Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 21 Read online

  She wiped her eyes. It was difficult to hear her. “But now the world will be full of ghosts. The daytime will haunt the nighttime. The changeover has already occurred.” Furness stood straight and gestured at the bad wall of the auditorium. We all swiveled to look. Something flickered across the wall, a huge moving sketch of a grimacing face.

  I gasped. Then I realized it was only the work of the theater tech students, projecting the student movies from the Intermediate Film Elective class onto the back wall. While Furness gave her speech, Jillian held my hand. There was some kindness in her, whether she really was a good person deep down or she had learned it from a magazine article. What People Do For Other People When They Are Feeling Bad.

  Everyone cheered. Furness talked and talked, and all the while, it never grew lighter outside.

  * * * *

  The true and false names of the dead. There were so many names. More than the names of my family, I thought of names of people who I never knew, would never know now. And as I gazed at the rest of the students, Furness’ speech began to penetrate my mind. I was happy to be alive. No, wait. I melted, I froze, melted and froze again back and forth. I was thrilled to be alive. I thought of all that had been lost and ruined in order to carve out this piece of the world for me. The names rushed through me, they made me breathless, not just first names and surnames, but email addresses and internet pseudonyms too, of all the people that had been lost, and I felt wrung out, like I was viewing something so large it filled my entire vision but really, I was only seeing the very tip, one tiny corner.

  Here's what I wanted: I wanted to be a book. I wanted to be stuck one way or another, permanently trapped in happy or sad or something by the last page.

  I left the auditorium when the party started, and sat on a stone bench by the bushes. The raccoons were in the trees again. Some of them bounced on the branches, and some of them ran around the trees looking like cats that were bent the wrong way. The trees were skinny and the raccoons looked huge next to them, if they were all things that came from different toy sets.

  Bart came out and sat next to me. He looked at me sideways for a while before speaking.

  "Being alive doesn't make you a monster,” said Bart. He looked doubtful. “It's a piece of luck. Just look at it that way. Don't question it."

  "What kind of bargain do you think we made?” I said.

  He said, “I don't know. Why do you think there had to be a bargain? There was no bargain."

  "Then we're stupid,” I said. “Stupider than the stupid Day Class."

  Bart chewed on the inside of his top lip defensively. “I worked hard to get here. What did you do?"

  "I didn't do anything,” I said.

  "So there,” said Bart. “Don't talk about us being stupid. We did the smart thing."

  Music thumped the doors. If we went inside, it would pound in our chests, replacing our natural heartbeats. They were partying inside to the same old playlist, and I wondered if it would ever change for as long as I lived. You can dance like the world is ending and have a good time, but if the world has truly ended, is such a thing possible? Does it make dancing less fun? More?

  I tried to breathe. “I'm calling on you now for that favor,” I said.

  Bart smiled for a second, but then he scratched his forehead, thinking. He sat up and took both of my elbows into his hands, resting them on top of his palms.

  "Wake up,” Bart said. “Wake wake wake wake up.” We sat there for a while, his hands on my elbows, my hands on his shoulders. Everything stayed the same.

  We released each other's arms, and I slouched on the bench.

  I said, “Bart, are we going to go in and dance, or are we going to sit out here for the rest of the night?"

  Neither seemed good. We frowned. I started to feel desperate, because we needed to choose—didn't Bart know that I needed to choose? A decision had to be made.

  But then my leg twitched, and then Bart shifted in place, and both of us began moving towards the door as slowly as we could. That seemed like a fine and tolerable solution. We would make tiny movements between partying and not-partying, and do neither forever, until all of night was used up.

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  Dear Aunt Gwenda

  Surrealist Salmonella Edition

  Dear Aunt Gwenda,

  I really like a nice pair of slacks. Esp ones with peanut butter. Or jam. Or a lover named Fran. Is this normal? My parents don't seem to think so. They chained me to the wall since I started my slack obsession.

  Paul Jessup

  Aunt Gwenda: Dear Marcel Duchamp, your friend Salvador Dali is dead. Slacks are not for surrealists. They are for creepy businessmen.

  Dear Aunt Gwenda:

  Was that not a dainty dish to set before the King? John Klima

  AG: The thing I never got about that rhyme is that a pie composed of four and twenty blackbirds (that's twenty-four blackbirds total, for those of us counting) is in no way dainty. That is a whole lot of gross, oozy blackbird pie. The King should really focus on avoiding salmonella. Not to mention: Ewwwwwww.

  Also, this is the kind of thing my dog would eat if he was King.

  Dear Aunt Gwenda,

  Is it supposed to hurt when I do this? I'm asking for a friend.

  Alex Wilson

  AG: Everything worth doing hurts a little, right? Trust me—your friend likes the pain.

  Dear Aunt Gwenda,

  Is it ever, ever, EVER socially acceptable not to stifle farts while in the company of others?

  I mean beside on one's deathbed and whilst giving birth.

  Haddayr

  AG: It's never socially acceptable, but that may just be the answer you're looking for. There is no faster way to become a social pariah and get thyself free of the surly company of idiots than to behave in such a malodorous manner.

  The other exception is, of course, for the artistically inclined. If you feel called to be Le Petomane's rightful heir, wowing many and few with your flatulist antics then you must, must embrace your calling and let ‘er rip. The results still won't smell as bad as a pie made out of twenty-four dead blackbirds.

  If my dog was King, he'd do it all the time.

  Dear Aunt Gwenda,

  What should I do with all these hot peppers? Roasting, drying, freezing, stewing, pulverizing and straight-up eating raw have all begun to seem repetitive and dull.

  Michael DeLuca

  AG: When a man is tired of pulverizing, he's tired of life.

  Dear Aunt Gwenda,

  I'm starting to worry that they're out to get me. Have you heard anything?

  Jon

  AG: Oh, I have. I've heard plenty. They are. They're looking at you right now, admiring your socks. They're waiting for you to collect the twenty-fourth blackbird and then it will all come to an end. And, yet, you can't stop yourself, can you? You're still out there, stalking the birds, desperate for a conclusion to the constant surveillance you know you are under, even more desperate for sweet, sweet dead-bird pie. Resistance is meaningless and overrated: They will never stop.

  Dear Aunt Gwenda,

  If I were out to get someone, hypothetically speaking, what sort of things would you recommend? Code names? Disguises?

  Fred

  AG: Code names and disguises are good. Also: nets, booby traps, a dictionary, hot peppers, a friend in a high place, more friends in low places, ninja suits, a get-away car, urinal art, dogs, poisonous plants, an invisibility cloak, raw fowl, a death ray, a tin can, a trustworthy hobo, a sparkly vampire unicorn, a suitcase full of cash, Jennifer Garner, and a nefarious database.

  Dear Aunt Gwenda,

  What kind of band-aids are best for bandaging caffeinated capuchin monkeys with scalding burns?

  Will Alexander

  AG: Well played, Fred. Now you're showing the ingenuity needed to “get someone.” The blackbird is in the tree.

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  The Curmudgeon by Adam Ares

  The
curmudgeon's face was not immediately visible as I stepped outside to embrace the still autumn air. He was clinging to the handrail, his torso upon the first two steps, his legs flailing unhappily upon muddy leaves.

  "Are you dying?” I asked, when I noticed him.

  "This is, uh. This is me taking a rest,” he responded, “I'm, you know. Trying to forget about mankind's imminent demise."

  I whistled my exhalation. “Hoo-boy. Yeah, I know how that goes."

  * * * *

  We made some small talk about mankind's imminent demise. Then I started telling him about Jess, who was passed out on my futon at the time. And how my buddy Matt had been trying to hook me up with her, but how I was a little weirded out at the time and uncertain about the whole situation.

  I would have offered the curmudgeon a pillow; but because he was my elder, I didn't want to imply that he wasn't able to take care of himself.

  So I was kind of just talking to fill the silence. I said, “Yeah, so this girl Jess and I were debating for like an hour about game systems. I don't even know where Matt found this girl, but she at first seemed to know what she was talking about. She wouldn't cede to my point about the obviously superior not only graphics handling et cetera but the quality of the third party licensing, but all this time I'm just assuming—and here is where I err, because, as I said, it seemed she knew what she was talking about—that she's actually, you know, played the system in question? And it only occurs to me, because after all this time—an hour!—we're talking, and she says—here, I quote: ‘Well, I haven't actually played your system anyway.’ So what are you doing railing against it for half an hour? An hour. It's absolutely mind-boggling. But what Matt said is that she does this, any opportunity she has to argue with you about something, she'll do it, doesn't matter the topic. So I tell her: ‘While I appreciate your debating skills, and I thank you for the conversation, you really can't talk. You haven't played it.’ She hadn't played it! But it's cool. It was a good time, she seemed all right still. So we take off, it's me, her, and Matt in Matt's car, and we drive back here, figure we'll watch a movie or something."

  Finally, the old man lifted an arm from the handrail. “Let me tell you,” he said, “I'm a hopeless, bitter old man. I would cough here just to exercise, to demonstrate more eloquently—plus elegante. Uh. Plus Elegante-ment. That I am a broken piece of. Piece of nothing. Nothing in pieces. And devastated. But people of your age have no idea. No idea. You can program your damn computers, but you can't see America. And you can't see me because I'm nothing in pieces.” A sudden sigh. “It wasn't easy, you know, getting to be a curmudgeon."

  "Is that what you are? I thought it rude to ask."

  "That's me. Your good old reliable local curmudgeon. Crusty and miserly, self-certain but powerless. Unhappy and stoic. All the time."

  "Right on,” I said. Then, suddenly, he grabbed an empty bottle from the recycle bin, smashed it, held it to my throat, and demanded that I inject heroin as part of a cultic ritual for the Etruscan god Maris. Refusing, I shocked him with my Civilian Taser, which killed him. His body was falling on me; I pushed it onto the porch steps, dropped the taser, and did that thing that I do with my hands to express disgust at having touched something so unfortuitous as a corpse. I was solemn, because the killing even of an insane curmudgeon is not to be engaged in without the proper respects.

  * * * *

  "Jess,” I said, kneeling by the futon, “Wake up. I've killed a curmudgeon in self-defense."

  "Mmm. Babe, I'm sleeping,” she said, “You should sleep too.” An arm waved in my general direction, as though hoping to pull me nearer to her. I knew this action to be one of clever seduction: Matt had happened to mention that she does this when she wants a guy. Which is cool. We all have our methods, you know. Even if she was exaggerating her sleepiness, I figured that she was genuinely the sort of person who would want to be woken up gradually, so I climbed onto the futon and confidently stroked her hair. Her hand clasped upon my manly bicep and squeezed it.

  Then was the sex scene. After, I returned to the subject at hand: “So I still have to figure out what to do about the dead guy."

  "Yeah, what's up with that? A curmudgeon attacked you?"

  "Yeah. It was weird."

  "Do we have to be solemn?"

  "No. Not for self-defense. I was for like a second, though, just because."

  "Yeah."

  Then I realized: “Aw, no. Tomorrow's Sunday. And Monday's a holiday."

  Jess slapped the front of her face with one hand.

  * * * *

  There are many reasons for my wanting to get out of this stupid town. A new reason was added to the list once I had killed a man: everything closes on Sundays and holidays, including the Funerales.

  I called 911. They scolded me: “Couldn't you just go online and look up the FAQ for the local Funerales?” I would have considered this option, but Jess was still naked and I wanted to stare at her.

  Apparently, I was going to have to buy some Prolonger from the Wal-Mart—with my own money!—to keep the corpse undead for a few days. If I were to leave the body as it was until Tuesday, it would begin to get maggoty and I would have to pay a significant Decomposition Fee. As Charlie Brown would say, Aaugh!

  * * * *

  I remember how this one time, Matt wrote an ode to Wal-Mart. It was awesome. It got published in a really reputable literary journal. It was a little bit over my head, because I haven't read as many books as he has, but I know that it included a lot of references to older works. It was in part patterned after “Ode on a Grecian Urn"—which I have, actually, read—and it was meant to say that people, we all pass through the aisles of this store with many examples of art from around the world, like from China or Bangladesh, but we just don't stop to appreciate it. Also, we can never truly understand the significance of a shirt that was made in a really different place from us. Cultural difference obscures the essence of a thing, just as thoroughly as does the passage of time. That's why everyone needs to choose from the same books and speak in the same language: otherwise, there would be a never-ending series of little wars, instead of just the big, occasional, and important wars that have been leading us toward mankind's imminent demise. When Matt explained this all to me, I told him that I already knew he was really smart, and that he should stop showing off. He explained that in heaven, after everyone's demise, we would all be smart like him. I told him that heaven sounded boring. Being a writer, he only frowned.

  * * * *

  Finally, Jess and I went inside and got the stuff. Working at the checkout counter was a girl who usually works in the electronics department. She asked whether I had played any good video games lately. I replied that I always played good video games, and that in fact only the best of video games were ever good enough for me. She asked whether I had delivered any good pizzas lately. I told her that I hadn't, because our pizzas are disgusting and I have never been able to fathom how anyone in the world could ever eat them. She said that she disagreed, she liked our pizzas, and that moreover she liked having cute boys in their work clothes knock at her door with a pie in one hand and a two-liter bottle of her favorite brand of cola in the other. She said that she wished she could get a pizza delivered during her break from work—which she was about to take—but that, because all the pizza places were closed at this hour of the night, she was going to have to settle for leftover vegetable-fried rice and perhaps a snack cake from the vending machine.

  I was required to tell her that I loved snack cakes. Once I did, I was officially flirting with her and needed to dismiss my companion. “Okay, Jess,” I said, “Here's what's going to happen. You're going to walk back to my place with the Prolonger. I don't know how good you are at lifting corpses. You can wake up Matt if you need to. He'll help you to carry it into the dungeon. Oh, and the dungeon will be locked, but the key's hanging up in the kitchen with all the other keys. It should be marked—Dungeon Key. The same key works to get inside there and to shut the steel
cage. Just set down the corpse. Use the prolonger. There are instructions in the box for how to prepare the syringe and stuff. He'll start screaming—that's how you'll know it's working. Then lock up the cage. Oh, and be sure the door is closed while you're in there, so that the soundproofing works and no one gets woken up. I'll pay you $25 for your labors, and what's the fine for heartbreak on the first night?"

  "$75,” she said.

  "Right. And $75. I'll just put them together in a $100 money order."

  She left. I was solemn, because even on the first night, heartbreak is not be engaged in without the proper respects.

  * * * *

  Sitting on a bench in front of the Wal-Mart, eating snack cakes, I recounted for the cashier the night's events. She seemed interested in the story of the curmudgeon, but wasn't saying much in particular.

  I again was talking to fill the silence: “I can only imagine what Matt's going to say about all of this. Writers are so weird. I guess most of them are raised by their parents, like out in the woods. That's probably it. They come to the towns and they have to get used to everything. When he hears about the curmudgeon, I can promise you, he's going to say something to make the matter seem significant. Every time somebody does something random or crazy, he gets, like, a faraway expression, and he thinks and thinks until he can somehow manage to explain it."

  "I'm feeling disturbed,” the cashier, whose name I kept forgetting to ask, suddenly volunteered. “Customers have been talking a lot to me about the Family Center, as though something's going on with it. People who have relatives there have been talking to me about how they can't visit their parents anymore. They say that they're not convinced that their parents are still alive. They say that sometimes, when they go to the elevator of the place, they can hear screams from below. They say that the guards are panicking and talking on walkie-talkies and turning away everyone who wants to visit. Again and again, I hear these stories. If I were hearing so many weird stories about a human being, I would assume that they were going crazy, you know? So I get worried. I've always believed that the Family Center provides an important service—to ease the transitioning of the former Tribalists into our society. Maybe you don't know what that means. I know that most of us don't really understand what the Family Center does. It's just something that's there. But I've actually started looking into it. Books and stuff. It's kind of interesting. I'm sorry. This isn't how I talk to most of my customers. But then, I don't flirt with most of my customers. That's what bars are for. I've been wanting to flirt with you for a long time, you know. Thanks for breaking that other girl's heart. I know it can get expensive. Did you ever feel like someone was different? Not different as in crazy, but different in the sort of way that looking at them isn't like looking at other people who have the same career. This is all so difficult to say. I feel different when I see you."