Down a Well

Gideon fell down a well. It's not entirely clear how this happened. Alcohol may have been involved. Frankly, it's not one of those things that require reconstruction. Once you find yourself trapped at the bottom of a well, how you got there is irrelevant for the most part.

"Could be worse," Gideon thought, crumpled up in a muddy puddle. "At least my leg isn't broken." Then he tried to stand and discovered his leg was, in fact, quite broken. That pretty much ruled out climbing out by himself. The soupy brick walls of the well hadn't looked promising in any case. Footholds were far and few between.

He decided to call out for help a few times, in case someone might be within earshot. His first attempt sounded too desperate, the second too self-reliant. By the third attempt he got the balance just right. My dignity is intact, his cry suggested, but I could still use an assist.

"Hello down there?" A woman's moony face appeared in the opening at the top of the shaft, peering down at him and cutting off the sky.

"Hello," he returned.
"What are you doing at the bottom of this well?"
"Calling for help."
"So I heard."
"My leg's broke. Can you find a way to get me out?"

The woman thought about this. "I can't reach you from here. You're too far down. Maybe I could find a ladder?"

"Yes, a ladder would be very effective."
"Or possibly a rope?"
"Yes, either a rope or a ladder would be fine."

"There's a hardware store not far from here, I think. They must sell ladders." She pursed her lips in thought. "You'd be able to reimburse me for the cost, won't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good, because my budget is tight, what with my gym membership and the cable bill and whatnot. Very expensive living on your own these days, you know."

"Yes, I can imagine it is," Gideon sighed. "Look, I'll pay whatever you want, just please get me out of here. I'm getting very soggy and I can't feel my toes."

The woman glanced at her watch. "Oops, it's time for my show. Today we're going to learn if Betsy is really going to leave Jim for the mullato carpet salesman. I don't think she is, but I must know for certain. I'm afraid you'll have to sit tight for an hour until it's through. Bye for now."

"Wait!" he called, but the face was gone and with it the woman.

An hour went by. Then several. The woman had forgotten about him or lost interest or something had befallen her. He felt terribly alone. Then it started to rain. It rained with a fury and an anger not seen in recent memory. The downpour lasted for several days and several more nights. The well flooded and Gideon's limp, waterlogged body floated to the surface. The ladder was no longer needed.

Horrible Rodent

Horrible rodent, you've got a lot of nerve coming in here with teeth bared and bringing us your rot. It's a gloomy kind of Sunday in this city of ghosts and all the raindrops have been collected and sorted by the gleefully damaged. Unearthed bloodworms lay strewn about the town square where we sit on cinder logs, swinging buckets between splayed legs, and watch the buses lumber past like domesticated animals. The cold sun is concealed by coughing clouds and a tremendous wingspan, accompanied by an unholy flapping. Insects emerge from the pores of the city, clamoring for food. The organ grinder's monkey goes around the square taking donations for the funeral.

Here comes Tom Mustard, lost in deep smoky wonderbout, his skull trapped in a balloon. Up to his old tricks again, it seems. Time to feed the parrots and teach them dirty words. He knows what makes the clock tick as well as tock. They say he once released the hounds on his own daughter. Imagine that level of disassociation. Electroplated memories in the sawdust cellar. Surrounded by the smell of fermenting money. No one raises their head as he strides past and disappears down an alley which leads presumably nowhere.

There's a pawnshop on fire down by the broken drawbridge. Someone pawned a grenade and evidently the heat from the store room radiator was too much for it. Ladies conceal blades in their garters but gentlemen prefer bombs. Lethargic firemen carve salami on the running board of their truck. They've given up the fight. Meanwhile traffic signals go dead within a vulture's radius and faces go grey as gauze. Across town the funeral is over and all the mourners gone home to sleep or play cards.

Come Back to the Fold

Come back to the fold, precious one. Perhaps we acted a little hasty before but we're hoping for a little exchange of forgive and forget. We miss your charming company, your enthusiasm and youthful vigor. We feel it's time to bury the hatchet somewhere far out back where it won't be dug up again soon. We just want you to be comfortable here again, as before. Look, we've saved all your precious things, your knickknacks, your paddywhacks, your dog's bone. We kept your room just as you left it, just as you'll remember it, the good memories as well as the bad. We've even taken the surveillance equipment out of your bathroom.

Tragedy of the Common

After forty minutes of cooling my heels in the impossibly clean lobby of Mongoose Studios, I was led into an inner office decorated as tastefully as possible under the circumstances in a theme of oak and raccoon. There I was introduced to one E. Winston Monocle, whose handshake felt like reaching into a bucket of moist grapes. His hair looked like it was combed back with black shoe polish, his wormy lips strangely vacant without a cigar clenched between them. He settled back in his chair facing me across the imposing span of desk and asked to hear my pitch.

I cleared my throat for my big moment, as rehearsed. I told him it was about a spy named Rance Gladwell who works for a covert organization, so covert not even the CIA was aware of its existence. He's like James Bond, only instead of suave and sophisticated he was an incompetent fool.

"Maxwell Smart," he interjected with a dubious squint, "Inspector Clouseau."

I shook my head, no that's the thing because it's not a comedy. See, he's this totally incompetent being who makes a muck of everything he attempts. He's sent to Lisbon on an important assignment, the details of which we never learn, but before he even gets started he forgets his plane ticket, lose his suitcase with top secret papers inside, is unable to locate the embassy, and basically spends the whole mission tangled in bureacracy. He's a sad, unfortunate person, with expert training and a good heart but he can't do anything right. The kind of person who goes to the grocery store for cereal only to discover they're invariably out of his favorite brand. Elevators close in his face. Taxis already have a fare. It rains when he's forgotten his umbrella. See, it's not an action picture, it's a character study of a decent man betrayed by the little things. Foiled by the fine print, as it were. The terrible human sadness of it all.

E. Winston Monocle folded his hands into a pyramid and peered across the desk at me. "No one wants to see people fail at mundane things, kid. It reminds them too much of themselves. Remember, we're in the business of helping them forget all that. If you're going to fail you have to do it on a grand scale, where the stakes are high. No one wants to see you louse up a convenience store robbery, they want to watch you shot down while burgling the Louvre. See what I mean?"

But the tragedy of the common, I protested.

"Pales next to the tragedy of box office poison."

But wait'll you hear what happens when...

"Forget it, kid. Anything else on your plate?"

There wasn't, I was forced to admit. Many eggs, one basket. He rose and thanked me for only wasting a few minutes of his time. I'm not sure what I mumbled in response. Before shooing me out of his office he offered a kindly suggestion that perhaps this wasn't the right industry for me, that perhaps I should give theater a try, where I could experiment my face off without anyone getting hurt. His office door sounded unreasonably heavy as it shut behind me. On my way out I spit on his receptionist.

Romeo's Blues

Romeo sat on the sofa waiting for Juliet to come home from her bridge club. His rump formfit the sags in the cushion, his eyelids dropped from insomnia, his frayed bathrobe had seen better days, though not in quite a while. He aimlessly fondled the TV remote, dismissive of the Cheeto dust under his fingernails. He clicked past a golf marathon, a documentary on WWII battleships, and paused on a crime drama with a jazzy soundtrack. Recognizing he'd seen this particular episode before, he made another cycle of the channels before giving up and shutting off the tube. Maybe he'd give a call to the grandkid, find out how archery practice had gone. He located the cordless receiver under a bag of onion bagel crumbs. He glared at the taunting keypad. He'd forgotten the number. After a good ten minutes spent rummaging through a drawer looking for Juliet's address book it occurred to him the number was programmed into the speed dial. He let the phone ring until voicemail answered, at which point he forgot why he was calling. He hung up without leaving a message.

His powers of recollection, he had to admit, were getting to be an issue. Underwater light in the murky tank of his brain. "You should write down your memoirs while you can," Juliet had suggested. "People might be interested in that whole 'faking our own deaths and fleeing the country' thing." Maybe, but he couldn't muster up the enthusiasm. Verona was worlds away. His adopted land of America had treated him decently. He'd settled down, rose to a respectable rank in the labor union, invested in some real estate. Juliet had squeezed out a couple pups, joined the beautification league, licked a fairly severe illness. A few years of travel after the nest emptied, nothing overly ambitious. And then the gradual succumbing to inertia.

Sleep was his greatest diversion of late, putting in a good 10-12 hour shift most nights. The Institute had diagnosed apnea, which sounded to him like an exotic vegetable. They'd rigged up a snakey network of electrodes to his skull which measured the amount of REM sleep he was getting. Very little, as it turned out. Oozing with concern, the doctors offered to sell him some contraption that clamped over his nose and mouth and would ostensibly improve his nocturnal breathing. He quickly lost interest on learning his insurance didn't cover the cost. To be honest he didn't object to sleeping all the time, though Juliet had booted him out of bed due to his herculean snoring. During this exile he fashioned a sort of fortress for himself on the sofa and quickly adapted to sleeping in an upright position. Nothing to complain about.

Were those headlights flashing in the driveway? Bridge club must be over. Romeo noticed the TV was off and switched it back on, having forgotten why he'd shut it off in the first place. His creased face was illuminated in the moony glow of a wafflemaker commercial as he waited for the familiar scratch of a key in the deadbolt.

"Waffles sound good," he thought.

The Disappearing Mayor

Someone spiked the donuts. There's no other explanation. Everyone who partook are staggering in seasick parabolas on the church lawn, eyes crossed, tongues swollen, and complexions like paint thinner. Meanwhile some wastrel in Bermuda shorts hoisted himself up the marquee pole and with toothy chomp sanses the serif off the "J" in "Hang Ten With Jesus."

Nothing's been the same in town since the mayor disappeared. Not a word to anyone, his car engine left running, laundry still in the dryer, secretary's pen still poised for dictation. Everything's gone downhill since then. The master keys to the post office have been mislaid, though no one can afford stamps anymore so it hasn't really been noticed. Trash piles up uncollected, roadkill left to rot, traffic lights blinking out lyrics to popular showtunes in morse code. Professionals can't afford office space so everyone works out of the parking lot of a boarded up tarpaulin factory.

"Sure, it's gonna hurt," says the Belgian dentist, hunched over his hapless patient in the back seat of his Volkswagen. "Who told you otherwise?" He gives a little prod for emphasis with a rusty retractor. "Strange place for a snakebite, I must say." Before starting the procedure he knocks ash from his cigar into the sanitizing bowl balanced uncertainly on the drink tray.

Here comes a wily character wheeling a stolen shopping cart loaded with back alley prosthetics. Times are tough, even for black marketeers. Hardly a leg to stand on. At least you can still buy cheap fish tacos from the stand along the highway, at least when the old seadog's in port. Which is admittedly not that often these days. But the locals set their lips firmly and tell themselves when there's a down there's an up, or when there's a back there's a forth, or when there's a will there's a way, or whatever will help to keep their spirits up. It's that kind of town.

Steam Beast

In Lower Manhattan on rainslick midnights when roiling steam pours out of the grates in long flumes, it looks like the city itself is breathing. Halitosis from the jaws of a concrete Cthulhuian beast. A boiled claw reeking of sulphur reaches from the sewer to drag you down to its ancient realm of sodden newspapers, lost coins, White Castle containers, discarded subway passes, forsaken lottery tickets, condom wrappers, cigarette butts, and the occasional finger. You cling to lampposts & postboxes, but the wet pavement is a sluice down the gullet of the beast, who salivates over you, squirming slab of beef. But it's a welcome demise, as demises go. Unlike the mummified limbo of empty parking lots and cheap aluminum siding somewhere in the yawn of the great wide nowhere.

Pandas

I suspect there are demonic pandas hiding in my cellar. I hear strange chewing noises late at night coming up through the vents. It's not the landlady at her fridge, gnawing on chickenbones after midnight - no, something more feral and unearthly is at work here. They're not chewing on bamboo & ferns, but the tattered souls of former tenants. Bloodshot goggle eyes peer out from the dark recesses of the stairwell when I go out to check the mail. The postman knows. He doesn't come inside anymore, leaves my packages on the stoop & hastens away. And those rumbling noises, like hell's empty stomach. Like a great furnace crying out for fossil fuel. There are jagged teethmarks in the wooden banister & everyday they seem to rise a little higher. Who do I call about this - an exterminator or an exorcist?

A Whirling Skirmish

I jabbed a penknife into the bicep of the football hero. He won't be throwing with that arm again anytime soon. He smelled of unwashed gorilla genitals. I snuck up behind him while he slouched on the bleacher, gazing up at a cheerleader's underpants which were blue and white striped. When she saw what I had done she screamed, then laughed, then screamed. She yelled that she was going to report me to the coach. I didn't know who the coach was and he didn't know me from anyone. The football hero started to sob and begged me to call the field doctor. I told him I was a Christian Scientist and his injury was due to erroneous thinking. He evidently wasn't familiar with the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. I asked if he had a library card, but he wasn't paying much attention to me at that point. These damn self-absorbed athletes. The field doctor was located and diagnosed something about a severed tendon. I tried to sneak away but two other footballers cornered me. They looked ridiculous in their enormous shoulderpads and small heads. Like ants on steroids. They took turns beating on me with their fatty knuckles, then wiping the blood off on my shirt. When they dropped me to the grass I plunged my penknife into the foot of one of them. He wailed like a little girl lost in a supermarket. The other one punched me hard in the back several times. I think he was aiming for my spine. Their kind are all about punching and shooting. It never occurs to them to cut or stab. Even when he broke two of my fingers to wrest the penknife away, he didn't use my own weapon on me. No sense of irony. I certainly would have bludgeoned him with his football helmet if given the chance.

Scrod

With rubbery grin & saltlick hair he wheels through the frozen fish section, a veritable whirlpool of waterlife. He coughs on the thick stench of coral reefers, poolsharks packed in like sardines. He comes to rest on his hunches as sweet mermaid Marian bats an eyewink. "That's one hell of a grotto booty," he smirks in thought. "Say," she counters, "is that a dorsal fin on your back or are you just happy to..." et cetera.

She lures him on with wiggle of tail, back to her penthouse aquarium where he flounders in conversation, nervous with jellyfish in his belly, a barely concealed yearning to harpoon her. Champagne uncorked with lobster claw, he strokes her fins as rain treacles down the pane.

Morning on the seabed, the sunlight makes her crabby. He bids her farewell & crawls back into the slime.

The Giant Bat

In Market Square, a giant bat was hung on a lamppost, its wings spread outwards, its tiny vermilion eyes scanned across the angry mob. It hissed in defiance as torches were cruelly thrust into its side. The herdlike townsfolk milled about, curious children in shabby dress stood on tiptoe or climbed atop wooden benches or stone walls to peer over the heads of the adults at the proceedings. A nobleman distinguished from the rest by his groomed attire stood at the head of the throng, poised to speak. The swarming crowd was subdued to murmurs as he addressed the imprisoned creature in a controlled voice.

—We hereby charge thee with acts of terror, the spreading of ill-merited grief, nocturnal prowling and stalking, provoking fear and horror in the hearts of the innocent, and stealing the souls from the good people for your own villainous purposes. Your pronounced sentence is death.

The onlookers roared in agreement. An armored guard, stationed beside the beast, lifted his edged halberd from where it rested and, upon command from the nobleman, thrust it deep into the belly of the forlorn creature. The giant bat hissed angrily, fangs bared. Bloody spittle sputtered from its black lips and its wings quivered violently. Then the outburst quickly died away in its throat and its form grew limp. The square grew quiet as the fearsome head fell to one side, lifeless.

There were cheers and cries of celebration, victorious laugher, women spun in the arms of their husbands, children dashed amid the tangles of legs, elders looking skyward. All the while, a black ominous vapor spewed from the stabwound, thickly gathering in the torchlight. The onlookers ceased their merriment and turned their attention to the bewildering sight. The impenetrable mist quickly filled the square, choking the townspeople, stinging their eyes, burning their throats, biting into their flesh with unseen teeth. Dreadful screams escaped their lips. Their eyes bulged and they retched violently, the vile stench of vomit filling the nostrils. Some clawed at bleeding faces, wrenching out eyes with trembling fingers. One woman, seeking escape, slit her own throat with a ragged thumbnail. When at last they had all fallen, the deathfog began to lift. The tattered bodies lay horribly over one another, with twisted limbs and terrible wounds, ghastly faces of immortalized terror.

And in the center, the giant bat was gone. In its place lay the dead nobleman sprawled outright across the pedestal base of the lamppost. His grimy fingers were curled into a talon still quivering, his empty eyesockets turned towards the dark heavens as though trapped in a piteous deathplea with the immortal gods, seeking forgiveness for his grave misjudgment.

A Salty Venture

Sauntering along steelrust railroad tracks, kicking shale, my burlap bag slung across my jacketed back, brimming the outskirts of a nameless grey seaside town on a chilly morning. I find myself amid rank weeds and discarded litter in a vacant lot behind a ramshackle garage built from dirty orange bricks. A tiny miniature trailer lies overturned at my feet, like a discarded toy in the grass. Stooping, I retrieve the artifact and shake it slightly like a thermos, curious as to the contents. I strike a match on my denim trouserleg and hold it near the trailer door for a glimpse into its dark interior. A tiny matchbox man leaps out in a panic, his head ablaze. He runs in frantic circles, waving his little stickarms before stumbling over a haphazard leaf. Using the leaf like a fireblanket, he extinguishes his flaming head. He peers up, dazed, his little head like a lightbulb, his eyes like pinwheels.

I'm not clear how he can fit inside the toy trailer, since he is considerably larger in size than it. In a chirping voice he admits sheepishly he doesn't know either. I apologize for my negligence with the match, which he shrugs off without concern. His name is Edison and he climbs onto my shoulder, clutching my ear for stability. I stroll down along a sloping road past empty grey buildings to a seaside cafe overlooking the bay where the air is salty and thick with the odor of cod. My stomach growls a warning, so I enter the cafe with my new passenger and slide into a booth providing us with a pleasant vista of the harbor. Edison clambers onto the table and seats himself on a saltshaker while I peruse the coffeestained menu with eagerness. Glancing about, I notice several dejected waitresses scattered about at separate tables, head-in-hands, staring miserably at heaping trays of dirty dishes before them. The waitress in the tomatostained apron who brings me my clam chowder too seems rather vacant, lost in routine.

Edison suddenly emits an electronic gasp and dives under the table in haste as a greyhatted hachetman lurches through the cafe door. He stands near the entrance, surveying the contents of the restaurant with a wary eye. Edison tugs my pantleg frantically. Understanding that the hachetman is after him, I open my knapsack and he nimbly leaps in, nestling amongst the books and articles of clothing. Then, having finished my soup and leaving a reasonable tip, I rise and pass by the hatchetman's suspicious eye on my way towards the exit.

He follows me outside. From within the bag, Edison makes woeful predictions if we do not elude the hatchetman. Without glancing back, I head for the nearest abandoned house, a madhouse designed by a demented architect. With Edison perched on my shoulder once again, I climb up a flight of crooked Caligari stairs, the hatchetman tailing close behind. I lead him on a dizzying madromp through five-cornered rooms and twisting passages of labyrinthian perplexities. A triangular door opens out onto the rooftop of the madhouse. Here I cling to a crippled weathervane, blinking in muted daylight as clouds whirl overhead.

When I feel the hatchetman has been suitably eluded, I reenter the bizarre structure. I wander down sloping corridors, trying various doors in search of an exit. One room contains several torn disheveled mattresses spilling cotton innards from gashes onto a cement floor. Another door opens to reveal an eerie underwater room, a small grimy window letting in a thin turbid stream of light. A girl crouches in one corner, trussed up with rope, her mouth tightly gagged, bulging eyefright. Strange translucent tubes, swaying and wavering, release poisonous bubbles into the water.

I quickly slam the door shut on this spectacle and continue down the corridor. Finally I discover a doorway which leads us outside, not far from the fisherman's wharf. Edison insists the hatchetman will find us again and we must launch a boat to get away. We climb aboard a stalwart craft and cast off, plowing swiftly through taciturn waters with powerful oarstrokes, as seagulls scream overhead, as though sounding alarm. Passing several other boats engaged in marlin-hunt, our craft glides further away from the coast, across the saltstained waves, sifting in sunshine swirls.

Glancing towards shore we spot the hatchetman pursuing in a vessel of his own. Oaring desperately now, we soon escape the bay, and behind us the coastline vanishes. Then heaven cracks and torrents rise against us, threatening to capsize our modest craft. Valiantly I joust the storm, paddling in seasick circles. Edison clings for dear life until the tempest snatches us up and dumps us in the drink. The ocean, refusing to swallow me, washes me onto a shipwreck island where I collapse in the sand, falling into an obscure sleep. Hours later I revive to discover Edison sprawled dazed beside me, shaking saltwater from his lightbulb head. The hatchetman's boat drifts close to the shore, empty. He must have been pulled under the waves during the squall.

Wading through the surf with Edison perched on my shoulder, I reach the craft and climb aboard. With weary bones, we row back to the mainland where I return my lightbulb-headed friend to the plot of land behind the garage where I first found him. He waves a fond farewell, then leaps back into his miniature trailer and I bound off, bag over shoulder, down the railroad tracks once again.

The Balloonist

On a moody afternoon I float above the sprawling corduroy earth in a helium balloon, wisps of clouds tickling my lip. Seagulls glare because I'm invading their turf. As I pass over a village, everyone comes out of their houses to learn what is causing the demonic shadow splashed across the land. They peer up at me, shading their eyes with saluting hands. One after another they grab up rocks & heave them in deadly arcs at me. One glances painfully off my shoulder. Another strikes the basket, causing it to wobble. I clutch at the harness to steady my balance. Another projectile smashes against my wrist & I hear something break. Most sail past harmlessly. A schoolteacher takes careful aim & drives her rock through the fabric of the balloon. I hear the hiss of gas escaping. The balloon comes crashing down to earth where the villagers set upon me with their rocks.

Distance

At the far end of the playground a woman perches on a bench, visibly upset. She clutches a bag of pretzel shards in a frail hand. Scattered about the bench in several directions and distances lay a litter of lifeless squirrels. She eyes them mournfully, her shoulders sagging in a posture of defeat. Her body is wrapped in a dusty overcoat to shut out the autumn wind, the belt drawn tightly across her midriff. She instantly brightens as an animate squirrel bounds out of the underbrush and scurries towards her, balances on the metal rim of a trashbin, watching her with blank eyes. Her skeletal fingers dig through the bag and emerge with a fragment of pretzel, and crescents of pretzeldust buried under her nails. She offers this to the squirrel, who twitches a whisker, then hungrily accepts. It downs the pretzel in a frenzy of teeth and claws, then hops off the bin, staggers a few brief steps, nose raised as if sniffing danger. The squirrel gets barely a foot from the bench before collapsing on its side, breathing heavily until the breathing stops entirely. The look of anguish returns to the paper skin of the woman's face, her eyes yellow with moisture. "Why are you playing tricks on me?" she utters to the inert creature. She prods it with the tip of her shoe. Not harshly, just a gentle poke. "Wake up. Why are you pretending to sleep? Wake up!"