jamieproctor.ca

November 2^nd – Finished moving in – both the bedroom AND the living room are now furnished with my total of five bits of furniture. The bathroom I’m leaving as it is. This house really is a piece of shit – three rooms, one garage, and ten feet from the highway. God knows what sleeping’s going to be like. This job had better pay off…

November 3^rd – Apparently when someone says “we’d like to hire you” you should know that they are also saying “if the five better-qualified applicants all drop dead of heart attacks within the next two days.” Assholes. Now I’ve got nothing to do but sit around in this shack, with nothing but fifteen boxes of Kraft Dinner for company, and check the classifieds. And I don’t know if I can take much more of this… last night was hell. I just sat there in bed with my eyes wide open listening to that goddamn highway; the noise was almost hypnotic. I could barely blink. My eyelids are so dry that I still don’t think I can.

Well, it’s nine. Time for another night from hell.

November 4^th – The classifieds suck. But they did offer me five minutes of entertainment when fashioned into crude paper airplanes and hurled across the room. Then one bashed into a wasps’ nest that had been quietly sitting unnoticed in the corner of the living room and I had to spend the next hour fighting for my life. I really do hate this house.

Now for another restful sleep.

November 5^th – What is it with this town; did all the jobs fly south for the winter?! Out of the five thousand, nine hundred, and forty-two cars that passed last night, not one stopped in this cow-pie village. Yes, I counted. In addition, two thousand, three hundred and seventy-six trucks went by last night. And one boatmobile.

Three nights with no sleep and no blinking – strange, I don’t seem to need to anymore – have glued my eyelashes together into two solid masses. It’s almost a good thing – gunk had started to accumulated on my eyeballs, but now I can kinda twitch my cheeks and these things brush ‘em off.

Night four begins in five minutes.

November 6^th – I can’t blink anymore even if I try. I’m getting better at the eyebrow wiping, though. Now I can do it almost as instinctively and periodically as blinking. Whoop-de-do.

I’m starting to get more used to the highway sound, but I still can’t sleep. Not that I care anymore.

November 7^th – Yeah, still no sleep. I think my eyeballs have enlarged; somehow, there doesn’t seem to be much room left for my nose in the middle of my face now. Also, my premature baldness has accelerated. It’s like the house is determined to drag me down with it.

November 8^th – I couldn’t sleep last night, so I moved into the garage. I won’t say I fell asleep, but I got some rest. I’ve just noticed that my skin’s getting all weird now – almost calloused-hard, but smoother – so maybe that has something to do with it.

Time for another evening of highway music. Y’know, I almost welcome it now. Though since my days are spent looking at the classifieds without really reading them, I guess anything’s an improvement.

November 9^th – Rested in the garage again. I think I’ll move in here.

I’m getting fat. Not sure how, since I’ve only been eating Kraft Dinner, and that’s twice a day. All I know is that I have to go sideways through doors. Getting harder to turn myself around, too. I’m looking forward to a good evening of highway.

I think my eyeballs met this afternoon. My perspective just went “bink” and there they were. Makes spotting flies before they land on me a helluva lot easier.

November 10^th – When I came out of my rest this morning, I was listening to the Pussycat Dolls somewhere behind my left ear. What was left of my hair had twisted itself into a little aerial overnight. Found out I could change channels by sticking my finger in my ear and swivelling it, switched it to a classic rock station, and left it. Useful. I’ll turn it off for the highway tonight, though.

November 11^th – I lost my nose this morning. I’m pretty sure that no one else besides Michael Jackson can say that. I just came out of rest and it was gone. Feh, the thing was too big anyways. Although it had been getting smaller recently. Commemorated the moment by switching my head to Michael Jackson for five minutes, then turning it off when I remembered how much I loathed his music.

November 12^th – Stopped eating Kraft Dinner. Not really hungry anymore, although I keep getting bulkier. It’s getting harder to even use this Dictaphone – my fingers are getting stubbier.

Highway was nice last night.

November 13^th – Gasoline is surprisingly tasty. No, really, it’s great. If it tastes bad when you drink it, you’re just not doing it right. The trick is to pour it into your ear.

That’s odd… my other ear vanished. Probably not important.

November 14^th – I’ve discovered that it’s far easier to move around on my hands and knees than any other way. Well, I think they’re my hands and knees. They’ve kind of blended into my arms and legs. Eh, same difference.

November 15^th – My teeth have intertwined into some sort of grill. This is really, really, REALLY bad news. I hate rappers, and I hate bling. At least the grill isn’t gold – it’s more shiny, like stainless steel.

November 16^th – Thought I saw something on my grill, looked in a mirror, and realized it said “Honda” right in the center of it. Also found out that my nose hasn’t vanished, it just shrank. It looks like some kind of little ornament sitting on my hood. I mean face. Whatever.

November 17^th – Der grill haff competely fealed off my teef. It’f getting hard to tark. Feh, who caref. Der highfay iff ‘ooking ‘etter and ‘etter. I fink Im gonna go for a drife foon.

Problem iff… the garaffe door iff fhut. Im gonna haffa get fhrough it fomehow, an’ my handff are gone.

Hey… there’ff some high-octane fuel in here. Wonder who left it?

November 18^th – Vrrroom, Vrroom, Vrrom, muuuuuuururrrrrrrr – screeeeeeaaaaaaacccchhhhh…

–CRUNCH clANG CRunK!

Vrooooommm…

Copyright 2007, Jamie Proctor.

Rocks. Damned rocks.

There they go, on as if without end, past the horizon and the horizon beyond it, over and onward, backwards and forwards, in front and behind. Big ones, medium ones, and little ones that are just chips off the first two kinds. Rocks. Damned, damned rocks. Black, jagged rocks. Damn them.

I don’t know a lot about geology, but I’m sure these aren’t granite, gabbro, slate, sandstone, flint, or limestone. They’re just rocks. Black ones. Come to think of it, they might be obsidian. Who knows? Not me.

I hate the rocks. I hate them so much that there’s barely any effort in it anymore; the kind of old, polished hate whose reason is a solid and fused mass of issues and grievances all tangled up beyond unknotting. Still, easy examples leap to mind.

They’re rough. Very rough. Rough and uneven, hell on your feet, like walking on sandpaper forever and ever. They have sharp edges to cut yourself on and blunt ones to stub your toes against, and there’s never telling which you’ll see next. The sun lies funny on them, so you can never tell if that’s a shadow lurking there or a hidden indentation that’ll trip you up and send you stumbling, grating feet and fingers alike as you flail and struggle to keep your balance, grasping at rocks to save yourself from other rocks. It’s self-defeating, like everything else here.

It’s a Sellennian custom, you know. I don’t know how long they’ve been doing it, but it’s been time enough for them to make it an art, an art out of a criminal sentence. They serve out the verdict (guilty as hell in our case, with loads of witnesses to boot – god, we almost deserved acquittal on grounds of mental incompetence), they let you stew over the prospect of a long, hard slog through a prison, years of your life delicately sliced off day by day, and they watch you squirm very calmly and politely, and then, discreetly as hell, they inquire if you would prefer the alternative sentence. It’s all very polite and very neat and, in retrospect, funny as hell. I tell you, no matter how well-known it is that Sellennians have no sense of humour, it’s a lie. They like a joke as much as any of us, it’s just that they’ve got stuck on this one and like it too much to let go, setting up the delivery and listening to the punch line over and over and over again. They never get tired of it.

So, cautiously, you ask what this sentence is. And they lay it all out for you, openly and without a fuss: you must walk.

It’s a long way to walk, they say – halfway across the planet’s largest continent, they’re more than willing to produce a map and give you measurements and distances – but it’s doable. They’ll give you supplies of a sort, and drop you off with a bunch of other people who took the same deal. They never let you go in a group smaller than ten, and some people have to wait a few weeks until they’ve got a full quota. If you wait for more than a year, they let you go. Or so they say. I’m more than sure that no one’s ever been able to test that promise.

The supplies aren’t a lie. They shoot you up with something in a series of injections with pointlessly large needles. They say it’ll keep you going without food or water for months and months, maybe a year or more, if you’re lucky. I don’t know how it works; if I did, do you think I’d have sunk to trying to knock over a bank? It also cuts down on your need for sleep, which, they so graciously inform you, should reduce the duration of your little pilgrimage by quite a lot. It doesn’t work like you’d think; it’s not that you don’t sleep anymore, or that you sleep less. It’s that your sleep isn’t sleep anymore. You’re only half-awake, half-asleep, and you can walk like that. It’s harder, and you slip up more often, but you don’t feel it as much until you’re awake again and you’ve got another cut, another bruise, another scrape to watch and not-quite-notice over the days it takes to fade.

What it all adds up to is that there’s nothing to distract you from your walk. You’ll get tired, yes, but once you get tired enough you’ll drop into half-sleep, not-sleep. You’ll get hungry, but it’s not real hunger. And you can get as thirsty as you please, but no further, because you really aren’t. Which, strangely, doesn’t make it any less of an irritant.

Anyways, after they’re done pumping you full of mystery drugs and nutrients, they pack you into a cargo flyer and zip you off smartly. It takes a few hours, and then you’re being set down above what you have been told is one of a score or so locations within a few hundred miles of the center of the continent. Start walking in any direction, says the pilot. Sellenn’s coasts are packed with one-hundred-percent of its population, so as soon as you hit the sea, you’re safe in civilization again. Make it to the coast, and you’re free with all charges cleared, no matter the crime. And they won’t hinder you in the slightest, which makes the whole thing even funnier.

So, right off the bat, you get together with your fellow convicts and erstwhile hikers and have a little chat. You pick directions, ask if anyone else wants to come, and set out. Sometimes it’s in twos and threes, sometimes all in one big bunch, and sometimes they all walk alone from the beginning, out of sight and into mind after the first few miles. Still, the distances bend and stretch as some fall behind and some pull ahead, and the angles of their paths waver unwittingly. Past the first month or so and you’ll walk into people you’ve never seen before in your life, on other courses, moving in other directions, from other starting points. There’s no point in talking to anyone by then, and you’ll move past and around and alongside them with the laden, uncomfortable silence of two men passing in a tight corridor as you walk, hundreds of feet between you while the overlarge sun shines in Sellenn’s wide, damnably-blue sky, beaming down on both of you and the rocks. The rocks don’t mound into hills, they don’t roll into valleys; just rocks, rocks, rocks, all the way from wherever you are down to within a few miles of the encircling coast that surrounds you completely at all times yet remains infinitely out of your reach. Maybe that blurred line in the far distance is the darkling ocean of Sellenn, lapping quietly at a forested shore. And it’s definitely just another row of rocks, squatting on the horizon, blotting out time and sanity.

After a while, your mind starts playing tricks on you. Have you seen that rock before? You shift your vision, halt your pace, and squint, and then decide that you haven’t. Then you resume your trudge, all momentum lost and weariness creeping up in you once more, and sure as the sun rises, five seconds later you’ll have stopped and looked again. The déjà vu will lurk in your hindbrain unceasingly for hours, long after the worrying rock is lost to sight, tickling strange dark thoughts. Have you looped back in on yourself? Are you walking in a circle? No way to ever know.

The sun doesn’t help. It’s hot. Not hot enough to bake, but hot enough to make you uncomfortable, and the damned rocks absorb enough heat in the daytime to get to that exact degree of temperature that makes bits of grit and rock dust stick to your sweat. It doesn’t end when the sun goes down either; the moon comes up and you bump into things even more often with the decreased visibility, its shiny white light just enough to ruin night vision, yet not quite enough to see by. You’ll think about resting, stopping, but then you start to imagine things. You imagine every second between you and the end of the nightmare, and then you imagine those moments of time as a vast pile of those damned rocks, heaped up high in front of your goal, every black stone a second spent walking. Then you imagine resting, and watching another stone drop onto the pile with every idle second. It doesn’t take long for you to start moving again, if you halt at all.

Now and then, people die walking. You come across the bodies; or, more rarely, you’re close enough to see it happen. They come to a spot where they need to clamber up a heap or sidle around a ledge, and they just keep walking, bodies smacking on black, uncaring rocks. The pettiness of it all is the bit that’s really funny, the part that must have the Sellennians slapping their knees. Dying by walking into a canyon, dejected and hopeless, is a tragedy. Dying by falling into a three-foot pit that you should’ve, could’ve stepped across is comedy. For some people. Sellennians.

I’ve been out here for who knows how long. I have no watch and lost track and interest after day eight. I could’ve been out here for two months or three years already, and I wouldn’t know. How long it’s been isn’t what’s bad. What’s bad is how long it feels. It feels like hell, real hell, the kind with no devils or demons or brimstone, the kind that’s realized that all you need to make someone truly face despair and crumble is an eternity of small cruelties and inconveniences towering over you. Forever. This isn’t a bad approximation, for something within the finiteness of life. It certainly explains the ones who walk to their deaths. If the worst theories of the afterlife are true, they’ll at least have experience, and hopefully, a change of scenery from rocks. And if it’s anything else – anything, down to and including utter oblivion without hope or any other emotion, thought, or shred of existence – than it can only be a relief.

Whenever my thoughts head this way, I find myself losing focus on my walking and collect a few scrapes before I pull myself back together. Maybe one day I’ll just go with it, go out without a bang or even a whimper. I’ll give a Sellennian a chuckle, another repetition of the same old vaudeville sketch, another delivery of the finely-aged punch-line. God knows how long it’s been being told, or who the original comedian was. If this is as close to hell as I think, at least Satan, whatever else anyone can say about him, has a sense of humour.

Is it a bad thing that the idea of the chortling Sellennian makes my spirits lift? Just the idea of happiness, anywhere. That it can exist somewhere, somehow. Maybe. I don’t know.

Is that blur on the horizon Sellenn’s tranquil sea? Or is it more rocks, black, jagged rocks. It is. It will be. Forever and ever.

Amen.

“Rocks” copyright Jamie Proctor 2008.

I’m not very good with math. My own, pet theory on this is that people start by learning to count on their fingers, and I don’t have any. Regardless, I’m not any good with dates sort of by association, and thus you’re going to have to forgive me some vagueness.

I was initially forged back in the Good Old Days, when killing was up close and personal – unless you were some persnickity little fuck with a longbow; luckily, they weren’t everywhere yet.

My creator, a thorough and passionate admirer of this stirring feature of his time, proclaimed me his masterwork, and gifted me to his lord in lieu of rent, or tribute, or whatever they called it in those days. His Lordship (I think his name was something that started with “s”… Stewart? Sven? Sam?) was highly pleased with me, but, clumsy-though-well-muscled sod that he was, managed to snap me in two with a misaimed practice stroke that smashed me into a wall. Livid, he flung me at my creator’s feet and proclaimed him a worthless toady, then forced him to pay double.

My creator, though a remarkably skilled and cunning man, was quite human (thank goodness I’m not like that) and took this hurt as a matter of pride. He promptly took himself into seclusion for several months, turning away all business, during which time he re-forged me in a cauldron of boiling blood obtained from his brother-in-law (he was a butcher and sold him some cattle blood. What were you thinking?).

When I came out, gleaming fresh and bloody, he used me to sacrifice a lamb to something with far too many consonants in its name and declared me alive, at which point I woke up quite suddenly. Very shocking, really. You people get a nice slow start to sentience, transforming from screaming feces machines to illogical, self-centred brats to semi-logical, self-centred jerks gradually over many years. I got a fully developed and working intellect in a split second, with a handful of memories from being a metallic implement. It shocked me dreadfully, and I’m very thankful for the many weeks I spent hidden away in a locked trunk in my creator’s cabin. It gave me some time to sort things out: a few tricky existential questions that most people don’t think about when they’re young and never recall when they’re old, and many, many, many hours of elaborate speculation upon the nature of knots in pine wood, and on what sort of noises cockroaches made depending upon their relevant health (my hypothesis on limping roaches hissing more was never confirmed or debunked to my satisfaction).

Anyways, after quite a long period of trunkishness, I was unearthed by my creator and used once more as tribute to the lord. My creator explained, with a twinkle in his marvellously canny little eyes, that I had been specially re-forged to be tougher so that none of his Lordship’s little high-spirited moments would split or sunder me. Being the oaf his Lordship was, he proceeded to test this by ramming me into the floor. I was the most surprised person there when I not only didn’t snap, but clove almost full-length into it (through a stone block, might I add).

Needless to say, his Lordship was most impressed. My creator was given full room and board in his castle, a dingy little thing that was nevertheless the height of luxury compared to his squalid shack. He moved on to smithing many intricate and clever things, like torture implements and other weapons. I was never possessive towards him or jealous about them; they were mere instruments with no minds of their own. It would be like a human becoming envious of a beloved’s dog. Also, my creator had virtually no redeeming values, something I was aware of from the start. He was greedy, petty, vengeful, and unappreciative of his own gifts. I was incapable by design of many of those flaws, but I was determined to avoid those that I could.

His Lordship eventually used me in actual battle, an exhilarating experience for him and me both. My incredible cutting edge allowed him to stand against almost anyone, and I must admit, there is something seriously thrilling about being the only reason an otherwise average schlup is capable of performing any of his deeds. He himself didn’t see it that way, of course, but he still boasted long and loud of his “miraculous magic sword.” Of course, it was only a matter of a few more weeks before a hired cutthroat performed the duty of his name upon his Lordship whilst he slept and absconded with me, which was pretty much what my creator had planned for in the first place. I never heard of him again, but I like to imagine that he died in a painful and undignified manner, which, given the era, was probably betting with the odds.

The cutthroat gave me to another petty tyrant (possibly a baron?) who’d decided that one of his immediate underlings possessing an undefeatable blade was poor planning. He promptly paid the cutthroat by lodging me in his chest cavity. I’m not sure why he didn’t expect that.

My new wielder was a far craftier man, one who reminded me uncomfortably of my creator, only of higher birth. Being crafty, he wasn’t dumb enough to fight anyone unless he absolutely had to, which meant that I didn’t see use past ending the life of my burglar for several years. Than one day one of my wielder’s rivals set the peasants to rebelling, using the cunning argument that his unjust rule was preferable to my wielder’s capricious regime. My wielder’s guards were swarmed on the ramparts by angered peasants, and I was soon being used inside the keep’s walls in a truly exciting melee. It was magnificently entertaining after such a lengthy period of boredom, and I daresay I was the deciding factor in the baron’s victory, allowing him to smite down brawny foes and those better-skilled than he with ease. He was so pleased by his snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat that he promptly led a counterattack against his rival’s keep, which sadly doomed him to, well, doom. He’d forgotten in the heat of the moment that his nemesis had sent only a few of his henchmen out to whip up the mobs, and that he still possessed a sizable stable of thugs as opposed to the baron’s scanty and much-depleted band of brutes. I still performed more-than-adequately, but the baron, alas, did not. I can’t say I mourned him that much; he’d been an odiously boring schemer and then a hot-headed fool, exchanging one vice for another in a most silly and carefree manner. I believed I might’ve had something to do with it, but I didn’t care at all. Still don’t.

Well, after that things got sort of hectic. I moved from hand to hand like the world’s most temperature-enhanced potato, my speed of ownership-changing hastened by greased palms. The preferred grease was blood. Most of my owners were unmemorable, violent scum, and by the time I realized that the amount of fascination I commanded couldn’t simply be the result of my more-than-impressive capabilities, I was quite happy to learn that I cursed almost all of my carriers to violent deaths. Quite frankly, the sort of person who seeks out an object of pure violence and then revels in using it for its intended purpose should scarcely be surprised when he dies violently, don’t you agree?
Now and then, given the fullness and abundant lengthiness of time, I ended up being used by someone halfway decent. I couldn’t really prevent my curse from functioning, however, and more than often I didn’t want to. Most of the nicer ones weren’t as prone to using me, which I must admit I found quite annoying. Being picked up by some maniacal hacker was almost refreshing after spending a year or two hanging on a wall. The most egregious example led to a truly startling revelation on my part.

My current wielder was a truly bloodthirsty man, a skilled combatant, a warlord on the rise, who had the bad luck to try to charge a man with a longbow. Guess who won that one. I was looted from the battlefield and spent a few months being traded, sold, and resold, with occasional murderous theft, before ending up in a monastery under the possession of the abbot, a renowned scholar. I was placed back into wall-hanger status for twelve years, during which time I was meticulously scrutinized by the man so many times that to this day the very sight of anyone with any of his facial features (beaky nose, square jaw), makes me feel ill.

The one blessing out of the whole incident was that it gave me a very long time to think, and even that was offset by the depressing truth that there wasn’t much for me to think on. I don’t have existential questions. For me, it all boils down to “I’m a sword.” I was made to hurt people, I do my best to keep my function going, and the fact that I inevitably lead violence to my owner is a mere side-dish on the dinner-for-one table arrangement of my existence.

At any rate, I found myself witness to all the comings and goings of the monastery’s important business, due to my wall-hanging position within the abbot’s chambers. Quite a lot of this business was done through the abbot’s right-hand man (his name eludes me, as does that of the abbot), who was much more savvy in real-world matters, although he wasn’t as well-educated. He was whole-heartedly devoted to the well-being of the monastery, but he held a very small spark of resentment quite close to his soul, that he, the man who held the place together as much as its mortar, was put beneath the man who was at best a vague overseer, and who, despite the best efforts of his advisor, would occasionally ignore his advice.

One day, this overlooked and underappreciated man was leaving the abbot to his contemplations after a somewhat fruitless attempt at persuading him to take a certain diplomatic tack. As he walked beneath my place of hangment, I could almost smell the pent-up frustration and anger streaming off him (I have no nose, but you will, of course, allow me figures of speech). In what seemed the most simple and natural thing in the world to do, I reached and suddenly he realized that all of his problems would be solved if he simply became abbot. Then the monastery would be led properly. He shook off this disturbing turn of thoughts immediately, of course, but it remained in his head as he departed.

I was left with spinning thoughts of my own. No longer would I have to suffer through months or years of inactivity! Now I would control my own fate, wielding my owner as he did me, choosing the next in line for my use! The exclamation points of triumph roiled through the paragraphs of my imagined future in an epic of joy!

From then on, every visit planted seeds of annoyance, peevishness, and general furiousness in his head at the tremendous ineffectuality of his superior. Eventually, I had him musing that the only method of promotion sure to work would be murder. But how to murder a fit and tough man, certainly stronger than he was? He knew little of poisoning, and hiring cutthroats would leave a trail. Of course, immediately after that he couldn’t help but remember the marvellous antique sword mounted upon the abbot’s wall, upon which the man himself had frequently and earnestly expounded, lingering upon its incredible cutting capabilities…

It was a bit messier than he thought it’d be, and he was caught trying to clean up after himself. I’d planned that too… a lack of turmoil meant I was doomed to wallhangingdom. I was used to hack through the nearby witnesses (a moment of mental nudging was required there), and then I was in the possession of a newly-minted and aged-soul’d outlaw, where I remained for several exciting years of hack-and-slash robbery before he committed suicide for me, a new and bothersome event. Luckily, he had the good grace to kill himself within snooping distance of a fairly well-traveled road (he was a highwayman, after all), and so I only had to endure a few days of being stuck through the ribcage of a rapidly-putrefying corpse.

The owners came on, and the times moved on. Once gunpowder weapons began to really proliferate, I began to change wielders much more frequently, an event that was not without risk. On the other hand, the black powder of death wasn’t the only step forwards… I began to see more and more of the world as humanity became more well-travelled, and some of it even before the metallic sceptre of the gun overshadowed all; I saw the crusades firsthand, for instance, and flipped from side to side almost every battle.

I made it to the new world at the side of a conquistador, and eventually found myself slipped between the ribs of Montezuma the second, although as to who my wielder was I will remain silent. What’s the romance of history worth when all its secrets are laid bare?

I ended up in the Caribbean, and was used with admirable effect by someone named something like Edmond (Edwin?) Torch, one of the few of my owners I deign to even attempt to remember properly, for, despite his vulgar vices, he was exceedingly deadly. He died headless, and I was claimed by a British sailor in the confusion after his death. This led to a somewhat perilous existence for many decades, being used by naval men of all nationalities and stripes, constantly in fear of being lost overboard, a fate which very nearly occurred more than once.

Eventually I came to the great wars of Europe, and I found a world that had left me behind quite badly. Guns were everywhere, but there was still a place for me in the brutality of close-up combat, where still nothing could match a good cutting edge, and my cutting edge made “good” appear as dull as the louts I was slicing. It was interesting for me to find, as the lead-spitting dragons gained prominence, that here was the time in which I acquired the greatest body count, this special era before the utter predominance of the ranged weapon, when the ability to carve your enemy’s face off was still more than merely useful in some situations. Several times I came within spitting (well, sighting anyways) distance of Napoleon himself, on various sides. Despite the enormous pileups of corpses that were frequent, I never was left on a body long enough to be missed – even if no one’s eye was caught and dragged to me (as often happened, and easily), I would snag their interest by force.

The times moved on, and the wars did too, going ever-farther away from the age of the blade. I saw some action in colonial Africa, but alas, that was the last of the big battles for me. There was no place for me in the War To End All Wars, nor its hate-fuelled successor, and at last I saw that the guns had won. What did I do then, you ask? Why, the obvious: crime! As I was no longer the weapon of choice for official slaughter, I would humble myself enough to engage in outside-the-box stabbing. Although somewhat archaic-looking compared to the switchblades and shivs of the modern thug, my effect was unquestionable. The only major downside was that I was immeasurably harder to conceal – a two-and-a-half-foot blade as opposed to a five-or-six-inch one. In retrospect, my eventual confiscation by the authorities seems inevitable, but at the time I was too busy cursing my luck to think about that.

I was taken to several different experts of medieval arms, who were able to date me and half-guess at my place of origin (I think they were correct, but I’d forgotten both by then). After all this, I was hauled off to a museum, where I remain to this day. The ultimate wall-hanging.

The security around here is too intense for me to try and tempt any passer-bys to taking me, and those who could disable the alarms and remove me without incident too rarely pass by. I’ve been here for twenty years or more, and it may be my fate forever.

The time of swords is over. There is no place for me now except as a wallhanging, and while I used to dread that fate, it is what is expected of me now, and so I accept it gladly. This situation is by no means permanent, anyways. I hear bits and pieces of the world as it walks by my display case, and who knows? In ten years, twenty years, thirty years, a hundred years, there could be a time when the blade will be needed once more. Whether because the black powder dragons have had their day and died in the pyres of a fading civilization, or because one of the old horrors you no longer believe has awoken from a great sleep.

Oh? You don’t know of them? Ha! You’ll believe in a sword with a mind of its own, but not in dragons, trolls, giants? Don’t be so devastatingly grounded in the present – it very well could end badly. You can fight fire with fire, blade with blade, gun with gun, and achieve stalemate, but to seize victory you must bring other tools to bear. Fight fire with water, blade with bow, bow with gun… and beast with blade.

I had a place in this world. Now I have another, and likely not the last.

“A sword and its story,” copyright 2008 Jamie Proctor.

Air is funny. It moves around when it’s warmed and it slows down when it’s chilled. This results in all sorts of odd things happening, which most of the things that live on earth, surrounded by air, call “weather.” It includes all sorts of water (frozen solid and kept liquid) falling out of the sky via big clumps of vaporized water hanging about miles up in the air, swooshing and swooping sheets of air frisking about as they sweep from one bit of sky to another, and all manner of other things.

Most things that live on top of the earth spend their lives surrounded by air. Almost all of them need to breathe it to stay alive. It’s quite a bit like water then, except you can’t make snowballs out of it once it’s frozen. Also, the only things that can move around through air itself are the ones that have wings, and it’s a lot trickier to go about than moving through water, mostly because air is much thinner, and if you aren’t careful about flapping through it, you just fall and go thud, thwack, or thunk, depending on what you land on.

A really interesting thing about air is how thin it gets the higher up you go. Things can get dizzy and pass out and need oxygen tanks, and the boiling point of water drops, which makes it very difficult to hard-boil an egg on Mount Everest. This doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, the thing boiling the egg becomes very annoyed. Imagine if you’d dreamed all your life of having a boiled egg with toast on Mount Everest, but were too lazy to look up the troubles of boiling eggs at high altitudes, and then your dreams were crushed right at their very end. Actually, you’d probably deserve it; if you didn’t care enough to learn about it, it was probably just an idle whim that you obsessed over, most likely irritating everyone around you while identifying you as shallow and thoughtless. Shame on you. Unless you haven’t had this particular dream, in which case said shame is undeserved and may be ignored.

Air can be compressed, you know. You squeeze it until it’s under pressure, and then you can keep it in small containers. The one problem with this is that if the container gets punctured it sort of sprays everywhere very fast, which can be quite dangerous. Air isn’t the only gas that can be compressed, of course. Oxygen is often compressed, for use in scuba gear tanks, but not usually all by itself, for safety reasons. You can use air in a scuba tank too, of course, but if you go too deep you’ll suffer from nitrogen narcosis, act drunk, and possibly die, usually from acting drunk more than one hundred feet underwater, which most things think is fairly stupid.

Anyways, air is awfully important because it forms our planet’s atmosphere, and without that nothing would be alive at all, which would be pretty depressing, to say nothing of boring. There’d still be lots of interesting things around, but there’d be no one to talk about how interesting they are. If that isn’t boring, what is?

Water is like air: a thing to move through, a thing to live in. The things living in air dispute this sometimes. Water, they say, is plainly something, while air is more like nothing. Therefore, they say, when you live in water you’re living in the middle of something, while to live in air you’re living in nothing. What’s interesting is that these things often don’t realize that if they were right, they would be living a most empty and disjointed existence, with no connections whatsoever to one another. It’s thankful that air is something, then, even if it does mean that fish can choke on it. That’s another proof right there: how can you choke on nothing?

Anyways, water is something to live in, and it’s deliciously, fragrantly good at it. It supports and comforts, coddles and nourishes, and is much more exciting to splash around than air, which doesn’t really splosh well, or earth, which can take someone’s eye out. Also, if you live in water, a much more sizeable slice of the planet is open to you – not only is far more of the world water than land, but water has the great advantage of containing far more up-and-down-ish-ness, which makes it even roomier. On the downside of this is that most things prefer to stay within certain areas, but that’s the way life is anyways. It doesn’t like change, even if it spends its life looping from the north pole to the south pole all year. That’s not change, that’s habit.

Things that don’t live in water are pretty varied in how they treat it. Some of them don’t like it for any sort of reason (it makes their fur wet and damp, it’s full of things that think they taste nice, it’s hard to get around), and others like it quite a lot (it’s full of tasty things, it’s good for bathing in, it’s fun to splash at people). A lot of them could take it or leave it. However, they all need it to stay alive, so they all love it very much in at least one way.

Most of the water on the planet is saltwater, or seawater, which isn’t very good to drink, mostly because of its distressing tendency to kill things that try to get nourishment from it. Stick to freshwater. It’s much, much, much rarer, but it doesn’t kill you unless it’s contaminated, or boiling, or freezing, or you’re dropped into it from somewhere very high.

Water has quite a lot of ways to kill things, actually. If it’s too warm, you’re cooked by it, if it’s too cold, you freeze from it, and if it’s too full of things that find you toothsome, you’re eaten in it. That last one isn’t really water’s fault, though.

You can float some things on water, like most wood. Most rocks just sink, though – but not all rocks. Pumice floats in a most buoyantly exuberant manner.

Most of the things that live in the water have to stick to a certain shape, to allow them to move around properly. This happens because water’s much more solid than air, which of course makes most things think it’s nothing, as opposed to water being something. We already went over how silly this was, so I’m not going to do so again.

It’s widely agreed that all life on our planet started out in the water, as tiny little things and bits that lived only to produce more of themselves. That’s sort of like now, except scaled-down a little bit, for things.

Earth is a few things: a kind of soil, the planet we’re standing on, and what we’re going to call the ground, for the sake of simplicity. Actually, that’s just making a word with a complicated bunch of meanings more complicated, so it isn’t simple at all.
If it weren’t for earth, we wouldn’t have anything for water or air to cling to, which would mean we wouldn’t exist. Well, our atoms and molecules would, but they wouldn’t have much to do with us, unless you’ve always fancied yourself to have a strong resemblance to an interstellar dust cloud or asteroid. Most things don’t look like either of those, although there are always exceptions. A snapping turtle has a very bumpy shell that might look a bit like an asteroid to some things.

Nothing breathes earth, which makes it a little different from air or water. On the other hand, plenty of things live in it, and it gives vital nourishment to life, just like air and water. So it’s really pretty similar there.

Earth contains all sorts of interesting things, like metals. A certain kind of thing uses metals to make many objects, particularly ones to kill their fellow things. It’s all a bit strange, but they assure us that there’s a good reason.

One of the odder things about earth is that if you go down far enough, it’s revealed to be sitting on molten rock. It’s divided into huge, crusty, curmudgeonly plates that slide around whacking into one another, like very big and very old bumper cars, except not at all. Most things didn’t believe this at first when someone thought of it, but then they decided it was all right. Some of them still think it’s wrong, but they’re the same ones who think that the planet is only a tiny, tiny fraction of its actual age just because they said so, so we can ignore them. It’s good for us, and good for them too, so everyone comes out ahead if we do that.

Quite a lot of things live inside earth. Many of them have lots of legs, or no legs, or are microscopic. Actually, given the population of things on the planet, you’re unusual if you don’t have a lot of legs, but not nearly as unusual as if you aren’t microscopic. If you didn’t notice this, it’s probably because you aren’t microscopic, since things that aren’t like that have a bit of trouble seeing things that are.

Another important thing about earth is that most plants grow in it. Since plants take the gases things exhale, and turn them back into the gases they inhale, this is pretty important. This is also why chopping down enormous forests of plants is a little silly, because then we won’t have anything to breathe. This is quite related to air, when you think about it. Really, air, earth, and water are so tangled up that it’s amazing, but that’s how the planet works.

An important thing to note about earth is that although it has lots of nifty things in it (like metals and fossil fuels), it doesn’t have endless amounts of them. That would mean we would have an endless supply of earth, which would be quite stupid.

Well, that’s about it. If you thought I was going to put fire in here, you were wrong. The sun’s a big ball of fire that keeps us all alive, and the earth’s core is made of magma, but nothing lives on them, or in them. So it’s not here.

Did you notice how all the bits were connected to each other? It sort of happened that way, and it’s complicated. Sorry.

“On the Environment” copyright 2008, Jamie Proctor.

“So, what happened to the finger?”

“GAH! Easy on the poking!”

“I’ve got to figure out where it broke.”

“I thought doctors were supposed to PREVENT pain…”

“Nasty break – and you’re going to need stitches, too. What caused this?”

“It’s sort of complicated. You know that big concert the symphony orchestra was doing tonight?”
“Yeah. You’re one of the musicians, aren’t you.”

“The tuxedo tip you off?”

“A little. Anyways, how’d this happen?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. You see, everyone was a little tense throughout pretty much every rehearsal, and it kind of came to a head right at the concert.”

“Difficult music?”

“No, no, the music was fine. But the principal trombonist was sleeping with the second violinist’s wife. OW!”

“Sorry, caught me a bit by surprise there. Go on.”

“Jeez… anyways, everyone sort of knew about it – except for Jeff.”

“The violinist?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to play the violin.”

“Good for you. Anyways, he was really suspicious, but he felt like he needed to be one-hundred-per-cent-sure before calling either of them on it. I have no goddamn idea why, Matt –“

“…the trombonist?”

“Yeah. Matt was practically smirking every time he looked at Jeff, and they kept sniping at each other on and off pretty much whenever they saw each other.”

“Got it. And?”

“Well, there’s always a bit of tension right before a concert, and it sort of mingled with the arguing, and they almost got into a fistfight offstage during intermission. The tuba guy pulled them apart though.”

“My son plays the tuba.”

“Really? This guy doesn’t – he plays harp.”

“Then why did you call him…“

“We all call him that; he’s shaped like one. Anyways –”

“He’s shaped like a tuba player?”
“No, like a tuba. Can I finish this story?”

“Go ahead.”

“Good. Right, well, we got into position, the conductor – Perkins, a terrifying man with a world-ending moustache – came onstage, and then just as he raised his baton, Matt leaned over and sort-of whispered to Jeff – it was loud from clapping, right, so he had to speak up a bit, and the rest of the orchestra sort of had to overhear: “You’re a violinist, all right. You need a lot of little sticky products to get up and running, and you get all high-pitched and whiny at a climax just before you break a string and go flat.” And then he made a pumping gesture with his trombone and said “burn, bitch!””
“My niece plays the trombone.”

“That’s nice. Well, Jeff’s face went from white to red to post-apocalyptic sundown and then he made a sound like a man being neutered in the woman’s washroom and chucked his music sheet at him. It sort of spun sideways, like a shuriken.”

“I had an aunt that used to know ninjitsu.”

“Really? What happened to her?”

“A rival clan sent three of its finest warriors to kill her. She felled them all in honourable combat but was mortally wounded by a clever ninjaken strike just as she dispatched the last of her foes.”

“Ah. You know, you don’t look Japanese.”

“I’m adopted.”

“Ah. Anyways, the music sheet sort of sliced into Matt’s nose and gave him an enormous papercut from cheek to cheek. He fell over backwards and almost decapitated the guy on third French horn with his trombone.”

“My grandfather decapitated a man once.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Or rather, he had him decapitated. He would not listen to his generous business offer and remained stubbornly convinced of his need for financial independence, and so he was offered a separation agreement.”

“Ah. The separation of his head from his body?”

“Grandpapa was a thorough man.”

“Ah. Anyways, the whole hall sort of froze, and then Jeff launched himself at Matt with his bow in one hand and violin in the other. He crossed the stage in two big bounds with a warlike yodel and if the tuba guy hadn’t snatched up Matt’s music stand and blocked his bow-blow, I don’t like to think what would’ve happened to Matt’s face. He was aiming for the nostrils.”

“Spectacularly cruel.”

“Yes. It was pretty unsporting, but then again, so was what Matt had said. Then Jeff smashed his violin into the tuba guy’s head, but he had a pretty thick skull and he just grabbed Jeff in one hand and his instrument in the other, and shoved him right into it.”

“Gracious. That must’ve been hard on the poor harp.”

“What? No, it was a tuba.”

“But you said –”

“No, no, no that was the tuba guy, THIS is the tuba guy. Different people.”

“I… see. Did I mention my son plays the tuba?”

“Yes. Well, Jeff was a pretty well-liked guy in the string section, and they’d been pissed as hell at Matt for acting the way he did, and that was all the excuse they needed to mount a charge. A pretty fearsome sight it was, too – a solid wedge of violins, tipped by a heavy force of cellos, with double bass backup.”

“My cousin used to play the double bass.”

“Good for him. Why’d he stop?”

“He played a song grandpapa didn’t like.”

“Ah. Anyways, I was one of the flutists, and we were sort of caught between the hammer of the onrushing strings and the anvil of the hurriedly fortifying brass god DAMNIT that hurts!”

“Stitches do that. Go on.”

“Well, the woodwinds looked to be in trouble, and I confess, we reacted poorly – not a shred of the discipline of the opposing sections that threatened us. Half of us ducked for cover, the other half tried to form a sort of defensive formation. I was in the formation, and I can tell you, it was no picnic. Ever tried to perform a coordinated life-or-death defence with a three-hundred pound, five-foot-five double bass player bearing down on you at full speed with bass set to ramming position?”
“No, thank goodness.”

“Well, that’s what was coming at me, and I looked down and all I’ve got is this little flute, and so I did the only thing I could.”

“You ran?”

“No, I stepped smartly to one side and let him ram the guy behind me. It was a pity – I always liked Phil – but he was a piss-lousy clarinettist, so no great loss. Besides, I dispatched the fat bastard with my flute while he was trying to shake Phil off his bass.”

“How did you do that?”

“Sharp blow to the forehead. Dropped him like a load of tubby, Twinkie-eating bricks.”

“My mother ate Twinkies.”

“You don’t say. Regardless, when I looked up –”

“And sucked on them, too, as well as putting them down her shirt. They weren’t real ones though; they were props made from gelatine and pre-chewed liquorice. She didn’t really like it, but it was specified in the movie contract, and father wouldn’t let her wriggle out of it; or the leather straps, for that matter. He did, however, allow her to opt out of the clause that stated that scene five had to be performed with a monkey and a big bowl of marijuana jell-o. She said afterwards that it might’ve been better with a monkey and that the jell-o would’ve at least let her pretend she was in a happier world rather than the exhausted hell-life she found herself in on that dastardly shoot. From that day onwards, she cried whenever she saw liquorice, and so I was never allowed in a candy store again. Father’s laughter echoed around the house every Halloween.”

“Ah. Fascinating.”

“Sorry, I do tend to go on. Continue, please.”

“Right. Well. Anyways, I found myself to be in the rubble of the woodwinds. The strings had simply ploughed through us and were even then hurling themselves against the shining metal of the brass section. An ugly business – both sides were evenly matched. I saw a trumpet player fencing with a violist before taking him down with a thrust to the beer gut, only to fall beneath the merciless garrotte of a thin, delicate-fingered cellist called Jim-Bob. The tuba guy was trading dim-witted blows with the tuba guy, and Matt and Jeff were fighting literally tooth and nail. It was madness.”

“It sounds terrifying indeed. Last stitch, then on to splinting.”

“Excellent. Well, old Perkins was hellish mad at seeing his orchestra tearing itself apart, and he banged his baton on his podium and roared for order as loud as he could. One of the oboe players was so panicked that he just threw his music stand at him, like a spear. I never saw anything so eerie in my life as how Perkins handled that; he just sort of swayed his upper torso to one side and caught the thing with one hand, then hurled it straight back at him. It ran him right through.”

“I used to run through malls when I was younger, looking for my friends. They would always hide from me and whisper dark hints as to their location directly into my tiny little prepubescent brain. They always hid in the ladies changeroom, and I always got in trouble when I tried to find them. One time, I had to cut the manager to get away in time. I didn’t mean to do it, but my friends made me. I never found them again, but sometimes I hear them whispering whenever I pick up something with a sharp edge.”

“Ah. Perkins pretty much leapt off his platform and landed in a duelling stance besides three of the violinists and a trumpet player. The man was a whirlwind with that baton; they all just sort of flopped to the ground, screaming in agony at their ruptured nerve pressure points, alive but in really terrible pain.”

“Your conductor reminds me of my uncle Gary. He made a study of human endurance under extreme conditions, with careful hypotheses supported by extravagant amounts of testing. Why, he sent no less than eighteen experimental subjects into a single booby-trapped hallway in order to determine the exact point, down to the decimal, at which a blast of super-intense heat can literally melt flesh from bones, yet preserve the subject’s psyche long enough for them to emit a shriek of spine-shredding pain.”

“Ah, fascinating. Well, Jeff and Matt were on their feet again, though both had lost their instruments and resorted to wrenching off their ties and using them as lasso-nooses, each seeking to strangle the other. They both managed to get one around the other’s neck at the same time, and when they each tried to deliver the killing yank they both were too weak from oxygen loss to manage it. Total stalemate, and the rest of their sections were too busy with their own fights – including Perkins, who, by the way, was indiscriminately laying about with aim to incapacitate.”

“Well, it’s better to rough up the employee that steps out of line than to do away with him entirely. Rule by fear is more effective when you allow second chances. But only second chances – infinity leniency is foolish. Don’t go out of your way to make examples, but if you must, make it a good one. My staff around here smartened right up after they got to work one day and all that was at my secretary’s desk was her fingernails. Good ol’ grandpapa always knows where to find the best guys to get stuff done.”

“Right. Well, the woodwinds sort of got together and decided that we were going to give ol’ Perkins a hand, seeing as he was taking on the sections that had just handed our asses to us on a platter. We charged the strings from behind and just zipped past them and into the brass; it’s much easier to penetrate a heavy defensive line when you’re carrying a piccolo than a cello.”

“I’d imagine so. I think one of my nephews plays the piccolo.”

“Yes, and the lighter instruments are much better for close quarters. I took out the tuba guy and two trombonists without breaking a sweat before I ran into a violinist. That was tougher. He had enough elbow room to use bow and instrument in combination, and he nearly got my eye.”

“Was that how you sustained this injury?”
“Eh? No, no. A French horn player clobbered him from behind, and I got off narrowly. All in all, the brawl was sort of winding down by then, especially since Perkins had reached Matt and Jeff and bashed their heads together several times. Within four minutes, it had ceased entirely.”

“Really? Then how did you get this injury?”
“Thanks for the fix by the way, the splint looks really nice. Well, it’s sort of embarrassing. We were all starting to remove the dead and wounded under Perkin’s direction, and then the audience started to clap. Apparently they thought it was some sort of performance art.”

“This relates to your finger how…?”

“You see, the adrenaline had worn off by now and a lot of us, myself included, were sort of shell-shocked. One little old lady in the front row stood up and started yelling “encore,” and I was so pissed off that she appreciated the hell we just went through that I leaned over the edge of the stage, face to face with her tiny, wrinkly eyeballs, and gave her the finger.”

“This finger?”
“Yes. Do you know that the little hag actually had fanged dentures?”

“What a coincidence, you’ve just perfectly described my great-aunt. You’re lucky all you got was a mangled finger. She simply can’t abide rudeness. I crafted those dentures myself, you know. They’re made from the finest illegal elephant ivory, tipped with the black sorrow diamonds that are hewn by slave-child-miners in the hell-pits of Yar-Cuchcha.

“Did you just make that up?”
“Not more than anything else I’ve said to you.”

“You’re a real kidder, doc. Those lines you cracked were better than morphine.”

“Thank you. By the way, since you’ve been such a good patient, why don’t you take this with you.”

“A handgun?”

“It has some incriminating fingerprints on it, but don’t worry; the investigation has just been thrown into confusion, so there shouldn’t be any further pursuit.”

“‘Further’ pursuit?”

“Yes, the gentleman that came in just before you was the head detective on that particular case. Would you like his shoes too? Size twelve, and in fine condition.”

“Concert” Copyright 2007, Jamie Proctor.

It was a dark night and Matthew was tired. These are many things: excuses, reasons, facts, and results. That they were excuses for what happened was true, but they were also adequate reasons, which was indisputably a fact. They were also the result of overcast weather and a large, sleep-inducing meal that he had just eaten at Jesse Newman’s cottage before stumbling back to his small rowboat, tripping over rocks in the dark on his way to the rough wooden pier.

He’d been rowing for a good five minutes or more – hard to say in the dark – when he reached the narrows. The narrows need no real description other than their name. As he quietly splashed his way through the rocky channel, he saw a gleam in the water, and half-stood up to see what it was. A brief beam of moonshine, here then, gone now as the moon dipped away behind the clouds again, had illuminated something in the water. Maybe a stray buoy, one that had snapped its tether and drifted off. He might as well retrieve it, if it was. Standing up slightly straighter, he hauled on an oar one-handed, bringing the boat around. Almost within viewing distance… One more pull on the oar brought him close enough to see, and he was satisfied to see that it was indeed a loose buoy – home-made from a plastic juice jug. Then there was a bump, he clutched at the rowboat’s side, and, with almost comical willingness, it dutifully tipped over in a sudden spin of oars and water, plunging him in headfirst.

Trying to swear and choking on water, Matthew flailed murkily, completely disoriented. He felt a vague pull in a specific direction, and realized that his lifejacket (which, he remembered, with sudden annoyance, he was now more than fifty-seven pounds too heavy for) was weakly tugging him towards the surface. Flush with relief, he gathered his legs up, tensed them, and kicked towards the surface like a gigantic frog, happy that he’d gotten out of this annoyingly little incident so easily. He was already working out how he was going to right the boat and head home when his head connected with a hard surface (emitting a startling “wokk!” noise) and he passed out.

Matthew was aware of the bobbing, lulling sensation first, the enjoyable feeling that’s the closest thing anyone out of diapers can come to being rocked in a crib. Then the dampness chimed in. After that came bleary realization that he was really very lucky to be alive; apparently the tiny lifejacket had been just enough to keep him afloat. Forcing gummed eyelids open, he couldn’t see the boat. No telling how long he’d been out, or where he’d drifted – fog had rolled in, completing the set of bad weather that had followed his family’s vacation over the weekend, and making it impossible for him to tell how far off shore was. He bobbed, disconsolate. He couldn’t even see the point in striking out in any direction; there was no telling where he was.

After a minute or two (his watch had stopped working, to his annoyance), he heard a distant, repeated splashing, as of oars dipping in and out of the water. It was hard to be sure, but he thought it was getting closer, and after another guessable period of time, he was sure of it. Raising himself out of the water slightly with circular arm movements, he called “Hey! Can I get a lift? Fell overboard!”

A moment’s pause, with the oar sounds suddenly ceased, and then “Sure! Just keep talking, hard to see in this stuff!”

“Thanks!”

Feeling marginally better, Matthew listened to the steady rise and fall of the oars with good humour, keeping up a monologue of random comments. After a surprisingly short amount of time, he felt the spray from one particularly close splash on his face. Immediately thereafter, an oar smacked him on the head, directly on the sore spot left by his earlier bout with unconsciousness.

“Aagh!”

“Sorry.”

The offending instrument was extended to him, somewhat apologetically, insofar as a shaped length of wood can be said to have a manner of bearing.

“Grab ahold.”

Doing so willingly, Matthew hauled himself into a small rowboat, only slightly bigger than his. Its occupant, a vaguely friendly-looking middle-aged man with a somewhat unfortunate wide-brimmed straw hat, grinned at him. “Boat tip over?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so. Ran into the thing a little while ago. Wondered about it, looked around, and then I heard you.” The man began rowing again; steady, strong strokes that looked like they could keep going forever.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Law of the sea, or lake, or whatever. Anyways, it’s sort of my job to pick you up.”

Matthew thought that last comment was slightly odder than it needed to be, and his expression must have conveyed a little of what he was thinking, because the man sighed. “Look, do you want me to tell you all at once or in little bits?”

“How can I answer that if I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me?”

The man frowned. “Hmmph. True.”

“And what do you mean, it’s your job?” continued Matthew.

His rescuer winced. “Oh, bugger the whole “break it slowly” routine. It always feels silly and everyone just asks me to cut to the point. You want the facts? You’re dead.”

A brief pause, save for the continuous, industrious rowing. Then, “I don’t seem to be.”

“’Course you don’t seem to be.” said the man, patiently. “You don’t expect to be dead, so you don’t look it.” He gave Matthew a critical stare. “Most things work like that, once you get past the body.”

Matthew spent several quiet but mentally frantic moments trying to find a way to get home without spending any more time in the same boat as this guy, and then, almost without prompting, his mouth opened and said “Why the hell do you say I’m dead?”

“’Cause you are. Think I’m a liar?” After a more careful examination of Matthew’s face, he added “Well, I guess you do. Can’t say I blame you.” He altered his stroke, and the rowboat swung to the right, changing course. “Where’re we going?”

“To grab a little proof. I do this sort of thing a lot, and let me tell you that you aren’t the first person I’ve picked up who’s a little doubtful of me.”

There was a small trip in silence, during which Matthew picked up his lost train of thought regarding escaping the rowboat, and then their side bumped against something. The man grunted in satisfaction, and leaned over the side slightly.

“What is it?”

“It’s your boat” came the muffled reply from over the edge of the rowboat. “Just lemme flip it and…there she goes!” Matthew’s driver pulled himself back into his seat for a moment, half sitting-down, and then tipped over again.

“Allright, here, have a look at this.”

Matthew twisted in his seat and adjusted his angle, and was unpleasantly surprised to see the man holding a motionless form by the strap of its remarkably undersized lifejacket. He let out an extremely large and gusty sigh. “Well, shit.”

The man watched him closely. “Satisfied?”
“No. But I believe you.”

“Fine. Just wanted to clear that up before we went any further.”

“Understandable.” Coming face to face with your own body should be more of a shock, thought Matthew. Instead, it was just vaguely gross, kind of like moving a piece of furniture only to discover that an exceptionally large mouse had chosen that location to pass away.

The man let the body drop back into the water, where it splashed.

“Was that really necessary?”

“Hey, it’s not like you’re gonna feel it.”

“Yes, but you could treat me with a little more respect there.”

“Sorry. I’ve seen a lot of this stuff, and you kinda get whatsisname, accumulated after a while.”

“Acclimatised.”

“Yeah.”

Matthew sighed. “So, two things: who are you, and now what?”

The rower grinned again. “Well, what happens next, like I said, depends a lot on what you expect. And as to who I am, think of me as the grim reaper, only less boney and more nautical. I handle the messups on the liquid-y-er parts of our big blue planet.”

“That’s an awfully big job for a guy in a rowboat, especially, no offence intended, when said guy is more than a few miles north of forty.”

“None taken. And you’d be surprised how many people have said that.” The rower chuckled. “And they were pretty surprised too, after a while. This trip takes a little bit, and you’ll see a few things before it’s over.”

“Anything dangerous?”

“Nope. Nothing’s really dangerous when you’re already dead, unless –“

“Unless you expect it.” finished Matthew.

“Yup. And even that doesn’t really apply here. This is what you could call the official part of the proceedings.”

A small pause, during which the fog managed to suck the sound even out of the gentle plashes of the oars, and then “So, I’m dead. That’s it?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“This really fucking sucks.”

“Probably,” he agreed.

“I mean, I’m still a virgin for Christ’s sake. I hadn’t even had sex yet!”

“Don’t look at me.”

Matthew winced “I wasn’t.”

“Just joshin’ ya.”

“You certainly don’t fit the “grim” portion of a gatherer of the dead. No scythe either.”

“Well, that’s an agricultural instrument, and I’m more the nautical variant.”

“A fishing net’d be favourite, then.”

“Ha! Yes, that’d be good. Never thought of that before, maybe I should find one somewhere. Hold on a second.” The man cupped a hand to his ear, and frowning, stared off into the grey fog.

“Sorry, is this another pickup?”

“Yes, and now sshh up for a minute, please.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, be quiet.”

A moment or two passed with intense listening, and then the rower sat back down and picked up the oars again. “Right, this should be easier than picking you up was. Passenger liner went down.”

“How’d it do that?”

“Bomb in the hold. Dunno why, but motives scarcely matter at this point, wouldn’t you say?”

Matthew nodded. “So, how many people?”
“A few hundred. Tropical seas, so you don’t have to worry about hypothermia, and since the GPS stopped working, they should be picked up before they attract the attention of any sharks.”

“A few hundred? In this rowboat.”

The man smiled. “It’s all what you expect –“

“It to be,” Matthew finished again, a tinge of annoyance colouring his voice.

“Well,” said the rower, a touch exasperated, “It’s true. They were just on a big ol’ passenger vessel, they’ll have them on their minds. So most of ‘em’ll probably see this as one.”

“And what it is? Really?” asked Matthew.

The rower looked thoughtful for a couple strokes, and then “You know, I don’t know. Personally, I’m always in favour of a good row, you know? So for me it’s a rowboat. But when someone else comes on board, if you try, you can always see it from their point of view. I’ve seen this little girl as a battleship, outboard, aircraft carrier, ocean liner, and once, the Flying Dutchman.” He paused again, for a moment. “That was a very odd man, that was. Gibbered at me the whole time about how I wasn’t going to get my filthy hands on his soul. Gave me the creeps, he did.”

He leaned over the side, staring into the fog. “Ah, there’s our first customers. Stick an oar out, willya?”
Shrugging, Matthew did as asked, and was mildly surprised when he immediately felt a heavy weight on the oar. Pulling it in, he found that it had a wild-eyed young man attached to it. Wordlessly, he hauled him up over the side, and then inserted the oar back into the water. Again, he felt a tug almost right away. This time it was a middle-aged man. Again, and it was a bedraggled-looking woman. After that he stopped paying much attention, and just kept hauling them over.

After a time, he felt an exceptionally heavy pull, and began the weary process of bringing in the oar with a very fat person hanging onto it. Instead, rather to his surprise, the oar’s occupant was an extremely large shark, which glared at him resentfully.
“I ‘ot it. It’s ‘ine. ‘Lear off, huhan,” it said, muttering incoherently around the edges of the wood.

Matthew stared for a moment, and then, somewhat automatically, he said “Could you wait a second?”

“’Ot all niht.”

Matthew leaned back into the boat, keeping a tight grip on the oar, and poked the rower on the shoulder, drawing his attention from his most recent catch. “There’s a shark on the oar. Could you have a word with him?”
“Just tell him that we’re on collection duty,” the man said, turning back to his efforts.

Matthew leaned over the edge again. “I’m sorry, but we’re on collection duty. And might I tell you, just as a carry-away bit of advice, oars aren’t edible.”

Releasing the implement, the shark gave him a look. “Goddamn typical of you bastards, sticking stuff in the water and waving it around like it’s in cardiac arrest, and then telling us it isn’t even goddamn alive. Fucking humans.” Its piece said, it dived under the boat with a flick of its tail, vanishing from sight.

Matthew gazed at the spot where it had dived. “You didn’t mention we’d end up talking to sharks, you know.”

The rower talked without moving his attention. “Yeah, animals can see us. Mostly I end up talking to the sharks, y’know? They’re damn bright compared to most fish, and they turn up at wrecks a lot.”

Matthew took his eyes off the sight of the shark’s submersion to haul in another passenger. “Are they all such assholes?”
“Hey, not like we give ‘em reasons to be happy, you know? One time I got into a good long talk with a bronze whaler about world fish markets and he said they’re being hunted down like rats, poor bastards. Being fifteen feet long and having a mouth full of fangs isn’t much good against a five-hundred-foot fibreglass-hulled fishing boat, and they aren’t as luminous as the little fellas, like sardines and so forth. Hard for ‘em to recover from being fished up in big bunches like that.”

Matthew hauled in another dripping castaway. “Numerous.”

“Pardon?”

“If something’s luminous, it’s glowing. If it’s numerous, there’s a lot of it.”

“Thanks. You’re a regular dictionary, aren’t you?”

“I do my best.”

The man sat down with a sigh. “Well, we’re done here – thanks for being such a help, by the by. Pass me that oar, would you?”

Matthew did so, noticing, without much surprise, that there was no sign of the people they’d fished up.

“So, they’re all off in an ocean liner?”

The rower grinned. “Yup. If you want, you can take a peek. Just change what you expect. I’ll poke you if I need help again with a big order, don’t you worry.”

“Right.”

Matthew sat motionless, trying to picture the place as an ocean liner might look. Big, fancy, huge buffet tables stuffed with the kind of food that made you waddle after a few days of it, big soft beds, onboard entertainment…

It wasn’t working. The rowboat remained, steadfastedly, a rowboat.

The rower looked up for a moment. “Try shutting your eyes. That always helps.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem”

Matthew shut his eyes. Ok. Big. Fancy. Buffet. Beds. Enormous television screens for lazy people who didn’t want to have to look at tropical views all day. He opened his eyes.

Woah.

He was sitting on a large soft-backed chair in a small room filled with incredibly complicated equipment. In front of him, a wide window showed an enormous prow cutting through the fog. Besides him, the rower, still wearing his straw hat, sat at the wheel. He gave him a mischievous little grin. “Bigger, isn’t she?” Matthew slowly nodded. Down there, there was a tennis court. He could see a handful of people wandering around, moving in and out of doors.

“How many people were onboard when you picked me up?” he asked.

The captain grinned again. “No one, actually. First catch of this trip.”

“Won’t this take an awfully long time then?”

“You’d be surprised. Not as if I’m the only person on duty, you know.”

“There’re other…” Matthew fumbled for a phrase, and grabbed hold of his first thought; “…grim rowers?”

“Ha! First time I’ve heard that. Yeah, there’re others. I’m actually the only one who rows nowadays. Most of the others prefer to change around from boat to boat, but mostly powered stuff, or sailboats. Me, I like the work. And the one time I ever was in a sailboat, I managed to knock myself overboard within two minutes. No, I like this girl as she is.”

Matthew looked out upon the intimidating expanse of deck. “Yeah. I think I do too.” He squinted for a moment, and abruptly, he was sitting in the rowboat again, opposite the steadily rowing man. He gave him a quizzical look. “You weren’t always like this?”

The grim rower snorted in amusement. “Nope. I dunno how long I’ve been doing this, but it must be more like fifty years than all eternity.”

“How’d it happen?”

“Well, I got picked up after an accident a lot like yours, ‘cept I was kayaking and was out off California, ‘bout the late summer of nineteen-sixty. Then I hit a rock, went under, managed to smack my head on a rock – might’ve even been the same one – and then some little old guy in a kayak picks me up. We chatted along, I took a look at what he was driving – for him it was a big ol’ sailing ship, the like the world hasn’t seen for a hundred years and more– and then as we dock and everyone starts departure, he up and asks me if I want his job. Said he’d been doing this since eighteen-ought-four and he was ready to retire. And really, how could I refuse? Always liked messing around in boats, and it’s almost like community service. Always liked that, too; it gives you a lovely warm feeling inside.”

Matthew mulled over this for a minute. “What’d he do?”

“He disembarked with the rest of them, and I went off in my rowboat, visited my first passenger – some guy who’d managed to drown in a bathtub, believe it or not – and I’ve never looked back since.”

“You had to fit this in a bathtub?”

The grim rower gave him a look. “Oh, c’mon now. Have you ever seen hide or hair of land since you drowned? Think about it.”

“Well…”

The man whisked an oar out of the water and held the dripping instrument in front of Matthew. “Here, give the water a taste.”

Matthew reached out with one hand, smeared off a drop of water, and gingerly licked his finger. “Salty.”

“Yeah. It’s all pretty much one big ocean, out here, once you die. Whether you drown in a pool or the Atlantic, it’s all Neptune’s domain out here, boyo.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t mention it.”

They made another stop, this time for three luckless souls who’d managed to run aground on a sandbar before their boat had sunk from under them, but then had been picked off one by one by a solitary shark who’d apparently developed a sweet tooth for bipedal apes, a rare commodity in the sea. Matthew saw the shark as they paddled off. It gave him an unrepentant grin before it was lost in the fog.

“You said you ran into my rowboat…”

“Yup.”

“So we kind of are in the place where the people died, and here, at the same time?”

“Far as I can tell.”

“And we can see the animals, and they can see us.”

“Yup.”

“So they just see us pop out of thin air, or what?”

“Pretty much, I think.”

“Weird.”

“Has anything not been, for you, on this trip?”

Matthew thought it over. “No.”

“Well there you go.”

Another long period of silence, during which they picked up a ten year-old girl who’d fallen off a dock. Unlike the other passengers so far, she seemed to see the ship as a rowboat, and she sat next to Matthew, sucking on a lollypop the grim rower had produced from a pocket.

Matthew contemplated the candy for a moment, and then “That wasn’t there a moment ago, was it?”

“Nope.”

“What you expect, right?”

“You bet.”

Five or six more shipwrecks, one after the other, all small boats, anywhere from one to eight people on each. Matthew talked with the little girl in between stops (her name, she said, was Melissa), and helped with the larger wrecks. Melissa remained the only person who saw the rower’s vehicle as a rowboat.

Finally, the grim rower sat back with a sigh. “Well, that’s it for this trip.”

“To the pier, eh?”
“Yup. Off to the dock.”

“Let me guess…this dock looks different –“

“Depending on what you expect.” The man grinned. “You catch on pretty quick.”

There was a long and splashing sort of silence, ending after what might’ve been ten minutes, and might’ve been something very different, when a battered wooden pier that barely cleared the waterline hove out of the gloom. It must’ve been no more than ten feet long.

The grim rower sat back on his oars and sighed. “Well, end of the line. All passengers disembark and all that.”

“Can I have your job?” asked Matthew.

The man started slightly. “I expected you to ask, but not like that. For goodness’s sake, didn’t your parents teach you manners?”
Matthew grinned with the same impertinence of the shark with a taste for humans. “All right. Can I have your job, please?”

The rower grinned back. “That’s the ticket. As to your question, sure. You seem an ok sort, you didn’t mind the work, and I was starting to get bored anyways.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “And you saw my old girl here for what I think she is at heart, never anyone else mind – a nice little rowboat.”

Melissa piped up. “Can I stay too? I like this.” She pointed at Matthew. “I like him too.”

The man gave her a funny look. “I don’t recall any – aha – “grim rowers” taking permanent passengers on before, missy.” He smiled. “But who’m I to know? You can get off whenever you want, at the end of any trip, and you seem a nice sort. By all means, if it’s all right with the young man here.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t mention it. And of course it’s all right, Melissa. You can stay on as long as you want.”
“Yay!”
As they sat, they watched the passengers stream off the boat, walking onto the misty shore. “Where’re they going?” said Matthew.

The man smiled and got up, placed his straw hat on the seat, and stepped awkwardly onto the pier. “Wherever they expect, which is just what I plan to do.” He leaned down and solemnly shook their hands, one after the other. “Curt Veitch.”

“Matthew Stuart.”

“Melissa O’Conner.”

The grim rower – Curt – straightened up. “You have a good trip now, you hear?” Turning on his heel, with a final wave, he strode down the dock and into the mists.

Matthew moved into his vacated, still-warm seat and looked at the hat. Then, with great deliberation, he picked it up and placed it on Melissa’s head. She watched him with large, solemn eyes. He grinned. “It doesn’t suit me, you know. But it looks good on you.”

She smiled back, exposing tiny, perfectly-white teeth. “I like it.”

“Good.” Matthew reached under the seat and pulled out a battered old captain’s hat. He turned it over carefully, examining it. “It’s what you expect. I’ve had this hat since I was a baby, and I expect to put it to good use now.”

He took up the oars and grinned at Melissa. “Ready to go, cabin boy?”

“Cabin girl.” she corrected him, primly.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Boat” copyright 2007, Jamie Proctor.

A most elegant property, this is. How old? I’m not quite sure, I’m afraid. Bits of it have been rebuilt and added on and knocked down as the years went by, but it is in excellent condition, with all the amenities.

Here is the porch, a fine wraparound complete with a Victorian porch swing. What, it’s rocking on its own, you say? Yes, it does that quite often, and it’s done so since forty-seven years ago.

What happened? I know a bit of the story, I’m privileged to say – I’ve a hobby of local history, you see. Forty-seven years, five months, and eight days ago, John Scollops proposed to Catherine Hibbert upon this very swing. When she spurned him, for John was the town fool as she was its beauty, they say that he sprung to his feet and clapped a hand to his breast in sorrow, then fell, dead, upon her, staining her white dress with red blood. They found a nail in his heart, head clutched between his fingers, and it was the marvel of all that John Scollops, the man who had only learned to tie his shoes three years ago, at the age of sixteen, had managed to slip such a short and sturdy instrument between his ribs to prick his heart most exactly. He’d practiced upon cats, it was revealed later. A little kitty graveyard right outside the window of his home.

So sorry, I get carried away sometimes. May you go inside? Of course! Silly of me to keep you waiting here. Mind the door, good sir, and don’t touch the knocker – it sometimes bites, and we can’t let the risk of it tasting fresh blood; not after last time.

Here is the entry-room, and you’ll find it serves well. A tidy little hall, with the living-room upon your right through that door, and the kitchen dead ahead. To your left is the staircase up, as I’m sure you can see. There’s a small, stout stove in here to keep the drafts warmed when the wind wails, but I must caution you: do not, under any circumstances, place the wood of the pine in it, especially black pine, or your flues will moan at midnight.

Step over here and view the living-room. It’s got solid oak paneling, and I can promise you that these walls will outlive your great-great-grandchildren by many, many years. What’s wrong with them? Nothing’s wrong with them at all, my good man. Surely you do not think I would leave any faults unsaid to my clients! No, the only thing to worry about within this room is perhaps this wooden chair. A grand thing it is, a bit like a throne, but it’s ghastly chill to sit within, and you can count on terrific pins-and-needles for days afterwards, combined with a rather unpleasant hissing in your ears. A bit like having water in them, I say.

Now, if you twist this knob on the fireplace’s mantelpiece, the bookcase over there will slide to one side and reveal the secret passageway, so be sure to keep that section of wall clear of paintings and the like. Why are you so surprised, good sir? Surely you’ve seen the like elsewhere – no? How sorrowful I am on your behalf, sir, that you have been restricted to houses so staunchly dull!

It’s a bit of an exaggeration to call this a passageway; it’s a bit more like a hidden entrance. Past it, as you can see clearly, is the den. The walls may be hidden behind these grand old bookshelves, sir, but I assure you they are every bit as elegantly-paneled as those of the living room. Be warned, however, of the bookcase in the corner, the looming structure of yew that seems to sink roots deep into the floor. No book should be taken from it, much less read, unless you are willing to risk madness and far worse. Oh, and I found a skull in that armchair when I first discovered this place. But fear not – it has been disinfected.

As we step back into the living room – just twist the knob again, and the den shall be hidden once more, sir – I must inform you of something that I have only just recalled. The eyes of the painting upon this wall (a fine portrait of an unknown lady; note the dignity in her bearing, if it pleases you) may move now and then, but pay them no heed, as it is harmless to any but those who harm the house’s children. If you must punish any of your offspring, should you have any, you should do so out of sight of this room, or the alternatives will torment your dreams for many nights.

Kindly step through here, sir, and you behold the dining room. A fine long walnut table, fit for any meal from a lone breakfast to a holiday’s banquet, but I caution you to never, ever, under any circumstances, extinguish the white-candlestick-in-the-black-candleholder in the center of the table, or I cannot say what might happen. Do not shrink with worry, my good man, for it cannot be unlit save by the tarnished silver candle snuffer that lies mounted upon that wall.

From here you can see the backyard, with its lovely sculptures of things monstrous and beautiful, with their names inscribed beneath them in letters of no alphabet I know. They were carved by a man from far away, with ebony eyes and blue lips, who left after taking as payment for many month’s labors a single, addled crow’s egg, and none know what to call the stone he shaped them from. Sometimes they move when no-one is looking, but they never venture far.

The sundial they surround is much older, and its pedigree less mysterious. It was the keystone of a great bridge, once, until one day it vanished, and let a thousand tons of stone tumble down with many a life, unchecked by its restraining power. I know not how it got here, good sir, or who scratched the sundial-markings upon it, but I do know that you can only see its shadow in the dark hours.

The kitchen is handily adjacent to the dining room, as you can see. It is beautifully harmonized, with microwave, stove, and faucets old-and-new, a melding of antique and modern that anyone of any age can appreciate. There are but two things to keep in mind of here: firstly, the microwave’s “start” button is a bit sticky, and you may need to push it a few times to make it work. Secondly, there is a brownie that lives under the sink, and who must be left milk every evening. Just a small bowlful, sir, less than you would put in cereal, and he will be kept more than happy. If you forget once in a great while he will forgive you, especially if you leave a small sweet with his next meal by way of apology, but if you stint him whenever you feel you can’t be bothered, you’ve gone out of your way to create mischief, and so will he. And he’s better at it than you are, sir.

Oh, and the front-left burner on the stove – the big one – may be a might stubborn about turning on now and then. Be patient, leave it to igniting for a moment, and it will light properly and without undue fuss.

The cellar, sir, is next, through this door right here, set fine in the wall, with a latch out of the reach of a child’s fingers – the stairs are dark and steep and dank, and we can’t be having little ones slipping on them to hurt themselves. There’s an old gas-light down here that you may flip on and off as you come and go to provide illumination, salvaged from the wreck of a ship whose name most have forgotten and some try to forget, a pirate’s vessel whose crew knew nothing of mercy and too little of life’s value. It foundered upon something dreadful in the dark hours of the night, and the seashore town nearby was kept awake all night by the most terrible sounds before finding all sorts of flotsam and jetsam in the morning, some of which they couldn’t bring themselves too look at too closely, else they should recognize it. Don’t stare at the shadows it leaves for too long, sir, or you may see something unpleasant, and the more attention you pay to it, the uglier it will become.

This cellar, good sir, is the most ancient part of the house, walled in stone blocks that hold tight with no mortar, creaking and groaning under the weight of the home. Behind that barred door, sir, the stones give way to untouched rock, and a tunnel drills deeply into the earth that leads into a domain walled with slime, crowned in decay, and dwelt in by things that croak and squelch, far below the feet of all that is good. I would not go that way, sir, whether alone or in company.

The furnace is a magnificent beast, as you can see: set in its glory in the center of the floor, bolted there to prevent its own power from budging it. I hear tell that a man lived here once who threw his own son into it, in an attempt to earn the favor of something with more syllables than slime, and too slimy to be sane. He vanished afterwards with naught but a scorch-mark and a smoky, meaty smell to hint at his fate, but the furnace is still here. Leave small presents down here on Christmas, and in the morning they will be gone. I recommend that it be done, sir. It will function without complaint regardless of this kindness occurring or not, but it really is something that needs to be undertaken, just the same. Thank you, sir; I knew you would understand.

The closet right here holds all manner of tools: pliers, hedge clippers, hammers, nails, a small vacuum cleaner, a lightning rod, and a saw set consisting of regular, hack, jig, and bone. That is all for the basement, sir. If you’ll follow me back up, please, we can resume our tour upon the second story.

As we ascend the stairs to the second floor, sir, examine the intricate detail of the carpeting. Oh? Yes, I suppose it does squirm under the eye a little, if stared at, but perhaps it thinks staring is rude. No, I’m afraid I don’t know the story behind that. It’s quite pretty, though, isn’t it?

The upstairs hall is small and neat, as you can see, with the same carpeting as the stairs themselves. The paintings here sometimes roam about, so if you should awaken to find a landscape positioned above your headboard, do not be alarmed. They’re quite harmless.

The master bedroom, sir, is well-furnished with a luxurious four-poster bed flanked by maple reading tables. Leave your novels and stories of nighttime perusal lying upon them, by all means, but if you leave them overnight in one of the drawers, every single one of their pages will be overwritten with the frantically-inked words “OVER AND OVER” by dawn.

The chest-of-drawers here is a venerable antique, and the padlocked bottom drawer should never be opened – if you can find the key. Instead, if you should find it (a thin, skeletal thing of iron), bury it six inches deep at a crossroads, then burn a sprig of holly in a golden dish above it.

The bathroom is not only accessible from the hall, good sir, but, as you can see, is attached to the master bedroom through this door, for convenience. Now and then writing in blood will appear upon the mirror above the bathroom sink, but it comes off easily enough with a damp sponge, which is precisely why one is kept in this tray here. You may want to replace it every once in a while, like a toothbrush, and for similar reasons of hygiene. I recommend something that rinses well; the blood is much more stain-prone than you’d imagine.

The bathtub is both deep and wide, but I caution you: filling it over the depth indicated by this scratch is dangerous. The farther over it the water rises, the deeper and wider the tub entire becomes, until drowning oneself becomes quite easy. Keep it below the marking, sir, and you’ll suffer naught but a pleasurable bathing experience of the highest quality.

Leaving the master bedroom, examine the guest’s room right here, which can be freely and easily altered to serve as a storage-room, permanent bedroom for a family member, or entertainment center or somesuch. The closet, however, should be kept closed tightly after dusk, and meat (cooked or otherwise) should never be brought into the room proper. The full-length mirror, also, is somewhat treacherous. Ignore anything you see in its depths – in fact, if you must use a mirror, use the one in the bathroom. All that this one will achieve is to unsettle you, which is quite bothersome.

Adjacent is the children’s room, with a bunk-bed so that, if you are possessed of multiple offspring that are marginally tolerant of one another, you may sleep them two-to-a-room, and catch any overflow in the guest’s room. However, you should caution them most carefully to never poke about under the bed (there’s far more space under there than there appears to be, and they could get lost or stuck), and if they leave any belongings lying about upon the floor, un-cleaned-up, they might be tossed about or missing come morning; though that appears to be more of a parental aid than anything.

Back into the upstairs hall, and we will be on our way to the attic through this door, good sir. The staircase is nigh-as-dark as that of the cellar, and much, much steeper – why, it’s almost a ladder! Again, as with the cellar’s door, if you should have children, I recommend keeping a lock on it.

Here is where it begins to be very different from the cellar: an electric light is available, sir, and without the rather gruesome history of the gas-light. Simply flick the switch at the top of the stairs, and light is yours, although a decent amount leaks through the twin porthole windows up here, as you can see, facing both west and east, so that at most times a goodly amount of daylight will be available. This place should be left empty once the sun goes down at all times.

The books in this chest, sir, are writ in a language unknown to any, but luckily enough a complicated treatise on the tongue itself is contained within a small, sturdily-bound traveler’s log set into a bracket upon the interior of the trunk’s lid. Many of the books are doubtless dangerous to read, but some could be wholesome enough. I wouldn’t know, for I haven’t attempted to decipher them myself. Nevertheless, better safe than sorry, eh?

Much of the remaining paraphernalia up here was taken from an old country estate, such as these stuffed animals, symbols of wolf, bear, moose, and more than had fallen to the landlord of the place. If you hear footsteps echoing about upon the eve of a full moon, sleep well, for the stairs are too steep for their clumsy feet of cotton balls and woodwork to navigate.

The telescope set up at the west window should not be peered through during rain or snow, lest lightning fall upon you in fury.

Well, that is the house, good sir. What do you think of it – ah, you’re sure you wish to buy of it? So soon? Whyso, if I may ask?

Ah, of course, sir, how wise of you (oh, here’s a pen). I’m gratified and ennobled by your trusting my knowledge and honor so deeply, and I find your logic indisputable. After all, why should you or any other buy a home whose faults you do not know?

“Guide to a Haunted House” copyright 2008 Jamie Proctor.