AN
EXCEPTIONAL EXPLOSION OF BEAUTY AND DEATH
I didn’t want to
shoot the son of a bitch but it was me or him and the world would be a hell of
a lot better off without him. He was having lunch in an outdoor café on a small
square. There were few people on the street and no one else at any table. The
thug behind me jabbed me and told me it was time to get it over with. I peeked
around a wall on a corner a few storefronts down. The thug shoved the rife into
my hands and pushed me. I lifted it to my shoulder and fired. The bastard fell
backwards, his feet kicking the table over. Blood flowed around the shattered
dishes and glassware. I heard a scream. We both bolted. A couple of streets
later with no one around, we ditched the weapon in a hedge and sauntered the
last few blocks to the store. Another thug was waiting for us and ushered us
in. He told us to walk through the store and exit the back. He led us through a
yard and out a gate. Across the street, we climbed a flight of wooden stairs up
to the roof of a dilapidated building. When we reached the edge of the roof,
the thug from the store looked down to a field of dry, overgrown grass. He told
us the man I had shot was beloved by the insects. There was fear in his voice.
A high pitched rattle began to fill the air. He looked around frantically and
told us we had to get the hell away before they discovered us. He screamed and
flew off the roof right before our eyes. We turned and ran down the stairs for
our lives as the rattle turned into the clanging of a distant fire alarm. But
there was no fire. We raced down the street towards an intersection bisected by
an abandoned, weed covered railroad track. Both of us stopped in abject terror
as the weeds suddenly began a frantic dance from the racing insects beneath
them. The clanging, rattling howl filled our ears.
All went silent. We stood stupefied. The quaking plants swayed still. Millions of eyes staring at us pricked our skin like needles. I felt tiny grandma next to me. She began to sing her favorite song – “The gas is turned on high, let’s all sing and shout. Judgement day is nigh – “. I rocked on my feet with the rhythm in my head. The man looked at me in astonishment. When he turned to run, a cloud of insects vomited out to the brush and consumed him. The music filled my soul. My shoulders moved with it. The cloud over his bones hovered for a moment next to me as if making a decision. I began to dance a slow, sweet Tennessee waltz. The fog of tiny teeth moved with me. I opened my arms to it. It surged toward me. It enveloped me. It danced with me. It rhythmically caressed me. I felt it was speaking to me. “Tiny grandma knows where the desk is and she is in danger.” I rolled my head back on my shoulders and smiled as darkness closed in.
I came to laying on a couch in a living room. A man, a woman and their children sat around me. It was a Norman Rockwell painting. A toddler sleeping by his father suddenly he lunged for his father's arm and bit a large chunk of flesh out of it. His father screamed in agony and grabbed his arm trying to stop a spurting geyser of blood. The mother picked up the little monster and walked outside with him. I followed asking her why she was not upset and what was she going to do with her son. She reassured me that everything was going to be fine. The child stared at me with ice cold hatred. His ungodly assault on the world focused on my eyes. I fought back. I bellowed that he was not fit to be locked up in a cage. He leaped from his mother's arms and crawled into the underbrush. He emerged at the base of power pole, climbed to the top, grabbed a wire and let the electricity surge through him before shooting down the line and disappearing. The mother told me I must go before the child returns with others of his kind. She handed me some car keys and pointed to a parked car. She said I had to drive into town and warn everyone.
The town was in a panic. Marauding children were picking people off one by one. A man in a bar had his arms torn off. A woman in a restaurant was decapitated. A well-known actor performing a treasured play was surrounded on stage and torn to pieces as the audience fled the theater screaming. I looked around me. My eyes darted here and there. It wouldn't be long now.
I heard rustling. The infants were surrounding me. They were glaring at me hungrily. They began to chant quietly. “ Assassin. Assassin. Assassin.”
I felt something in my shirt. I looked down and saw an insect crawl out. I took it into my hands and raised it to my lips. "Can you find your friends quick, before it's too late?"
“If you live, assassin you must get to the sea.”, it answered. I let it fall to my feet and it skittered off.
I turned to the children. "You know, when you grow older, you are going to grow hair in places you don't grow hair now."
They stopped their advance and looked at one another. "And when you do, you're going to have to shave it off."
They had confused looks on their faces. "You're going to have to shave it off every day."
Their confusion turned to anger and they moved closer. "Some of you will have it ripped off." This stopped them again.
“You will never keep me from reaching the ocean!”, I hissed. Legions of insects burst out of the undergrowth and covered them. Muffled screams filled the air.
I could hear the surf rolling in the distance. When I reached the sea, it surged at me. I climbed a large rock as fast as I could. Worn steps were carved into it. I followed them to the top. There was a jolt. The steps disengaged from the rock. I was lifted up over the top and down into a walled enclosure of weathered wooden buildings. A well dressed man and woman approached me. They were polite but their voices were firm. They would escort me to my quarters. They took me into one of the buildings and down a hallway past comfortable rooms, some with people sitting quietly, then ushered me into a small suite covered floor to ceiling with intricately inlaid marble. An anteroom was filled with consoles of machinery.
They left me there with an attendant, a large, lanky man with a sad face. I asked him if I was a prisoner. He rolled his eyes. The consoles in the anteroom jerked and swung into motion like rocket launchers on a warship. He walked over and closed the door. I asked him if I could leave. He said I could not. His eyes showed concern. My unease was turning to fear.
I tapped his shoulder. “I must leave.”
He turned away and repeated himself. “You cannot.”
I took his hand and pulled him toward me. I kissed him. He pushed me away. I kissed him again. I opened his shirt. He shuddered. I put his hand in my shirt. He didn’t withdraw it. I loosened his belt. He grabbed me. We fell to the floor. He tried to stop himself.
“You want to!”, I whispered. “You love it! Be yourself!”
He shouted something incomprehensible. As he gave in, he transformed. His ears grew. His arms shrunk. His nose was black and moist. There was a large black spot over one of his eyes and tears flowed out of both of them.
“You fags!” The woman was standing over us, her heels in my face. She ordered me up and dressed. The dog-man was weeping in a heap. Two scowling guards with wasps on their shoulders the size of light bulbs surged into the room, picked him up and dragged him out.
The woman ordered me down a corridor. “My husband figured you out immediately. He wanted to throw you into the sea. I reminded him that Michelangelo, Leonardo, Alexander were all fairies. I reminded him that you were an assassin.” She opened a door and pushed me into another marble room. “Before we use you, I will use you.” She closed the door. “I want you to love me.” She unbuttoned her blouse. She was attractive. She was a witch. I had to escape. I unzipped her skirt. Her expression softened. I would make her delirious.
“Mommy! Daddy wants to tickle me!”, she cried in the voice of a toddler. “Hi, daddy!” She pulled off her skirt and fell to her hands and knees. “See daddy?”
I stepped away. “I can’t do this.”
“Of course you can’t! You’re queer!”, she snarled.
“I need a shower.”
“You will not shower!”, she choked as she pulled on her clothes. “You will never find the desk! Tiny grandma is dead!”
She pushed me out the door. She stomped behind me down halls, past more quiet rooms filled with silent people. We stopped at a gate that exited the building. It was over grown with vines and alive with lizards whipping the air with long tongues. Her husband was waiting. “He prefers dogs.”, she whispered loudly. The lizards began to sing. “The gas is turned on high – “. The husband and wife bloomed sadistic smiles and joined in. The gates opened.
As the couple stepped out, I launched myself onto their backs and the three of us tumbled to the ground. The woman screamed. The man freed himself and rushed to an idling ambulance. He opened the door and jumped in. I followed him and we struggled desperately. He grabbed the wheel and stepped on the gas. We careened toward his wife. Her skull burst under a tire like a melon. We sped straight through a barrier and over a cliff. I heard gunfire and shattering glass.
The ambulance rolled in mid-air. I was thrown against the roof. We slammed into the ocean on the driver’s side and I was thrown on top of him. Water rushed in. We sunk like a stone. I pushed myself out of the window and swam to the surface. Debris from the ambulance floated around me. There was no land in sight. I grabbed a stretcher. I was alone.
The stretcher just supported me. I jammed as much of the debris as I could under it and stabilized myself. If the sea stayed calm, I could survive a few hours, maybe days. I pulled myself onto the makeshift raft and lost consciousness. When I came to, it was night and the light of the moon danced on the water. Panic rushed up in a clattering storm. The raft only partially supported me and my legs dangled in the water. The thought of sharks battered my sanity. I thought of tiny grandma. She was my rock. She had made me what I was. She was waiting for me. I will find her and I will find the desk. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the sun was rising. I felt it on my skin and images of peeling, flaking sunburn taunted me. I was terribly thirsty. I was barely afloat. I thought about drowning.
The lapping of the waves was disturbed by a dull churning sound. There was a ship in the distance and it was steaming toward me. I heard frantic yelling. I was yelling. A large motor yacht pulled up along side me and a Jacob’s ladder was thrown down. The sun was in my eyes. I saw forms moving above me. I pulled myself up.
No one helped me as I fell over the railing onto the deck. A crowd gathered around me, a crowd of brown spheres each standing on a pair of stubby legs. I heard gasps and cries of alarm. Large depressions with faces in them appeared and disappeared on the spheres. One of the spheres spoke to me. “We are going to dock on a beautiful island. You should be proud of what you have done, assassin. Everyone is going to have lunch. The world is a better world now that he is dead.”
The engines surged and in almost no time an island loomed large. We pulled up along side a wooden pier and a gangplank was lowered. A gravel road led us through golden fields spotted with gnarled olive trees. A limb sprouted slowly out of a sphere walking next to me and grew a couple of digits. I felt them stroke my back. We came to a group of simple, round tables furnished with bent wood chairs resting under trees. Dozens of eggplants were piled on linen tablecloths.
One of the spheres grew hands and picked up a pile of the most beautiful white napkins I had ever seen. “You like these napkins, don’t you?”, it cooed. “That’s because they are for you. They are your napkins.”
A pair of arms appeared out of another spheres shoulders. It spread them magnanimously. “Eggplants!”, It boomed. “Ha hah!”
The sphere with the napkins nodded at an opening in the side of a hill. “Get the salsa!”
I couldn’t get the napkins out of my mind. I stepped into the opening and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. Then I found the huge bowl of salsa waiting for me at the top of a precipitous gallery of stairs folding back and forth on itself and twisting into the depths. I closed my eyes and imagined tiny grandma standing next to me. She nodded. I ran to the salsa and leaped, grabbing the sides of the bowl with my legs and its rim with my hands. It lurched forward and carried me downward faster and faster. I whooped and yelled and waived my arms over my head. My legs were splashed with salsa. I smeared some on my hands and tasted it. It was delicious. When I landed at the foot of the staircase, I found tiny grandma tied up by the wrists to nails driven in a doorframe. She was pressed up against a screen on the door. I was aghast. I had found her and she was in trouble. I tried to untie her.
“I don’t care what happens to me!” she barked. “This is about you, you and the desk. The desk is everything. You have to find it. Get away from me before the potato people see you! Find out what they’ve done with the others!”
Suddenly I was filled with pain. Guilt stabbed me in the gut. My head swam. My eyes filled with tears. “I have killed a man. I have done a terrible thing.”
“I doesn’t matter what you have done!”, snarled tiny grandma. “We are all animals burning through our minuscule flash of life on an invisible speck on the face of infinity! Go find the others! Maybe the others can help you! Maybe the others can help me!”
I heard voices in another room. The potato people were coming. I ran through a back door. A scream echoed in my ears. I crept back. I peeked through the door. The potato people had a mask with tubes attached to a canister. They were strapping it to tiny grandma’s face.
I ran through another door to a large dark room full of cages. The others were there, one in each cage. I went for the doors but they were chained shut. “They’re not going to kill us.”, everyone reassured me. “This is just a disciplinary thing. Besides, we have all the correct documentation. We found it in the desk before it disappeared. And they haven't found you. You don’t have any documents. You get out of here.” I kept quiet about the mask and the tubes and the canister. There was an outside door. I would be back with help, I told myself. I opened it and stepped into brilliant sunshine.
I started to think about the napkins. Why hadn't I taken them with me? They were so beautiful and they were mine but I never really had them and now I never will. The road in front of the door made a sharp turn and followed a hill that rose over the building. As I climbed it, I ran into a crowd of people surging down toward the building. Some had weapons. A small boy pointed a rifle at me but I talked him out of shooting me. “You have to go right now and save the people they have locked up inside. The potato people are going to gas them. You have to shoot the potato people.”
When I was clear of the crowd, I kept climbing until I walked into a small village. A blind man carrying a golf bag full of shotguns approached me and directed me to a store. Inside, a woman behind a counter gave me three elaborate hand made knives. She had a faint mustache, soft hair. I said I only needed one but she insisted I take all of them. I wondered if she shaved her legs. I slid the knives in my pockets and belt.
“You’re upset because they killed your friends.”, said the woman.
“You don’t know that!”, I said angrily.
“But they always kill them. At least you are alive. Think about your napkins. You’ll find them someday. Now take your knives and go.” She walked from behind the counter and ushered me to the door. The sunshine was blinding. I covered my eyes as I heard the door close behind me.
I wandered out of the town and into the hills. I stopped under a tree. My feet were caked with dirt. I washed them in a pool of stagnant water. I was so dejected, I didn’t even realize I was looking at it when I was standing right in front of it. I found the desk! It was lying in the dirt and the legs were broken off but I found it! I stood staring at it for a moment, frozen with anticipation. Were my napkins in there? I reached for the drawer and then stopped myself. What if they weren't there? What if there were insects in there instead of my napkins? I opened a broken drawer of the filthy desk and pulled out a pair of worn white socks, some stick puppets and an old calendar with all the dates scratched out. There were no napkins. I tried to fold up the puppets but they broke in my hands. All the sticks with little heads on them were in splinters and the bits of cloth with the faces drawn on them were torn.
I heard a sound. I looked toward the rise in front of me and saw people cresting it. It was the potato people. A chill went up my spine. There were several of them and they were somehow different. There was something on their heads. Should I run? They couldn't get me if I had a good start. And then I saw it. Then it hit me. They were wearing my napkins on their heads. Oh my God. They had my napkins and they were wearing them on their heads. They had punched holes in them and were looking at me through the holes. I had to kill. I had to have something to kill with. I remembered the knives. I pulled two of them from my pockets and unsheathed them.
The potato people stopped in their tracks. They started to laugh. Then they began to sing. What were they singing? What was that horrible sound? Was it Christmas carols? Was it? My God, they were singing Christmas carols. I screamed. I let go of my knives and slammed my hands over my ears. Silent Night! Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer! The Little Drummer Boy! The Little Drummer Boy! I shut my eyes. I fell to the ground and vomited. I choked. I started to shake. I opened my eyes and saw the feet of the potato people all around me. They were hairy.
All went silent. We stood stupefied. The quaking plants swayed still. Millions of eyes staring at us pricked our skin like needles. I felt tiny grandma next to me. She began to sing her favorite song – “The gas is turned on high, let’s all sing and shout. Judgement day is nigh – “. I rocked on my feet with the rhythm in my head. The man looked at me in astonishment. When he turned to run, a cloud of insects vomited out to the brush and consumed him. The music filled my soul. My shoulders moved with it. The cloud over his bones hovered for a moment next to me as if making a decision. I began to dance a slow, sweet Tennessee waltz. The fog of tiny teeth moved with me. I opened my arms to it. It surged toward me. It enveloped me. It danced with me. It rhythmically caressed me. I felt it was speaking to me. “Tiny grandma knows where the desk is and she is in danger.” I rolled my head back on my shoulders and smiled as darkness closed in.
I came to laying on a couch in a living room. A man, a woman and their children sat around me. It was a Norman Rockwell painting. A toddler sleeping by his father suddenly he lunged for his father's arm and bit a large chunk of flesh out of it. His father screamed in agony and grabbed his arm trying to stop a spurting geyser of blood. The mother picked up the little monster and walked outside with him. I followed asking her why she was not upset and what was she going to do with her son. She reassured me that everything was going to be fine. The child stared at me with ice cold hatred. His ungodly assault on the world focused on my eyes. I fought back. I bellowed that he was not fit to be locked up in a cage. He leaped from his mother's arms and crawled into the underbrush. He emerged at the base of power pole, climbed to the top, grabbed a wire and let the electricity surge through him before shooting down the line and disappearing. The mother told me I must go before the child returns with others of his kind. She handed me some car keys and pointed to a parked car. She said I had to drive into town and warn everyone.
The town was in a panic. Marauding children were picking people off one by one. A man in a bar had his arms torn off. A woman in a restaurant was decapitated. A well-known actor performing a treasured play was surrounded on stage and torn to pieces as the audience fled the theater screaming. I looked around me. My eyes darted here and there. It wouldn't be long now.
I heard rustling. The infants were surrounding me. They were glaring at me hungrily. They began to chant quietly. “ Assassin. Assassin. Assassin.”
I felt something in my shirt. I looked down and saw an insect crawl out. I took it into my hands and raised it to my lips. "Can you find your friends quick, before it's too late?"
“If you live, assassin you must get to the sea.”, it answered. I let it fall to my feet and it skittered off.
I turned to the children. "You know, when you grow older, you are going to grow hair in places you don't grow hair now."
They stopped their advance and looked at one another. "And when you do, you're going to have to shave it off."
They had confused looks on their faces. "You're going to have to shave it off every day."
Their confusion turned to anger and they moved closer. "Some of you will have it ripped off." This stopped them again.
“You will never keep me from reaching the ocean!”, I hissed. Legions of insects burst out of the undergrowth and covered them. Muffled screams filled the air.
I could hear the surf rolling in the distance. When I reached the sea, it surged at me. I climbed a large rock as fast as I could. Worn steps were carved into it. I followed them to the top. There was a jolt. The steps disengaged from the rock. I was lifted up over the top and down into a walled enclosure of weathered wooden buildings. A well dressed man and woman approached me. They were polite but their voices were firm. They would escort me to my quarters. They took me into one of the buildings and down a hallway past comfortable rooms, some with people sitting quietly, then ushered me into a small suite covered floor to ceiling with intricately inlaid marble. An anteroom was filled with consoles of machinery.
They left me there with an attendant, a large, lanky man with a sad face. I asked him if I was a prisoner. He rolled his eyes. The consoles in the anteroom jerked and swung into motion like rocket launchers on a warship. He walked over and closed the door. I asked him if I could leave. He said I could not. His eyes showed concern. My unease was turning to fear.
I tapped his shoulder. “I must leave.”
He turned away and repeated himself. “You cannot.”
I took his hand and pulled him toward me. I kissed him. He pushed me away. I kissed him again. I opened his shirt. He shuddered. I put his hand in my shirt. He didn’t withdraw it. I loosened his belt. He grabbed me. We fell to the floor. He tried to stop himself.
“You want to!”, I whispered. “You love it! Be yourself!”
He shouted something incomprehensible. As he gave in, he transformed. His ears grew. His arms shrunk. His nose was black and moist. There was a large black spot over one of his eyes and tears flowed out of both of them.
“You fags!” The woman was standing over us, her heels in my face. She ordered me up and dressed. The dog-man was weeping in a heap. Two scowling guards with wasps on their shoulders the size of light bulbs surged into the room, picked him up and dragged him out.
The woman ordered me down a corridor. “My husband figured you out immediately. He wanted to throw you into the sea. I reminded him that Michelangelo, Leonardo, Alexander were all fairies. I reminded him that you were an assassin.” She opened a door and pushed me into another marble room. “Before we use you, I will use you.” She closed the door. “I want you to love me.” She unbuttoned her blouse. She was attractive. She was a witch. I had to escape. I unzipped her skirt. Her expression softened. I would make her delirious.
“Mommy! Daddy wants to tickle me!”, she cried in the voice of a toddler. “Hi, daddy!” She pulled off her skirt and fell to her hands and knees. “See daddy?”
I stepped away. “I can’t do this.”
“Of course you can’t! You’re queer!”, she snarled.
“I need a shower.”
“You will not shower!”, she choked as she pulled on her clothes. “You will never find the desk! Tiny grandma is dead!”
She pushed me out the door. She stomped behind me down halls, past more quiet rooms filled with silent people. We stopped at a gate that exited the building. It was over grown with vines and alive with lizards whipping the air with long tongues. Her husband was waiting. “He prefers dogs.”, she whispered loudly. The lizards began to sing. “The gas is turned on high – “. The husband and wife bloomed sadistic smiles and joined in. The gates opened.
As the couple stepped out, I launched myself onto their backs and the three of us tumbled to the ground. The woman screamed. The man freed himself and rushed to an idling ambulance. He opened the door and jumped in. I followed him and we struggled desperately. He grabbed the wheel and stepped on the gas. We careened toward his wife. Her skull burst under a tire like a melon. We sped straight through a barrier and over a cliff. I heard gunfire and shattering glass.
The ambulance rolled in mid-air. I was thrown against the roof. We slammed into the ocean on the driver’s side and I was thrown on top of him. Water rushed in. We sunk like a stone. I pushed myself out of the window and swam to the surface. Debris from the ambulance floated around me. There was no land in sight. I grabbed a stretcher. I was alone.
The stretcher just supported me. I jammed as much of the debris as I could under it and stabilized myself. If the sea stayed calm, I could survive a few hours, maybe days. I pulled myself onto the makeshift raft and lost consciousness. When I came to, it was night and the light of the moon danced on the water. Panic rushed up in a clattering storm. The raft only partially supported me and my legs dangled in the water. The thought of sharks battered my sanity. I thought of tiny grandma. She was my rock. She had made me what I was. She was waiting for me. I will find her and I will find the desk. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the sun was rising. I felt it on my skin and images of peeling, flaking sunburn taunted me. I was terribly thirsty. I was barely afloat. I thought about drowning.
The lapping of the waves was disturbed by a dull churning sound. There was a ship in the distance and it was steaming toward me. I heard frantic yelling. I was yelling. A large motor yacht pulled up along side me and a Jacob’s ladder was thrown down. The sun was in my eyes. I saw forms moving above me. I pulled myself up.
No one helped me as I fell over the railing onto the deck. A crowd gathered around me, a crowd of brown spheres each standing on a pair of stubby legs. I heard gasps and cries of alarm. Large depressions with faces in them appeared and disappeared on the spheres. One of the spheres spoke to me. “We are going to dock on a beautiful island. You should be proud of what you have done, assassin. Everyone is going to have lunch. The world is a better world now that he is dead.”
The engines surged and in almost no time an island loomed large. We pulled up along side a wooden pier and a gangplank was lowered. A gravel road led us through golden fields spotted with gnarled olive trees. A limb sprouted slowly out of a sphere walking next to me and grew a couple of digits. I felt them stroke my back. We came to a group of simple, round tables furnished with bent wood chairs resting under trees. Dozens of eggplants were piled on linen tablecloths.
One of the spheres grew hands and picked up a pile of the most beautiful white napkins I had ever seen. “You like these napkins, don’t you?”, it cooed. “That’s because they are for you. They are your napkins.”
A pair of arms appeared out of another spheres shoulders. It spread them magnanimously. “Eggplants!”, It boomed. “Ha hah!”
The sphere with the napkins nodded at an opening in the side of a hill. “Get the salsa!”
I couldn’t get the napkins out of my mind. I stepped into the opening and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. Then I found the huge bowl of salsa waiting for me at the top of a precipitous gallery of stairs folding back and forth on itself and twisting into the depths. I closed my eyes and imagined tiny grandma standing next to me. She nodded. I ran to the salsa and leaped, grabbing the sides of the bowl with my legs and its rim with my hands. It lurched forward and carried me downward faster and faster. I whooped and yelled and waived my arms over my head. My legs were splashed with salsa. I smeared some on my hands and tasted it. It was delicious. When I landed at the foot of the staircase, I found tiny grandma tied up by the wrists to nails driven in a doorframe. She was pressed up against a screen on the door. I was aghast. I had found her and she was in trouble. I tried to untie her.
“I don’t care what happens to me!” she barked. “This is about you, you and the desk. The desk is everything. You have to find it. Get away from me before the potato people see you! Find out what they’ve done with the others!”
Suddenly I was filled with pain. Guilt stabbed me in the gut. My head swam. My eyes filled with tears. “I have killed a man. I have done a terrible thing.”
“I doesn’t matter what you have done!”, snarled tiny grandma. “We are all animals burning through our minuscule flash of life on an invisible speck on the face of infinity! Go find the others! Maybe the others can help you! Maybe the others can help me!”
I heard voices in another room. The potato people were coming. I ran through a back door. A scream echoed in my ears. I crept back. I peeked through the door. The potato people had a mask with tubes attached to a canister. They were strapping it to tiny grandma’s face.
I ran through another door to a large dark room full of cages. The others were there, one in each cage. I went for the doors but they were chained shut. “They’re not going to kill us.”, everyone reassured me. “This is just a disciplinary thing. Besides, we have all the correct documentation. We found it in the desk before it disappeared. And they haven't found you. You don’t have any documents. You get out of here.” I kept quiet about the mask and the tubes and the canister. There was an outside door. I would be back with help, I told myself. I opened it and stepped into brilliant sunshine.
I started to think about the napkins. Why hadn't I taken them with me? They were so beautiful and they were mine but I never really had them and now I never will. The road in front of the door made a sharp turn and followed a hill that rose over the building. As I climbed it, I ran into a crowd of people surging down toward the building. Some had weapons. A small boy pointed a rifle at me but I talked him out of shooting me. “You have to go right now and save the people they have locked up inside. The potato people are going to gas them. You have to shoot the potato people.”
When I was clear of the crowd, I kept climbing until I walked into a small village. A blind man carrying a golf bag full of shotguns approached me and directed me to a store. Inside, a woman behind a counter gave me three elaborate hand made knives. She had a faint mustache, soft hair. I said I only needed one but she insisted I take all of them. I wondered if she shaved her legs. I slid the knives in my pockets and belt.
“You’re upset because they killed your friends.”, said the woman.
“You don’t know that!”, I said angrily.
“But they always kill them. At least you are alive. Think about your napkins. You’ll find them someday. Now take your knives and go.” She walked from behind the counter and ushered me to the door. The sunshine was blinding. I covered my eyes as I heard the door close behind me.
I wandered out of the town and into the hills. I stopped under a tree. My feet were caked with dirt. I washed them in a pool of stagnant water. I was so dejected, I didn’t even realize I was looking at it when I was standing right in front of it. I found the desk! It was lying in the dirt and the legs were broken off but I found it! I stood staring at it for a moment, frozen with anticipation. Were my napkins in there? I reached for the drawer and then stopped myself. What if they weren't there? What if there were insects in there instead of my napkins? I opened a broken drawer of the filthy desk and pulled out a pair of worn white socks, some stick puppets and an old calendar with all the dates scratched out. There were no napkins. I tried to fold up the puppets but they broke in my hands. All the sticks with little heads on them were in splinters and the bits of cloth with the faces drawn on them were torn.
I heard a sound. I looked toward the rise in front of me and saw people cresting it. It was the potato people. A chill went up my spine. There were several of them and they were somehow different. There was something on their heads. Should I run? They couldn't get me if I had a good start. And then I saw it. Then it hit me. They were wearing my napkins on their heads. Oh my God. They had my napkins and they were wearing them on their heads. They had punched holes in them and were looking at me through the holes. I had to kill. I had to have something to kill with. I remembered the knives. I pulled two of them from my pockets and unsheathed them.
The potato people stopped in their tracks. They started to laugh. Then they began to sing. What were they singing? What was that horrible sound? Was it Christmas carols? Was it? My God, they were singing Christmas carols. I screamed. I let go of my knives and slammed my hands over my ears. Silent Night! Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer! The Little Drummer Boy! The Little Drummer Boy! I shut my eyes. I fell to the ground and vomited. I choked. I started to shake. I opened my eyes and saw the feet of the potato people all around me. They were hairy.
Then I saw tiny
grandma. She was here. She was with me. She picked up one of my knives and
wielded it like a sword. She stabbed the feet of the potato people. She slashed
their ankles. She cut off their toes. They fell all around me screaming in agony.
I jumped to my feet. I reached down and grabbed my napkins from their heads. I shoved my napkins in my shirt and picked up tiny grandma. She smiled serenely. “You have found the desk.”
I jumped to my feet. I reached down and grabbed my napkins from their heads. I shoved my napkins in my shirt and picked up tiny grandma. She smiled serenely. “You have found the desk.”
I placed her on my
shoulder and turned back to the desk. Suddenly a drawer flew open. A hand
reached out from a drawer, grabbed tiny grandma and pulled her in. The drawer
slammed shut and the desk exploded into flames. It took to the air and sailed
off over the treetops like a comet.
The napkins fell from my shirt onto the dirt. I put my head in my hands and wept. The memory of tiny grandma madly dancing with me in her apartment that looked over the city came flooding back to me. She sang our favorite song:
"The gas is turned on high!
Let's all sing and shout!
Judgment Day is nigh!
The pilot lights are out!
Batten down the hatches!
We're gonna have some fun!
I've got the matches!
You've got the gun!"
The napkins fell from my shirt onto the dirt. I put my head in my hands and wept. The memory of tiny grandma madly dancing with me in her apartment that looked over the city came flooding back to me. She sang our favorite song:
"The gas is turned on high!
Let's all sing and shout!
Judgment Day is nigh!
The pilot lights are out!
Batten down the hatches!
We're gonna have some fun!
I've got the matches!
You've got the gun!"
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