Gracelyn Polk stood in front of her social studies classroom and cleared her throat as she looked down at the paper she held in her hands. She moved her head up, addressed the empty desks with her eyes and smiled.
“For my report on the person I most admire, I chose someone that I just met. You may wonder why that is and how could such a notion come to be… The truth of the matter is, I’m often quite lonely. I don’t have a lot of friends and my family is all long gone. I don’t really know where they went or why. But here I am, before you today.”
She paused and looked out at the empty room. She started to feel foolish but went on with her speech regardless.
“My new friend’s name is Farm Guy.” She chuckled. “No, it’s not a joke this time. His name really is Farm Guy and I know that sounds awfully peculiar, but once you get to know him, it fits somehow. He’s a very nice man and a very smart man, too. He knows a lot about life and history and how to build things… And how to make the most delicious chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had. And he’s nice to me. And in a world such as this, I suppose that’s the best thing a person could be… And worthy of my admiration. Thank you.”
Gracelyn waited for the applause that never came and then went over to the large desk at the front of the room that once belonged to a teacher. She opened a drawer and pulled out a red marker. She yanked off the cap and sniffed at the tip, careful not to get any ink on her nose. “I just love the smell of markers,” she said aloud to herself. And then she moved her hand down to her social studies report and wrote A+ at the very top and circled it twice. She held it up in front of her, smiled with pride, and then went back to her own desk.
Astron Puffin looked down on planet Earth as it spun there on its fragile thread in the cradle of space.
“It’s set to snap,” said a strange voice from behind him — a deep voice, a slow voice, like a tape recording playing back on the wrong speed.
Astron turned his head. “And then where will the world go? Doesn’t it have to go somewhere?” he asks the one that looks different but is the same — his skin an oddly green color, but richer than that of himself, the eyes the brightest blue there could ever be, strange hair.
“It will drop out of the universe like a Price Is Right Plinko chip… And there will be no prize.”
Astron let a small, haunting laugh escape from his throat. “Price Is Right?”
“Come on down,” the alien said in his slow, monotone, deep voice.”
Astron turned away to look out the incredibly large window again. The Earth was still there. “I don’t ever want to go back,” he said. “Please don’t ever take me back.”
But then Astron’s eyes were closed for him, and when he opened them back up, he was lying on his back in the middle of a cabbage field. It was a very large cabbage field, seemingly endless except for the low hills at the furthest edges, the color of green mist. The air around him smelled of good dirt. He looked up and the sky with its dying sun was there — an ocean of blue filled with the white sails of cloud ships. He stood up and looked around him, turning slowly in a circle like a searchlight. It was an unfamiliar place to him for it was not his own farm. Deep in the distance he saw something that jutted up out of the horizon. It was a house — a large and welcoming house of yellow. He decided that was the direction to go in.
Gracelyn set her bicycle down in the front yard of Farm Guy’s big, yellow house. She bounded up the front porch steps and excitedly knocked on the white door with the inset frosted glass window. It wasn’t long before it opened, and the man was standing there in a plaid shirt and denim pants. A bright smile came over his face.
“Well, well, well,” Farm Guy said. “If it isn’t the infamous Gracelyn Polk.”
“It is me. I wanted to bring your cookie container back and I have something to show you.”
“Then please come in,” he said, spreading out a long arm before him in a gesture of welcoming. His eyes then quickly darted around the outside world with a hint of suspicion before he closed the door behind them.
Farm Guy took a seat in his favorite living room chair while Gracelyn sat on a small sofa across from him. The girl looked around the cozy room that reminded her of Christmas when there was a Christmas. A fire crackled gently in a large fireplace, even though it wasn’t extremely cold outside. The heartbeat of an old clock pulsed in rhythm atop the mantel. The view out a large window was lonely. She saw old pictures of other people scattered about the room on walls, tables, and shelves. Some of the people looked strange, different in an unexplainable way.
She set her backpack to the side, unzipped a pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper. She stood and took it to him.
“What’s this?” he wanted to know.
“I did a report about you.”
“A report? About me?”
“That’s right. And as you can see, I got an A+.”
Farm Guy reached to his chairside table, fished for a pair of reading glasses, and placed them on his face. “I’m going to have to take a look at this very closely,” he said, smiling and tipping his head forward, eyes looking out from above the frames of his readers. He held the paper before him and began reading it, his eyes half squinting as they intensely glided across the words. He let out brief snorts of wonder and charmed humility as he went along. When he was finished, he set the paper aside and withdrew his glasses and looked at her.
“What do you think?” she eagerly wanted to know, sitting on the edge of the sofa now.
“I’d have to say that’s just about the finest report I’ve ever read,” he answered. “And I don’t say that just because it’s about me. Do you mind if I keep it?”
“It’s all yours.”
Farm Guy got up from his chair and made his way out of the room. He motioned to her to follow. “What do you say we take this in the kitchen. I’ll hang it up on my refrigerator. Come on. How about some peanut butter cookies?”
Gracelyn sat at the kitchen table with a tall glass of milk and a plate of peanut butter cookies set before her.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“What’s that?” the man said as he stood, his back to her, admiring the girl’s report that he had just attached to his refrigerator with a Las Vegas souvenir magnet.
“How do you have all this stuff?”
“What do you mean?”
“The milk and the cookies… And the good electricity. Everything. I mean, it’s all just like a regular house from how it was before. Where does it all come from? How does it work?”
Farm Guy turned to look at her quizzical young face, her upper lip now striped with milk. He went to sit at the table across from her and struggled to think of a suitable answer, a serious tone morphing his face. He reached for and then handed her a napkin. “Do you believe that life extends far beyond what we experience here?”
She wiped her mouth and thought about it. “Do you mean on this planet?”
“Yes. But not only on this planet… I mean all around us. Even here. Right next to us right now in this very room. There’s so much more happening around us than we ever even acknowledge.”
“You mean you get all these things from somewhere else?”
He leaned back and studied her. “I suppose that’s a pretty good way of putting it,” he said, moving his head around to look at everything. “It all comes from somewhere else.”
“And what about you?” Gracelyn questioned. “Do you come from somewhere else?”
He looked at her intently, tempting to reveal himself completely, but at the last moment pulling the punch.
“Of course, I do. I’ve lived in many other places. Haven’t you?”
“Absolutely… At least it seems that way,” the girl said, and she tilted her head to the side and gazed at him with wide eyes “Can I ask you something else?”
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.
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.
A bastard chill struck a prophecy of a coming autumn as Astron Puffin sat on a fallen tree deep in the woods. He was looking down at his small but thick hands. He turned them slowly before him, and it was hard to imagine that those were the same hands used to crush their throats. But he had to do it, he rationalized, or their fate could have been much worse.
He remembered the day the strange men had come to his cabbage farm in their protective suits and told him they were there to shut everything down. They went into the house and destroyed all the pipes and cut all the wires. He remembered how they talked about the jail maximus and how it was burning and how all the lions were escaping from the zoo. There was so much chaos. Everything was falling apart. Then they just kept coming back and taking his wife and daughter behind closed doors — locked closed doors. He tried to shake the sounds of the thumping walls and their cries from his head.
Astron yelled out in the silence — hoping the bad vibes would shoot out of his soul like an exorcism. He looked up and the trees looked down. He saw the mustard-stained blue sky interwoven with the scraggly branches. And then the ship appeared again, to do its analyzing of a world it could no longer save. Astron watched the red-glowing disc hover slowly and silently above. There were quick, bright flashes — like old time flashcubes on those cameras that used film. He wondered if the visitors, these immortal observers, would suck him up again into the belly of their craft. He half-hoped they had never returned him to Earth as he bowed his head and waited to become weightless. But then, just as they had smoothly and silently appeared, they vanished. A crow berated him from a nearby branch, and then it too flew away. Perhaps every other living being in the universe had given up hope on man.
Astron suddenly remembered and reached into his pocket and pulled out Gracelyn’s drawing. It might give him a sense of purpose and peace, he thought, as he carefully unfolded it and then held it before his eyes. He would go to her again, he decided, even if she still rejected him as a friend, or a guardian. If the strange men in the protective suits ever came back, it would be better if she wasn’t alone — it would be better if he wasn’t alone as well.
Gracelyn was in a sleepy daze on the old living room couch when the knocking started. She had been halfway dreaming of meandering through the throngs of people on the streets of Paris during the French Revolution — or maybe it was merely a conscious memory. She darted straight up and listened as the knocking became more persistent, trying to figure out where exactly it was coming from. Her head turned toward the front door and she got up and stood before it. Dead and gone loneliness floated in the morning gray-gold cloud filtering into the foyer from brightening spaces throughout. She watched as the door rattled slightly with each pound of someone’s fist.
“Who is it!?” she said, a threatening tone in her voice.
The knocking stopped and there was a brief silence before he spoke.
“Astron Puffin. From the school.”
“I’m not going to class today. I don’t feel well…. So, you can’t force me to go. I’ll make up my work later.”
“I’m not here to make you go to school.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I can protect you,” Astron offered.
“Protect me from what?”
“You know what. The things of this new world.”
Gracelyn paused for a moment, thought about it. “I don’t need your protection. I’m very capable of taking care of myself.”
“You’re a young girl… Alone.”
“And I’ve done just fine for myself, haven’t I.”
“You’ve been lucky.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Gracelyn snapped. “I’m smart. I’m resourceful. I’m strong. Probably stronger than you.”
“Do we have to talk through the door like this?” Astron looked about the grounds around him, thinking he felt something, someone in the air. “I’d rather be inside if it’s all the same to you.”
Gracelyn moved toward the door, stood on her tiptoes, and brushed aside the curtain that covered a small window. She looked out at him. Astron smiled. Then she unlocked the door and let him in.
Astron looked around the old farmhouse as she led him to the living room. He pulled off his knit cap with the long point that hung over to one side of his head, a puffy ball on the tip.
“You can sit there,” the girl said, pointing to the couch. “I don’t have much, but would you like an apple?”
Astron nodded. “I can’t believe you live in this big old house by yourself,” he said to her as she trailed off to the kitchen.
“Why can’t you believe it?” she asked as she returned to the room and presented him the apple. He took it, rubbed it against his shirt, and bit into it.
“All the space. All the memories,” he said as he chewed the apple, a bit of juice leaking from his mouth. “I couldn’t wrap my head around it.”
She sat down on the couch, but as far away from his as she could be. “I’m used to it. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”
“How long?” he wanted to know.
She pressed her lips tightly together and considered the question. “A lot longer than you could imagine.”
“Why don’t you like me?” Astron asked point blank.
She looked at him, puzzled by what he said. “It’s not a matter if I like you or not. It’s a matter of survival. I barely know you… And why are you being so forceful about this friendship thing, or whatever it is you’re searching for.”
“You let me in… So, you must trust me, at least a little bit.”
“Have you been here before?”
Astron looked at her but didn’t immediately answer.
“You have, haven’t you?”
“No,” Astron assured her. “I haven’t.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out her drawing. He unfolded it, laid it out on the table before them and tried to smooth it out with his hands.
“Why do you have my drawing?” Gracelyn asked. “Why did you take it?”
“I like it. It brings me some sort of peace… It helped me find you. Here.”
Gracelyn stood up, angry. “You had no right to take that! It was for my art class, and I was going to be graded on it. Now I’ll fail! I’ll fail because of you!” She snatched her drawing from the table. “And now look at it. You’ve made a mess of it! I’ll probably have to do another.”
“You’re all alone at that school, don’t you realize that?” Astron blurted out, raising his voice to her for the very first time. “There is no school anymore. There are no other students or teachers or anyone. It’s an empty building full of ghosts.”
Gracelyn looked at him, her eyes wide and on the verge of being wet. “I want you to leave.”
Astron sighed, clasped his thick hands against his thighs, and got up. “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” he breathed. He turned back to her before he got to the door. “If you need anything, you can come find me. Even if you don’t want to.”
“I won’t need you… For anything.”
“I’ll be at the school if you change your mind.”
Astron tugged on the front door and went out. She went to the open doorway and watched him walk away. He threw the apple off to his left side, like he was skipping a stone across an unmuddied lake, before a bright light appeared in the sky, and in half of a blink of an eye, he suddenly vanished.
Dr. Frost was sitting in a chair across from Feldon and flipping through a file. He clicked a pen and scribbled something down. He was dressed in a shirt and tie and perfectly pressed pants. His shoes shined like the gates of Heaven. He was a man in his late 40s with a neatly bearded face and a high forehead with thinning dark hair slicked back over his scalp. He wore expensive glasses over his dark eyes and constantly sipped at lemon water during the sessions.
Dr. Frost was a serious man who seemed continuously annoyed at the less intelligent world that surrounded him. The doctor carried himself with an air of self-importance; he was a product of wealth and the best schooling, but it did him no favors because he was often looked upon by his colleagues as snobbish and close-minded. He had been trying to help Feldon for months now but was dismayed and often bored by his lack of progress. In fact, he felt Feldon was getting worse each time they met. The doctor folded his hands in his lap, cleared his throat and nodded his head with a fake grin.
“Are you ready to begin?” he asked in a firm yet soft tone.
Feldon was lying on the comfortable couch and staring up at the white ceiling.
“Yes.”
“How have things been since we last talked?”
“I got into a fight with Carl last night. I hit him.”
Dr. Frost readjusted himself in the chair and leaned in with some interest. How absolutely exciting, he thought to himself.
“Why did you hit him?”
“He was annoying me.”
“How?”
“It’s just every time I try to get close to Eve, he’s always right there. He’s always getting in the way.”
The doctor clicked his pen again and jotted something down in the file.
“I seem to recall that you had talked about asking Carl to move out. Maybe it’s time to do that. It sounds like things are getting a bit out of control.”
“I can’t just throw him out into the street. He doesn’t have a job. He’d never survive,” Feldon complained.
“I think it’s admirable that you care about the wellbeing of your friend, but you also have to consider your own happiness as well, Feldon,” the doctor replied.
“Happiness? What’s that?”
“I suppose it’s something different for everyone, but for you, I believe a sense of security and having less chaos in your life would be a start.”
“Maybe I should be the one to move out,” Feldon said. “I could just go away, somewhere else, and never come back. I just long to escape.”
“But Feldon,” Dr. Frost began. “Until you give up this idea that happiness is somewhere else, you’ll never be happy where you are. So, you see, it really doesn’t work. And you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re with yourself wherever you go. You may be able to escape from a physical place where you may feel sad and uncomfortable, but in the end, no matter where you go, there you are. Does that make any sense?”
Feldon turned his head to the side and craned his eyes to look over at the doctor.
“No,” he said. “It makes no sense at all.”
Dr. Frost reclined in his chair, adjusted his glasses, and sighed.
“All right then, I see we have work to do in that area, but tell me, what about Eve? How did she react when you hit Carl last night?”
Feldon squirmed a bit on the couch. “She didn’t say much about it.”
“Nothing?”
“Not really. I think she was a bit shocked maybe. But I also think she’s messing around with Carl when I’m not there, so, you know, she didn’t want to act like she cared too much about him. I’m not fucking stupid.”
“So, you suspect they’re having an affair behind your back?”
“Yes,” Feldon said, with little hesitation.
Dr. Frost removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and a finger. “Feldon,” he began. “I feel living with these two people is causing you a lot of unnecessary anxiety and worry. It’s unhealthy. I would strongly suggest separating yourself from them.”
“You want me to kick both of them out?”
“It may seem drastic, but I feel it’s for your own good.”
“But then they’d shack up for sure, just to spite me. I’d be sick to my stomach every single night. At least if we’re all in the same place, I can keep my eye on them. What kind of advice are you trying to give me? Are you sure you’re a real psychiatrist?”
“Feldon, please! I am not the subject of this session or any of your sessions. Let’s focus on this. You think they’re messing around when you’re not there, you said it yourself. What are you going to do when it goes too far and you walk in on them going at it in your own bed? Then what?”
“Why would you say something like that?”
“I’m just trying to help you realize how unhealthy all this is. You have to choose what’s best for you, not what’s best for them.”
“What if I asked her to marry me?”
“Who?”
“Eve.”
“I would put that notion on the back shelf, Feldon,” the doctor strongly advised.
“Why? Do you think I wouldn’t be a good husband to her?”
“It has nothing to do with that. You have far too many immediate issues to deal with. Marrying her would be a complete disaster for you.”
Feldon closed his eyes. His stomach hurt. “I’d like to talk about something else now.”
Dr. Frost sipped at his lemon-tainted water. “What would you like to talk about?”
“I had a job interview.”
Hmm, this should be interesting, the doctor thought to himself. “Well, that’s a positive step. What kind of job?”
“Working at a doll salon.”
“A what?”
“A doll salon.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s a place where people can bring their dolls for a makeover and what not. A salon… For dolls.”
“Are you making this up, Feldon?”
“No. It’s a real thing.”
Dr. Frost clicked his pen once again and wrote something down.
“What’s the matter?” Feldon asked.
“I’m simply taking notes. But why would you want to do that? Why would a grown man want to play with dolls for a living?”
“Are you questioning my sanity?”
“That’s my job, Feldon. But please, I want you to explain to me why you would want to play with dolls all day.”
“It’s not playing with dolls! It takes real creativity and skill to make a doll look beautiful and perfect. There’s hair and makeup to consider, the right dress, and accessories, too. Yes, you must know about accessories. These people pay good money for this type of thing, and besides that, I prefer human interaction with non-humans.”
Dr. Frost paused. He tapped his finger against his face and sighed with concern. “Do you realize how very odd that sounds?”
Feldon grew more defensive and sat up on the edge of the couch. “It’s not odd at all. There’s a real need for it for some people. It’s a service I’d like to provide, and I think I’d be good at it. I see nothing wrong with it. I thought you’d be pleased that I’m trying to put myself out there. Why are you trying to sabotage my progress!?”
“Just calm down, Feldon. There’s no need to get upset. I’m not trying to sabotage you at all. Please, lie back down.”
“I don’t want to. I want some chicken and coffee.”
“You want to leave?”
“Yes. I don’t think you are any help to me at all.”
“Have you been taking the ‘don’t be sad’ pills I’ve prescribed.”
“No. I’m making Carl eat them. I think that’s why he’s constantly grinning.”
“You shouldn’t do that. That medication is specifically prescribed for you. You could be causing harm to your friend, and yourself.”
“There’s trapezoids in my empty mind, doc. My empty mind.”
“Feldon, I want to see you more than once a week now.”
“Why?”
“I’m gravely concerned for your mental health.”
“Concerned? You mean you want more money, right?”
“That’s not it at all.”
“These are my last days, doc. My last days.”
“Are you feeling suicidal, Feldon?”
Feldon wanted to scream “YES!” at the top of his lungs, but he knew that such a response would surely be a death sentence anyway — a lie would spare him further agony and torture. “Of course I’m not,” he answered. “Don’t be silly.”
“Are you sure?” the doctor pried.
“Yes, I’m positive. It’s just that, well, sometimes life feels like a broken fucking record. Is that so immoral and worthy of persecution? Surely you feel the same way at times. You’re human, right?”
“I am,” he answered, and then the doctor leaned back in his chair and wrote some more notes. “I want you to come back on Wednesday, at 4.” He tore a piece of paper from a pad and reached out to hand it to Feldon. “And I’m prescribing you some more anti-anxiety medication. It’s for you, not Carl, okay?”
Feldon took the piece of paper and looked at it. The writing was indecipherable to him.
“I want you to take 8 pills a day, four at breakfast and four at dinnertime. Understand?”
“Okay. I get it. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
Dr. Frost watched as Feldon depressingly dragged himself out of the office, and he noticed he was mumbling something to himself. Then the doctor looked down at the file, clicked his pen, and wrote the words: TERMINAL MADNESS in big, bold letters.
TO BE CONTINUED
By
Aaron Echoes August
Not a WordPress member? Sign up at wordpress.com. If you’d like to follow this blog without a WordPress account, just enter your email address below to receive notifications of new posts from Cereal After Sex. Thanks for supporting independent writers and publishers.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 