Author’s Note: If you’re interested in seeing the notes used to frame this chapter of the story, you can visit this POST.
The next morning, Gracelyn Polk felt well enough to go back to school.
She slowly pedaled her bike in the morning glory goodness, looking up at the yellow metal sky and its crumbling sun. She thought about Astron and what he had said — about there not really being others at the school and that it was an empty place full of ghosts. He made her feel foolish. He made her feel as if she was wasting her time.
“I don’t care what he says,” she spoke aloud. “I still need a good education. And there’s nothing wrong with having a vivid imagination. I can play school if I want to play school. Whatever else am I going to do with my days?”
As Gracelyn came upon the unsettling neighborhood of Vinegar Village, she suddenly stopped. She looked off to her left, down one of the tree-lined streets there. It was the general Midwestern place found in the great picture book of the American dream, now dreamless. The homes ran in a row down each side of the boulevard, typical two-story architectural teeth erected by lost hands inside a broken jaw, darkened square windows of dusted glass looking out on buckled and broken sidewalks pierced by immortal weeds of green.
She heard a noise coming from a place where there was usually never a noise. She tried to stop breathing so that she could hear better through the distance. The noise rang out softly in a consistent rhythm — it was a clinking or tapping sound, metal upon metal, then metal upon wood, she thought.
“Someone’s hammering on something,” she told herself. “But who would be building in this dark age?”
She got off the bike, steered it out of the roadway and set it against a shrub row at the edge of the right-side sidewalk. She looked up at a white street sign attached to a tall, black lamppost at the corner. At the top, higher up then the sign, the post had a faded white covering the shape of an inverted tulip shielding a long dead bulb. The sign read: VINEGAR VALE, and then in smaller letters boulevard was abbreviated as BLVD.
She slowly slinked along the cracked sidewalk, peering through breaks in the shrub rows to catch glimpses of empty front yards, watched upon by the sentinel vacant homes that looked like tombstones because of how they sat all in a line like that — silent and dead and merely shells for memories blasted away. The hammering noise grew louder as she went. When she got to the end of the block, she peered across the intersection and saw a man mending a fence at a big yellow house there on the corner. It was much bigger than the other houses around it, much grander, Gracelyn thought, and not nearly in a state of disrepair as the others. Someone was caring for it. Someone had never left, or maybe someone returned. She stood at the opposite curb while the man continued to work. It wasn’t long though before he completely stopped hammering and straightened himself like something had suddenly caught his attention. He looked to his right. He looked to his left. He looked up at the sky — and then he turned around.
He gazed at her for a moment as if he just didn’t know what to make of the girl standing across the street and watching him. He holstered the hammer in a toolbelt he had around his waist. He reached into a pocket in his blue jeans, withdrew a red cloth and wiped at his face.
“Are you lost?” the man finally called out to her.
“No. I’m on my way to school.”
The man readjusted the straw-yellow cowboy hat atop his head and squinted at her with a look of wonder and confusion. “School?”
“Yes, sir. School.”
The man made a puzzled face. “There’s no school here… Or anywhere.”
“I make my own school. It helps to keep my mind occupied with something.”
The man shook his head in agreement, tossed a glance over his shoulder at the house and said, “I know what you mean.” He made a motion to her with his hand for her to come closer. “Let me get a better look at you,” he said.
Gracelyn looked both ways before she crossed the street that didn’t require looking both ways and went to him without hesitation. She stopped before him and looked up because he was tall. He had sentimental eyes, Gracelyn thought, Bear Lake blue and contemplative. His face was somewhat drawn and speckled with whiskers the color of salt. She wasn’t afraid of him at all. She felt safe for once.
He looked her over and smiled. “And who might you be?”
“Gracelyn Polk.”
The man nodded and twisted his mouth in an act of considerate thinking. “I never heard of a Gracelyn Polk.”
“Oh, it’s okay if you’ve never heard of me. I’m not famous or anything.”
The man chuckled and looked around at the present-tense world he was in. “Fame doesn’t matter anymore — it never did.”
Gracelyn nodded up at the big, pretty house of bumble bee yellow. “Do you live here alone?” she wanted to know.
The man sighed with the stab of a quick, dark memory. “I do. Yes, I do.” There was an awkward silence between them and then he put his hand out to her. “The name’s Farm Guy, by the way.”
Gracelyn reached out and shook his hand. She crinkled her face. “Farm Guy?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s your name?”
“That’s my name.”
“So, your first name is Farm, and your last name is Guy?”
“You would be correct.”
“That’s not really a name… It’s more of what you are, but then again, this isn’t really a farm.”
Farm Guy laughed. He liked her. “Do you want to see my birth certificate?”
Gracelyn seriously thought about it for a moment. “No. I believe you.”
He smiled. She liked his smile. It was peaceful and comforting, like a quiet grandfather maybe, she decided.
“You know, I think I’m tired of working on this darn fence for a while. Would you like to come inside for some milk and cookies?”
Gracelyn was happily shocked. “You have milk?”
“I do.”
“You have cookies?”
“Chocolate chip. Made them myself,” Farm Guy boasted.
Gracelyn chewed at her bottom lip and looked at the big house again, trying to decide. “I really should get off to school. I’m already going to be late.”
“Well, I know school is important… But I’d like you to. Been a while since I’ve had some company in the big old house… And the milk is cold, and the cookies are… Out of this world.”
Gracelyn sat at a round table topped with a tablecloth that reminded her of a picnic she once took when she was very young — like a checkerboard, but with blue and white squares. There was a glass vase in the middle of the table and inside the vase were yellow flowers that looked wild. The kitchen smelled like good cooking. It was a very nice house, at least the parts she had seen were. It was very clean and neat and smelled like a good, happy life. She just couldn’t understand why it was here or for what reason. It didn’t fit, but it did. Then again, it didn’t matter, because at the moment she needed it.
Farm Guy set a tall glass of milk in front of her. She quickly reached out a hand and felt the cold, wet glass, and drew it to her mouth and took a gulp or two. The man set down a cookie jar that resembled a white pig wearing a black top hat who was sitting down on his rear end like a person. He had a wide smile and a big belly. Farm Guy lifted off the head by the top hat and set it aside.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Help yourself.”
Gracelyn eagerly thrust her hand inside the pig’s cookie jar guts and pulled out a big chocolate chip cookie. “I haven’t had a cookie in… Seems like forever,” and she bit into it, closed her eyes, and slowly chewed, savoring every sweet moment.
Farm Guy pulled off his straw-yellow cowboy hat and hung it on a peg near the back door in the kitchen. His head was mostly bald except for a short crop of hair around the sides and a sparse patch of mowed down receding fuzzies up top. He pulled out a wooden chair across from her and watched as she enjoyed the snack.
It was then a serious look came over his face and he said to her, “Do you understand what happened to the world?”
Her eyes were fixed on him as she bit into another cookie. “I only know the world got too hard for people to live in… Most people.”
“You’re right,” he said. “You’re a smart girl.”
“That’s because I still go to school.”
The man gave her a soft smile and nodded his head.
“But what I don’t understand,” Gracelyn began. “Is why. Why did the world get so hard to live in?”
Farm Guy took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. He reached a long arm to the cookie jar and pulled one out, put it toward his mouth and nibbled on it as he searched for an answer for her.
“I suppose in a nutshell, the answer would be that people became too hard on people.”
“You mean they didn’t care about each other like they should have?”
“That’s a big part of it. Now, I don’t claim to know everything about the world, but I know quite a bit. And what I know makes me sad as I sit here and look at you.” He sucked at his mouth and looked around the bright kitchen. “You shouldn’t even be here. Not like this. You should have a different life. A better life.”
“But I don’t mind being here with you… Like this. It’s nice for once.”
Farm Guy held a fist in his hand and looked into her eyes. “We were too hard on the world, and it turned on us. Think about a cat. What happens if you pull on a cat’s tail really hard… Even if it’s the nicest cat in the world?”
Gracelyn polished off the last bit of the milk in her glass and looked at him. “The cat gets mad.”
“That’s right. The cat will turn on you. It will hiss and screech and try to scratch at you. I know it’s a simple answer, but that’s sort of what the world did to us. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Gracelyn quickly answered.
Farm Guy sighed and got up from the table and went to the kitchen window and looked out. “I sit alone in this big house quite a lot and it gives me too much time to think about how we messed everything up. There was just too much greed, too much selfishness, and everyone’s priorities all askew… Do you know what askew means?”
“Like crooked?”
“Yes. Crooked.” He quickly moved back to the table and sat down again. “Think about this and you’ll understand more about what I mean by priorities all askew. Imagine there’s a man on one half of the world and he’s a rich man, a fat man, a fancy man, and he’s having dinner at a fancy restaurant with other rich and fancy people… And they order all kinds of drinks and appetizers and big dinners, and they all eat and eat and eat until they are so stuffed with food, that they are sick to their stomachs and can’t even finish it all.”
“They’re being pigs,” Gracelyn blurted out. “Like your cookie jar, but not in a good way.”
“Sort of, sort of like pigs. But then imagine that on the other side of the world, the same gosh darn world we share with each other, there’s other people that are wandering around in the dirt of their country and they look like skeletons because they don’t have enough food to eat… They don’t have enough to eat while the ones on the other side of the world have so much to eat, they end up throwing it away. It ends up in the garbage. Think about that.”
“It’s terrible.”
“It is terrible… And these poor people lie down at night but it’s too hard to sleep because they’re starving and starvation hurts. How can we even have a word such as starvation when there’s food just being tossed away?” He made a motion with his hand and had a look of disgust on his face.
“You know what I used to think about?” Gracelyn said.
“What’s that?”
“I always wondered this… If the people on the poor side of the world didn’t have enough food, why didn’t they just build themselves a restaurant and go to it and eat?”
Farm Guy looked at her and smiled. “You know, I used to think the very same thing.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Seems like a logical solution, right?”
“It does to me.”
“The only problem was,” Farm Guy began. “There were too many horrible people sitting in these high towers of polished glass and steel and they didn’t want the poor people to have restaurants because the poor people couldn’t pay for the food. And these horrible people who didn’t care sat at long tables in fancy rooms, and they talked about and plotted how they could squeeze more out of every man, woman, and child, until they died and left this Earth. And this was all very important to them, mind you, they took it very seriously. And instead of feeding and helping others less fortunate, they built great electric temples to house their food and their products as if they were gods, and they convinced the people they needed to worship what was ultimately useless. Miles upon miles upon miles of these temples were built, all over the world, and the people who worked in them were stuffed into a uniform and inducted into a culture of selling and serving. It was sold as an exciting career with unlimited growth potential… But it was ultimately a form of slavery. And it consumed them daily, sucked away their life just so they could suck out the lives of others… It was a tragic cycle of profit over people. That was their battle cry and that was a god damn big problem for the human race. Always was.”
He looked at the girl with some concern, hoping he wasn’t giving her more than she could handle, but Gracelyn sat attentive and wide eyed. “Do you know how I know all that, what I just said?” he asked her.
“How?”
“I used to be one of those fools in the towers of polished glass and steel.”
“You were?”
“I was… And in the end, I lost everything that was important to me.”
“Is that why you’re all alone.”
“That’s why I’m all alone… Not that any of that matters anymore.”
“But you’re not alone now. I’m here.”
Farm Guy brightened. “And I’m so glad you are.”
Gracelyn wanted to hear more. “What else about the world went wrong?”
He chuckled sadly. “Too much. More than a lifetime could tell.”
“The wars?”
“That’s right… The wars. They elevated orange fools to positions of power and gave madmen weapons of mass destruction. And countries started stepping over lines just to kill and destroy and take, and for what? For what purpose? I never understood it. Never. And nobody did anything about it. Nobody cared.” He pointed a finger at her. “The gross evil came in the fact that we invested in war and killing and destruction. Billions upon trillions of dollars to rape each other to death with guns and bombs, to rip the earth apart and cover it in blood, and for what?… And all this goes on right under the nose of some caring creator?” He scoffed and looked at her. “I’m sorry if that was all a bit strong.”
“It’s okay. I can take it.”
“How old are you?”
“11. Nearing 12.”
“You come across much older than that.”
Gracelyn looked down, almost ashamed. “I guess in some ways I am.”
“But all we had to do, was cling to love and we didn’t,” Farm Guy continued. “We nurtured it so little. In our small circles, our big circles, across the entire globe. There was so much carelessness in the simple act of kindness.”
Farm Guy grew tired of listening to himself carry on in such a dark way. He glanced up at the clock on the wall, and then back to Gracelyn. “I’m afraid you’re really going to be late for school now,” he said. “You can just blame it on me.”
“It’s okay. I’ll just look at my time here with you as an… Educational experience. I may even do a report about you.”
“A report about me?”
“Sure.”
“I look forward to that,” he said, and he stood up and went to get a plastic food container out of a cabinet. He filled it with chocolate chip cookies, snapped on the lid, and handed it to her.
“To take with you.”
“Thanks,” she said, and she got up from the table.
“No problem at all. You’re always welcome to come back if you want more.”
“You’ll be around?”
“I’ll be around.”
“That’s good. I was worried I might never see you again.”
Farm Guy opened the back door and saw her out. He watched her for a long time as she walked away, as long as it took for her to completely fall away from his sight.
When Feldon awoke, he found himself inside a very old and large church, Catholic style, luminous and grand, full of soft light and scents of heaven, high arched ceilings and massive chandeliers dangling down from the rafters, the stations of the cross played out in intricate detail, gold chalices with beams of godly sun shimmering at the altar. He was in one of the back pews, long and sweetly polished, and there was a great stained-glass window at his side, Jesus all gleaming and blessed, green and gold, his arms were outstretched, and he was surrounded by sheep of white and gas eons of blue. There were angels in the clouds playing trumpets and the sun shot forth long bands of golden light across him as if he was God or savior or some important man.
At the front of the church there was a ceremony going on. It was a wedding, Feldon deduced, from the looks of the white gown and black tux and preacher standing there with the great guidebook of life and love. Then the crowd turned around in unison to look at him, and they were all mannequins — soulless, plastic mannequins. Even the preacher wasn’t skin and blood, and then Feldon saw that it was Carl and Eve as groom and bride up front and there was a plume of death incense percolating in a thurible and then a bloodless pall fell over the entire gathering and the crowd turned back around and the preacher said in a loud, monotone voice: “If there is anyone here who objects to this sacred union of love, let him speak now or forever swallow down his peace.”
“Yes!” Feldon cried out from the back, his voice cracking. “Yes! Oh, mighty God I object!”
The crowd hummed and murmured. The preacher craned his neck to see as Feldon marched forward down the center aisle. “Who are you?” the holy man asked. “And what case do you have to present against this couple, right here, under the witness of God.”
“I’m Feldon Fairtz and I strongly object to this union. Carl is unfit to be a husband to her. He is evil and shifty. Eve! I love you! Please don’t do this!”
Eve robotically lifted the veil from her face and looked out at him.
“Can’t you see I don’t love you?” she said, exasperated. “I’ve never loved you. It’s all been a lie. The whole time I’ve loved someone else. That’s right, Feldon. It’s Carl. It’s always been Carl. We’ve been doing it behind your back for weeks now… And in your bed. You’re a creep, Feldon. Now, can you please stop ruining our special day and get out of here before you get thrown out.”
“But Eve, you can’t do this to me. It was I that rescued you from the stuffy back room of Saharah’s Department Store and gave you a home. I gave you freedom and life and this is how you repay me? You’re going to marry this jackass?”
“I don’t care, Feldon. That’s just life. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. And yes, I’m marrying Carl, right here, right now, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
Feldon’s mind and heart sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
“Very well then,” he said, trying to lift himself back up again. “I hope you have a miserable life together. And fuck you just the same, Eve. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are nothing but a heartless bitch anyways… And hell if I need that in my life.”
Someone quickly grabbed Feldon’s arm to escort him out, but he tore away.
“Let go of me! I’m leaving.”
And as he walked down the long aisle toward the large doors, he heard the preacher’s voice rise from behind him: “And by the power granted to me by God, the church, and the state of this land… I now pronounce you man and mannequin.”
There was some soft, plastic clapping and then great and triumphant music rose to the top of the cathedral and Feldon pushed through the giant doorway and out into the bright light of another day and never looked back.
It was three months later when there was a knock at the door of Feldon’s smelly apartment.
“Who’s there?” he yelled from the couch.
“Feldon?” came a meek voice from the hall.
“Who is it and what do you want?”
“It’s Eve. Could you please open the door?”
Feldon was stunned. “Is that fag Carl with you?”
“No.”
“I think it would be better if you just went away, Eve. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Please, Feldon. It’s important. It will just take a minute.”
Feldon knew he would regret getting up off the couch and opening the door, but he did it anyway.
“What do you want?”
“Can I come in?”
Feldon held the door open wide and she drifted in.
“What’s this all about, Eve? I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
She suddenly realized how different he looked. He had gained some weight and his hair was scraggly and he had grown out a beard. “Are you okay?” she asked him.
“What does it matter to you?”
“Don’t be like that, Feldon.”
“Be like what? Crushed?”
“Feldon, Carl and I split up.”
Feldon snickered with a sick delight. “Really? So soon? What a shame. And what does this have to do with me?”
Eve’s head tilted slightly toward the floor.
“I’ve got nowhere to go. Carl is being a real jerk about the money and the house. He got himself some hotshot lawyer, too. I was somehow hoping you could find it in your heart to let me stay here for a while until I can right my own ship, so to speak. He left me with nothing.”
Feldon popped a cap off a beer and sucked the entire bottle down. “You’ve got some fucking nerve coming here asking me for such a favor. That’s some real fucking nerve, Eve.”
She looked away, hurt and somewhat ashamed. “You’re right. I should have never come here. I’m sorry. I’ll just go now.”
She made her way toward the door and Feldon suddenly softened. “Do you really have nowhere to go?”
She turned to look at him with sad, fake eyes. “Yes, but I’ll manage. See you around.”
“Wait,” Feldon said.
She turned again, her fabricated heart beating with hope. “What?”
“As long as you’re heading out, could you take my trash down for me?”
Feldon went into the kitchen, lifted a bag out of the can and tied it.
He went back to her. “Here you go,” he said as he handed the strained bag of garbage to Eve. She took it with a puzzled look of disgust on her face.
“Hopefully it won’t break on your walk down. I would hate for you to have to clean up such a mess,” Feldon said, laughing. He moved toward her, forcing Eve to back out into the hallway.
“Please Feldon, won’t you reconsider?” Eve tearfully pleaded. “Don’t you have a heart?”
“Not today,” he said, and he slammed the door shut and never saw her again and rarely did he care.
I thought I would do something different today and create a post about the notes I make when thoughts come to me at 5 a.m. and I get up and write them down in a frenzy, so I won’t forget what I was thinking while lying there in bed and worrying about the world and my place in it. I have to do it quietly and mostly without light, my way illuminated only by the glow of a computer screen in dark mode, so I don’t wake my slumbering wife.
What follows below are the unedited notes for Child of the Cabbage Ep. 6. Thought it might be interesting to share part of my process. I’ve debated in my head if I should post this before or after I write the actual piece. In one way, I don’t want to give details away, but on the other hand, maybe it will be cool for people to see how it all comes together, and from what… And hopefully generate some interest. Readers don’t know how it will actually turn out, and neither do I. So. I guess I will post it before.
I don’t always use notes to frame a story. Most times I just sit down at the computer with a small spark of an idea and start typing with absolutely no thought of where the story is going or what character is going to be bred from the dust. It just kind of happens. Some days my thoughts flow like water, other days they flow like cement in the desert. I’m positive every writer is familiar with how extremely frustrating it is to sit down and want to write so badly, but then nothing happens. It feels like failure. It feels like: “If I’m a writer, why can’t I write!?”
I’ve accepted that when I’m feeling blocked that I shouldn’t try to force it or what comes out will read as forced. It will be weak. As much as I want to write, at those times I just step away from it and wait for the ideas to come rushing back in… Which is often in the middle of the night or early in the morning while I’m tossing and turning in bed – like today. If I don’t get up and get the ideas out of me, no matter how incoherent and scrambled, I’ll lose them. It’s sort of like jotting down the details of a dream as soon as you wake up before they completely vanish. And my memory isn’t what it used to be.
As I said, the notes are in an unedited form, so please excuse the typos and disjointedness. I don’t stop to correct things when typing notes. I just go.
Thanks for reading.
Aaron Echoes August
The Notes
Gracelyn rides bike to school, stops at vinegar village when she hears hammering, meets a man mending a fence, his name is farm guy and they talk about names,
Gracelyn asks why the world is so hard on people, because we were hard on the world, pulling the nicest cat y the tail cat still turns on you, talks about greed, selfishness, upside down priorities,
A man sits in a fancy restaurant on one side of the world ad he’s given so much food he can’t even eat it all, and then he walks outside and everywhere he looks there are more restaurants overstuffing their guests and the food goes in the garbage bins and at the same time there are these people, on the other half of the world who walk around and they look like skeletons movig through all their dirt because they don’t have any food. They ie down at night to sleep but its hard to sleep because starvation hurts. How can we even have a word such as starvation when there is food being tossed away. That is one reason the world is so hard on people. There is so much carelessness n the act of kindness.
Talk about fat people vs. starving people on one half of the world, and how there are so many restaurnats and just put restaurants where the starving people are but that won’t work because the people n the hgigh towers don’t want that because the starving people can’t pay….they sit in tall shiny buildings of polished glass and stone and around long tables and talk about how they can squeeze more out of every man, woman and child, and it’s all very important to them, consumes them, so much time wasted on greed, and all this goes on under the nose of some caring creator who does nothing. And the whole conversation is about this lack of empathy throughout the world and then there are countries who decide to step over country lines just to kill and destroy and take and for what, for what purpose. A nod at Russia in Ukraine and the senselessness of all that and why isn’t anyone doing anything about it. Why doesn’t anyone fucking care!? This is why the world is so hard on people because people are so hard on people. And we invest in war and killing and destruction, billions upon trillions, to rape each other to death, to rip the earth apart, and for what? all that we have to cling to is love, yet we nurture it so little among ourselves, the people ofd the planet. I want to hold my wife forever and never let go. If this world ever takes her away from me, there would be a fury in me that I could not live
The world is so hard on people because the people are hard on the world. Look what they left us with. Total ruin except for a few lost wandering souls. We elevate orange fools to power and give weapons of mass destruction to mad men.
Do you know someone named Astron puffin…. He just vanished.
The cabbage farmer from hillsdale
Farm Guy isn’t a name, it’s just a description, and you don’t even really live on a farm
The role of Farm Guy should be played by J.K. Simmons
Pull the cat’s tail and even the nicest cat will turn on you and bite and scratch and scream.
Why, I should be named young girl then
Thatts ridiculous, youd me more like youthful female or metal female and your not made of metal are you
In some ways yes I am
Starting to get a wizard ofg oz vibe
Do you want to come in for milk and cookies. You have milk?
Yes
You have cookies?
Yes, I do
Astron looks down on the earth, spinning there on its fragile thread set to snap
And then where will the world go, he asks the green skin and blue hair aliens who talk in very deep slow voices like a tape recorder on slow speed
It will drop out of the universe like a plinko chip and there will be no prize.
They worship products, build great temples to honor all their producxts, milesand miles of storefronts, profit over people, that’s a big part of it,.
Mature Content Warning: The following contains language that may be offensive to some readers. You’ve been advised.
The Rejectionists
Feldon felt like crawling into the eye of God and setting the world on fire as he climbed the stairs to his apartment. When he reached his floor, the hall was empty. He could hear a television blaring and some people arguing behind a few of the closed doors. There was always too much noise, he complained inside his own mind. Too much noise. Too much rattling around.
He put the key inside his lock and turned it, pushed the door open, and clicked on a light. Carl was still asleep on the couch, but his eyes were wide and there was that ever-present grin —like a crooked car salesman. He went into the bedroom and turned on a lamp there. Eve was still sitting in the chair beside his bed. He went over to her and kissed her gently on the cheek.
“Hello dear,” he said. “How are you? You and Carl haven’t been up to any nastiness, have you?”
He glanced at his rumpled bed, and it looked the same as when he left, yet he still wondered.
“I suppose you haven’t made any dinner, have you?” Feldon asked her. “No, I didn’t think so. Don’t you realize I’m hungry?”
It was then that the phone in the other room began to ring, and it startled him.
“Who on earth could be calling me?” he wondered, and then he went to answer.
“Hello?”
“Hello. May I speak with Feldon Fairtz please?”
“This is Feldon.”
“Hi Feldon. It’s Shirley, Shirley Humpsley from the Fifth Avenue Doll Salon.”
Feldon grew excited. “Oh yes. Hello! How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you. I was just calling as a courtesy to let you know that we have gone ahead and hired another candidate for the position here.”
“What?” Feldon said, suddenly deflated.
“We’ve hired someone else for the position, Feldon. Like I said, as a courtesy, we reach out to our other candidates to let them know. We feel it’s the right thing to do so you can carry on with your job search without wondering if you’ll ever hear from us. It’s standard practice.”
“So, I didn’t get the job?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“But, why? What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing, Feldon. We just feel the person we hired had the strongest set of skills that matched our needs. Please don’t take it personally.”
Feldon grew angry over the phone. “But I have a very specific set of skills, Mrs. Humpsley! And strong skills they are! I am very talented, and I think this is absolute bullshit that you have decided not to hire me. It’s because I’m a man, isn’t it?”
“Please Mr. Fairtz, there’s no need to get nasty with me and use foul language. And our decision in no way reflects on your gender… Or anyone else’s.”
“Of course not, of course not, of course not!” Feldon repeated in anger. “It’s all straight talk and legit, isn’t it Shirley. It’s all politically so damn correct and sterilized corporate wise and all nauseating too. Well, I’m not buying it. This is a crock of crap, and I demand to speak to your supervisor!”
“Look here, Mr. Fartz!”
“It’s FAIRTZ!”
“I don’t care what it is!” Mrs. Humpsley snapped back in snappy black girl style. “I will not be talked to in this way, and if you ask me, Fartz fits you perfectly because you’re one hell of an asshole! Our decision is final, and I have nothing else to say to you. Goodnight, sir!”
She hung up.
Feldon held the cordless receiver away from his face and glared at it.
“I’ll get my lawyer you fucking bitch!” he screamed. “You violated my rights as a person! You assaulted me with words! Cruel words!”
He was breathing hard. His heart was racing. The phone was empty, and he suddenly flung it across the room, and it struck a picture of his dead parents that was hanging on the wall and it fell and broke. He turned to look at Carl. He was grinning chiseled mad, mocking him in mime.
“What the fuck are you looking at!?” Feldon screamed. “I just had a bit of trouble with a prospective employer. Nothing serious, Carl. Just look away. Please. Just look away from me!”
Feldon shuffled to the kitchen, reached into a cabinet for a glass and filled it with water at the sink. His hand shook violently as he brought the glass to his mouth and drank. It slipped from his hand, fell to the floor, and shattered.
“God damn it!” Feldon screamed. “Everything I touch turns into a disaster!”
He shuffled to the couch and collapsed into it. He leaned forward and put his face in his hands and started crying.
His face was wet with tears and his nose was stuffed when he reached for the box of facial tissues, yanked a couple out, and blew.
“God damn it,” he mumbled. “God damn it all to hell. It’s falling apart, Carl.” He turned to the mannequin, still half reclined on the couch beside him. “Do you hear me? I’m falling apart you son of a bitch. Don’t you care?”
There was no answer of course, just a wide, plastic grin and factory fresh eyes millions of miles away.
Feldon stood up quickly.
“Fine! Be that way, you prick! You may not give a damn about me and my life, but I’m sure Eve does. Oh, I know she does. See, she loves me. That’s right, Carl. We’re in love. And you better stop trying to fuck her or I swear I’ll kill you!”
Feldon stormed off to his bedroom and slammed the door.
He clicked on a lamp near his bed and the room was illuminated in a stormy, dreary kind of way. He knelt on the floor before Eve in her chair, touched her smooth, plastic hand and then looked up to her painted eyes of crystalline green.
“Eve, my darling. Gosh I’ve had a rough night. I was hoping that, just maybe, you’d be willing to lie in my bed with me tonight.”
He paused to study her reaction, holding the fabric of her dress to his face to smell it and wipe his damp skin.
“No, no, no,” Feldon reassured her as he patted her hand. “Nothing sexual. I just want to be close to you in my darkest time of need.”
He used his fingertips to move his hair back and craned his ear toward her.
“Of course I won’t be naked,” Feldon shyly answered. “I’ll wear my favorite pajamas. You know, the ones with the monkeys riding the trains. They must be circus monkeys, yes, circus monkeys, don’t you think?”
Then he giggled oddly.
“But of course, if you want to be naked, I won’t complain — not one bit.”
Feldon grinned, stood up and took Eve by the waist. He lifted her and took her to the bed, laid her down, and covered her with a sheet and blanket. Feldon stared down at her. Eve’s eyes were staring straight up at him.
“You look lovely,” he said to her.
Feldon quickly went to the other side of the room, stripped down and changed into the pajamas. He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and swished mouthwash. He clicked off the bathroom light. Then he clicked off the little lamp by his bed and crawled in beneath the covers beside her. His heart was slightly pounding. He turned his head and tried to see her in the darkness, hoping his eyes would quickly adjust.
“Eve?” he whispered.
He reached to grasp her hand.
“I love you,” he softly said. “Eve? Did you hear me? I love you.”
It was silent except for the sound of a slow drip in the bathroom sink and the humming of traffic outside the windows. He propped himself up on his elbow at her side and reached out in the darkness. He held his hand just slightly above her nose and mouth. He felt nothing and then suddenly felt very alone and empty.
“Are you holding your breath?” he whispered to her. “Eve?”
He moved his face close to hers and gently rubbed his cheek against hers. “Oh Eve, why are you so cold to me? Is it Carl? Do you love Carl?”
He closed his eyes and fumbled in the darkness to find her mouth with his own. He awkwardly pressed his lips against hers and there was no reciprocation. He pulled back, ashamed and hurt.
He threw the covers off himself in frustration and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. He pawed at his face and ran his fingers through his mussed hair of pale cherry. Then there was a light tapping at the bedroom door and he snapped his neck in that direction. His heart began to pound uncontrollably. The light tapping came again.
“Who’s there?” Feldon called out through the darkness. “Carl? Is that you? Can’t you just leave us alone? Ever!”
The tapping turned to a harder knock, then a pounding. The door began to rattle in its frame. Feldon hurled himself out of the bed and yanked the door open. Carl was standing there with his high eyes and wide grin and his fist held up in the air, fixed to pound. He was illuminated from behind by the glow of the television from the other room. There was loud talking and then gunfire rattling from the speakers.
Feldon squinted. “Damn it all, Carl! I told you to leave us alone! And turn the television down!”
The mannequin’s fist suddenly shot forward and clubbed Feldon right in the face. He stumbled backward and clumsily fell to the floor. He suddenly felt dizzy and nauseous and then everything went dark and silent.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 