Brian Lillie

 

1ST DEGREE

Jefferson Davis purchased a sock boiler from Stanislav Gamoria, the crazed Prussian inventor who was holed up in Philadelphia for several years in the mid-nineteenth century, waiting for that whole “Gamoria Poisoned Our Water Supply” thing to blow over.

One of the socks that were boiled was a green woolen number that Davis purchased during an absinthe-fueled debauch in New Orleans a few years before the War Between the States started to screw with his nightlife. This sock later fell out of a steamer trunk as it was being transported to Charleston, along with Davis’ entire collection of big-eyed silver duckling statuettes. The sock lay in a ditch for several weeks before being eaten by a particularly hungry badger.

 

2ND DEGREE

The badger’s named was “Lil’ Bumpy”, on account of the fact that he was smaller than the other badgers and had a fairly advanced case of eczema. (This didn’t prevent him from being a favorite among the toddler badgers, who would gather around him at the holidays and listen to him tell stories about rutting, looking for food, avoiding raccoons, etc.)

Now, after Bumpy ate the boiled green sock, a strange thing happened: You see, when that sock was originally dyed, a single snapweed seed got lodged in between some of its fibers. The act of boiling that sock several times cooked the seed, eventually releasing a tiny amount of Protease 15, which has been known to decrease the severity of skin ailments in small mammals. Unfortunately for Bumpy, he would have needed to be soaked in eighty-five gallons of Protease 15 for five weeks to fully cure his eczema. As it was, the tiny amount he ingested was just enough to kill one of his million or so eczema bumps.

That bump was named Gary.

 

3RD DEGREE

Gary’s death sent a shockwave throughout the Lil’ Bumpy Eczema community, as he was the Ombudsman for the right front paw, as well as secretary of the local Lodge. You can probably imagine that his funeral and wake were quite large and well-attended affairs, not to mention rather raucous. Over the course of the evening, all of the eczema bumps in attendance drank WAY too much and ate all sorts of fatty finger foods, which Gary’s lodge brethren had brought in abundance. The smell of all these microscopic cocktail wieners and bacon-stuffed cheese modules gathered together in one small area of Lil’ Bumpy’s right front paw was enough to attract an elderly mosquito named Ms. Eliza Portmanteau.

Because Ms. Portmanteau’s vision had deteriorated with the onset of old age (she was, after all, over thirty-five days old at this point!) she could not make out the tiny drunken mourners in their tiny little blobbish black suits, eating their tiny little snacks. All she saw was a vaguely ovoid patch of undulation that smelled like bacon. Thus, it is completely understandable that she thought she was beholding the ancient Mosquitoan god called Skreeeeeeeeeeeeee, the Bacon-Scented Oracle of Punkratonia.

As she prostrated before the “Oracle”, the drunken eczema bumps all looked up and were horrified to see the gigantic, matronly insect crouching above them. All except Pepito, Gary’s brother-in-law. He was so drunk that he thought the monstrous creature was really funny, and so he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Hey big mama, why don’t you come over to my place for a drink!”

Through her aged ears, Ms. Portmanteau heard Pepito’s jape as “From now on, you must subsist only on flower juice!” Ms. Portmanteau went on to form a Mosquito religion called “The Juicers,” who strove to give up their bloodsucking ways and live only on the nectar of fragrant woodland flowers. This religion lasted roughly three days, by the end of which all of its converts had died from malnutrition.

 

4TH DEGREE

Twenty-nine years later, in the library of Ohio State University in Columbus, a studious thespian by the name of Kroll Vandenbeen was researching obscure Mosquito lore for his role as the eldest larvae, Flip, in Arturo Sandregar’s “Death of 215,000 Mosquito Larvae,” when he stumbled across a terse passage in Wooton’s History of Really Stupid Insect Religions which mentioned Eliza Portmanteau and her ill-starred Juicers. Included was an artist’s rendering of Ms. Portmanteau prostrating to an oddly shaped god, which glowed godishly from the paw of a badger. “Skreeeeeeeeeeeeee, the Bacon-Scented Oracle of Punkratonia,” read the caption. Aha! This was just the stage moniker Vandenbeen had been searching in vain for. He had already picked out “Kevin” as the new first name that would catapult him to stardom, but now he had an equally impressive surname!

Behold! Kevin Skreeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Anyone who knows even a little about Hollywood would be able to tell you that Vandenbeen nee Kevin Skreeeeeeeeeeeeee went on to become one of the world’s biggest stars, winning three Best Actor Oscars, and starring in over forty well-regarded hit films, including “Wax Them Horsies,” “From This One Place To This Other Place With Bigger Trees,” and “Akimbo!”

 

5TH DEGREE

On His deathbed, Skreeeeeeeeeeeeee managed to write an autobiography before succumbing to elbow cancer. The book, One Cool Guy, became an instant bestseller, translated into twenty-five languages, including Chizembop, Eskimo, and Flozberish.

One dark and stormy night, a heavily loaded cargo plane sped above the mountains of Flozber towards the capitol city, Mulzmoondt. Its hold was filled with copies of Skreeeeeeeeeeeeee’s autobiography, freshly translated and printed using burnished spinach squeezins, in the traditional Flozberian way. All of a sudden, a finger of treacherous lightning jabbed downwards from the darkened clouds like a second-grade teacher accusing a seven-year-old of stealing her Hello Kitty “Best Teacher in the World” nose hair clippers, striking the plane and effectively busting it in two. Books and molten fuselage screamed away in great billowing wads to crash into the lonely mountains below.

One book, though, remained aloft in a particularly playful current of air, which blew the lucky tome all the way to Greenland before depositing it, unharmed, in the laundry basket of Kjerklt Ntttkrrsko’trsk, a local sportswriter, who was busy working on an article about that afternoon’s National Sodball Championship match between the Grrkkt’l Sassownsk’tts and the Ornjsk Bierntt’llqt’s.

 

6TH DEGREE

That afternoon, Ntttkrrsko’trsk slipped on a rogue Mento and broke his leg, while rushing to turn in his story. At the hospital, his niece Tjyerka’ssk visited, and he asked if she would go to his apartment and hang his laundry out to dry, which he had planned to do himself but would now be unable.

Tjyerka’ssk agreed, and when she went to her uncle’s apartment, she discovered Skreeeeeeeeeeeeee’s autobiography sitting atop the mildly damp laundry. The combination of the colors of the book jacket, the smell of the laundry, and the cavorting late afternoon sunbeams which filled the apartment caused Tjyerka’ssk’s head to expand to seventeen times its normal size.

Kevin Bacon stepped through her enlarged left nostril, wiped himself off with a bedspread, and offered to take her out for scones.

 

A week later, he starred in Footloose . . .

 

 

BRIAN LILLIE is a writer from Ann Arbor Michigan.

L. L. Madrid

 

Every Sunday my grandfather fishes at Ripple Pond. It’s an old habit, one anchored in boyhood. His mother allowed him to forgo church for fishing, as he was more contemplative by the water’s edge.

Today he’s wearing a neon orange baseball cap, his favorite for the last four decades. He looks maybe sixty. His age varies from week to week. Sometimes he’s as young as eight and others he’s the old man I knew. Always though, a toothpick juts from the corner of his mouth, often bouncing as if conducting the current.

During the initial sightings I confronted him, asking why he’d come, but he never answered. He wouldn’t even look at me. Instead, he’d wind his reel; grab his tackle and leave, disappearing at the tree line. I’ve spent six months of Sundays watching him fish.

When I was a kid he brought me here a fistful of times. The first outing he had a can of live worms. I didn’t want to bait the hook. The prospect of selecting a worm and impaling it was nauseating. Grandpa’s blue eyes narrowed when I’d asked him to skewer the bait for me. He spat, shook his head and said, “You got to do it yourself. Wouldn’t be honest otherwise.”

Fingers pinching a worm, I slid the wriggling creature onto the hook, pricking my finger in the process. Grandpa nodded his approval and reached into the front pocket of his shirt and handed me a toothpick. We didn’t speak again until after I got a nibble followed by a tug. A few cranks of the reel and I had a two-incher. Grandpa had me throw it back. It was my first catch and I wanted to keep it, but he insisted. My face went hot and words of protest bubbled inside me, but he offered up a rare smile and patted my back.

“It’s not about the catch,” he said.

“Then what’s the point?”

He held a finger to his lips and then gestured out toward the undulating liquid, the shifting variegations of cola-brown, peridot, and slate blue.

We grew comfortable sharing silence. Sitting side by side, our legs dangling from the dock as we both squinted at the sun like characters in a Rockwell painting. I contemplate those long-faded Sunday mornings, listing all the details I can conjure. The little yellow cooler. The entwining scents of pine and coffee. Feathered lures. Gooey orange bait. The whizzing, creaking whirl of the reel. There are neither hints nor harbingers suggesting he would continue the tradition after his death.

I wondered what, if anything, my grandfather remembers. I don’t know why I see him. No one else does. I brought Grammy here once as an experiment. Together we strolled circumnavigating the pond, as my eyes searched the shore, heart sinking. He didn’t show. Sensing my disappointment, Grammy squeezed my forearm. I haven’t brought anyone else.

Now, from under the shade of a great pine, I watch Grandpa rummaging through his tackle box, sifting its contents with just his fingertips. Taking careful steps I approach, my hand clenched tight, encasing an old pocketknife.

Sometimes he knows who I am. Mostly, he thinks I’m a stranger.

Others see him, not people who knew him, but joggers, dog walkers, and occasional anglers. They exchange nods, proof of awareness.

Today, I have a plan. My grandfather’s stare holds steadfast on the red and white bobber floating on the water below even as I crouch beside him. I lay a hand on his shoulder; it is solid and warm. At last, he looks at me and I reveal the pocketknife. The one he’d carried since Korea, the knife I’ve kept on me since his funeral. “You dropped this.”

The toothpick stills and there’s a glint in his eye. He shakes his head. “Hush now. You’ll scare the fish away.”

I sit beside him on the damp wooden planks. Dragonflies skim the water like thrown stones scattering the falling sunbeams. When I glance down at my legs I see that his are gone. I am alone on the dock. Next to me rests a solitary toothpick. A sigh of a laugh escapes me and I return my gaze to the pond.

 

 

L.L. MADRID lives in Tucson where she can smell the rain before it falls. She resides with her four-year-old daughter, an antisocial cat, and on occasion, a scorpion or two. Her work can be found lurking in various corners of the internet and at llmadrid.weebly.com.

Timothy Day

Upon receiving the letter from Elise, Olivia was surprised to learn that her sister was living at the edge of the universe. Olivia hadn’t seen her for three years, at the last holiday party their parents were alive for. She still had the picture of the four of them standing by the tree with candy canes on her fridge, Olivia pretending the cane was a pirate hook, Elise tilting her head sideways with the cane’s hook against her neck, as if being yanked offstage. Olivia had long since cut off the other end of the shot where her ex-husband had stood, a candy cane hooked on his ear.

It is beautiful here, and I’d like to talk to you before I proceed.

Olivia was not sure what to make of the letter’s last word. Proceed. How? What was proceed-able? Flights to the edge of the universe had spotty availability. Olivia booked the next one offered, leaving in three days somewhere between five p.m. and midnight.

Olivia arranged for her daughter’s babysitter, Zach, to stay at the house while she was away. He arrived with a bag full of her daughter’s favorite snacks, and just as Olivia reached the door, asked her how she wanted him to handle Mackenzie’s bat mitzvah.

“Mac’s only seven,” Olivia said. “And we’re not Jewish.”

Zach gave her a skeptical look.

“My Uncle used to live out there,” he said. “I know how it is.”

Olivia told him not to worry about it.

When she arrived at the airport, Olivia was directed to an exceptionally tall security officer, who slipped her ticket into his coat pocket surreptitiously before taking her arm gently and guiding her across the terminal in silence. After passing a series of more traditional flight gates, the officer led her into a back hallway, stopping at a frayed curtain with a scrap of paper on it that read: Employees Only. The officer held it up for Olivia and she stepped underneath to end of the hallway, bereft of any doors. After following the officer knelt down as if to tie his shoe and fished around in his sock, removing a single white key. He then reached upwards and moved his hand across the ceiling, stopping underneath a slight dent in the paneling. Bringing up the key with his other hand, the officer jammed it into the groove, breaking through the surface like styrofoam, and twisted. A jagged piece of ceiling crumbled off and fell to their feet, creating a cloud of dust. The officer turned to her and held his palms out, nodding upward. Olivia stepped into his palm and extended herself up past the ceiling hole, pushing against the new floor to lift her lower half into the room above. She looked back down at the officer, who whispered something inaudible into a walkie-talkie before looking up at her and smiling.

“Have a nice flight,” he said, then moved aside the curtain and left her.

Olivia stood and took in her surroundings; the room she was in looked not unlike the waiting area of a doctor’s office, with couches and chairs and artificial plants, no windows. Three other passengers sat around the room, their heads dipped into magazines. Olivia counted three correlating floor-holes in random spots of carpet, including a gaping one right in front of the check-in window that she traced to the overweight man sitting in the corner. She took nervous steps towards the attendant behind the desk, who raised a finger and and swiveled around as she approached. Just give her some cookies mom, she heard him saying. Christ shouldn’t you have this down by now? Milk makes them tired I think. Yeah, I think I heard that once. She’ll watch some cartoons and PTFO. Hold on a sec.

He brought the phone down and turned back to face Olivia.

“Just checking in?”

Olivia squinted at him over the cavernous floor opening.

“Zach?”

No, she thought, it couldn’t be — but it was.

The attendant, who was clearly Zach, tilted his head to the side and squinted back.

“Huh?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry mam do I know you?”

“You definitely do.”

Attendant-Zach clicked his tongue and cringed apologetically.

“I’m sorry mam. Maybe you’re confusing me with some other stud.” He winked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Code phrase please?”

At this the other passengers put their magazines down and looked at Olivia expectantly. She met their collective gaze with a furled brow.

“Edge of the universe?”

They exchanged looks of satisfaction before sinking back in their seats.

“Thanks,” said attendant-Zach. “You’re all set.”

Olivia tried to say more, but he swiveled back around and returned the phone to his ear. Mom? I’m back. Olivia retreated and sat down as far away from the other passengers as possible, then took her phone out and dialed Zach’s cell.

Zach picked up on the first ring.

“Sup Ms. Riley?”

“Oh,” Olivia stammered, looking back at the check-in window. “Hi Zach.”

“Hey hey hey. Enjoying that airport bar?”

“No, I mean — no. How’s Mac?”

“She’s great. Sleeping like a — well, like a seven year old I guess.” He laughed.

“Oh good. Well…thanks Zach.”

“Anytime Ms. Riley.”

He hung up and Olivia flipped her phone closed, listening to attendant-Zach, still talking, the exact same voice she’d just heard in her ear. And try to lay off the booze the rest of the week alright mom? I’m counting on you. The kid’s not mine you know! The exact same laugh.

Three minutes before takeoff, a new hole broke open beneath Olivia’s feet and she let out a stifled shriek before pulling her legs up onto the couch. Seconds later, a man with a visor and a camera strapped around his neck emerged from the opening, apologizing to her between grunts as he struggled to lift himself up. Olivia gave him her hand and helped him the rest of the way and he lay on the floor panting for a minute before rising and dusting himself off, taking the seat next to her.

“What airport?” he asked.

Olivia looked at him in confusion.

“SeaTac?”

“Ah,” he nodded, then pointed to himself. “JFK,” he said.

The man went to check-in and Olivia peered down the hole he had come through, looking into a small control room where a handful of operators sat at computers with headsets on, reciting coordinates into their mouthpieces. Olivia rose carefully and stepped over to another hole, the one closest to a French woman reading Time. This one seemed to be positioned above some sort of upper awning, an elevated catwalk just below. From far beneath it, Olivia could hear the echo of the airport intercom as flight schedules were announced: le prochain vol pour Grèce quittera en une huere.

Olivia was about to ask attendant-Zach how long they had until takeoff when she caught another glimpse through the opening near her feet to see not a control room but the sky, white wisps of cloud accompanying the blue, hurtling by at hyper-speed. So this was the flight. Olivia fumbled in her daughter’s backpack for the sleeping pills she’d brought along, taking two of them before sinking deep into the couch as the light of the room faded out.

Olivia woke to attendant-Zach shaking her.

“C’mon doofus! We’re here! Wake up! Wake up Olivia!”

Olivia broke from him and started up to her feet. The other passengers had gone and the door beside the check-in window was propped open, nothing but a wall of whiteness beyond. Olivia stood before it and craned her neck out; there didn’t seem to be a ground. She put one foot out to test it, but attendant-Zach yelped and came quickly to her side.

“What?” Olivia asked in alarm.

“We can’t land in the edge of the universe,” attendant-Zach said, as if it was terribly obvious. “You have to take the rope down.”

“The rope?”

Attendant-Zach stuck his arm out into the white and felt around for something, bringing back a thick brown rope.

“This’ll take you the rest of the way.”

Olivia balked.

“Seriously?”

Attendant-Zach sighed and shook his head.

“Fuckin’ first-timers. It’s just a little rope-burn.”

“Zach!”

Attendant-Zach paused and stared at her, his face grave.

“You don’t get it,” he said. “It’s all about to break.” With this, he walked back to the check-in window and sat, eyes locked ahead. Olivia went around the desk and approached him, noticing for the first time the clock ticking on the wall adjacent, the two hands moving across a blank white surface. She peered nervously at attendant-Zach, sitting upright and stoic in the chair. Cringing, she stuck out her finger and poked attendant-Zach in the nose, staggering back as his head cracked apart and went crumbling to the floor, followed quickly by the rest of his body. Olivia looked out the open door at the rope dangling amongst the white and took out her cell phone.

Zach picked up on the first ring.

“Morning Ms. Riley.”

The coffee table collapsed into pieces.

“Zach,” she said. “Could you put Mac on?”

“Oh,” he said, “I just walked her into class actually.”

“Can you go back and get her?”

The couch Olivia had slept on deteriorated into foamy bits of fabric.

“Uh…sure. Just a sec.”

A chunk of ceiling fell from the corner and crushed a chair.

“Mom?”

“Mac!”

“Hi mom! I’m in class.”

“I know jellybean!” Olivia shouted over the wreckage, “I just needed to tell you I love you!”

The floor began to break off into larger gaps.

“Oh. Okay. I love you too mom.”

Olivia stuffed her phone into her pocket and jumped onto the rope just as the entire room disintegrated.

It was a long journey down and Olivia’s hands stung terribly as she descended through the white. Finally her feet met something solid and she cautiously let go of the rope. She got on her knees and felt around with her hands; yes, there was ground here, though she could not see it, a sort of canvas material that resembled the surface of a trampoline in both texture and spring. Olivia rose, bouncing a bit on her feet, and spotted a figure approaching in the distance, a dark shimmer in the ocean of white. Olivia squinted; Elise. Soon she could feel the reverberations of her sister’s steps across the ground (cover? base? universe shell?), and then she could see her clearly, smiling and holding a sign that read: My Jellybean. Olivia ran forward and wrapped her arms around her, realizing as she felt Elise’s hand on the back of her head that she’d started to sob. Elise ran her fingers through Olivia’s hair gently, over and over, whispering into her ear that it was okay, that it would all be okay.

Elise took Olivia’s hand and led her through the white, turning slightly here and there until they arrived at a small brick apartment building, standing isolated amongst the nothing.

“You have neighbors?” Olivia asked as Elise got out her keys.

“You’ll see them eventually,” she said.

Elise’s apartment was filled with items from around the world; a dish towel from Iceland, a toothbrush from Pakistan, a teapot from Kenya, a broom from Siberia.

“What’s from here?” Olivia asked.

Elise shrugged.

“I guess I am,” she said.

They sat in the kitchen drinking tea out of mugs from New Zealand.

“You’ll have to break that to Sacramento,” Olivia said.

At this Elise reached across the table and took Olivia’s hand.

“That’s what I needed to tell you,” she said.

Olivia raised an eyebrow in question.

“We moved to Sacramento when you were a baby. Mom and dad thought it’d be easier if you didn’t know.”

“What would be easier?”

Elise paused.

“People like us go through life feeling out of place,” she continued. “We keep searching, feeling like there’s a place out there just past our reach where we’ll feel truly at home, but we never quite get there. That’s what it feels like to come from this place,” Elise smiled. “You’re home, Olivia.”

Olivia shook her head absently. She thought about her ex-husband, and the almost-but-not home she had felt with him. She thought about friends, sitting there present-but-not during get-togethers, never without the vague sensation that she was faking something. She thought about lying in her bed at night, alone. She thought about how much she liked to be alone. She thought about Mac.

“No,” she said. “I feel at home with my daughter.”

“If she’s a part of your home,” Elise said, “Then she’ll be here soon.”

Mac showed up the next morning, standing at Olivia’s bedside. Olivia sprang up and embraced her, asking how she had gotten there.

“Mom,” Mac said, frustrated, “We came together.”

“We did?”

“Duh.”

Taking a walk with Elise and Mac that morning, Olivia began to see more; people and buildings and trees taking shape in the white. When she greeted the occasional passersby, there was the unmistakable sensation that she knew them, that they knew her, that they were seeing each other in a place where that meant something.

They picnicked in the park, laying out a tablecloth next to what Elise told Olivia she would soon be able to recognize as a cliff.

“What’s out there?” Olivia nodded beyond the cliff she couldn’t see yet, and Elise smiled.

“That’s what I plan to find out,” she said.

Mac stood and tossed the end of her PB&J into the abyss.

“My sandwich is a pioneer,” she said.

Back at Elise’s apartment, Elise showed Olivia the hang-glider in her closet.

“But isn’t this home?” Olivia asked. “Isn’t this place all you’ve ever wanted?”

“It wears out,” Elise said. “This is how I renew it.”

“How can it wear out?” Olivia felt a sinking in her chest. “Is it really home if it wears out?”

Elise came closer and placed her hands on either side of Olivia’s neck.

“Olivia,” she said. “This is the best we get.”

“Then why are you still searching?”

Elise shook her head, then kissed Olivia’s forehead and left the room.

The next day, Olivia and Mac returned to the park to see Elise off. Strapped into the hang-glider, Elise hugged them goodbye and assured them she’d be back before admitting that she didn’t really know that at all. The cliff faded into Olivia’s view just before Elise jumped off and sailed into the open.

Olivia saw more every day. The post-office and school, the wetlands and the fields, the sprawling flea markets. She felt connection all around her, realizing as the world came into focus that everywhere else she had lived in her life had been the opposite of this place; a broad expanse of nothing, hidden beneath a thin layer of something.

Two passed before Olivia tried Zach’s cell again, unable to keep her only remaining source of anxiety pushed to the back of her mind any longer. Five rings went by unanswered, Olivia standing in Elise’s old bedroom with held breath, and then there was Zach.

“Ms. Riley,” he said, a little unsure, “Didn’t think I’d hear from you.”

Olivia sat down on the bed, taking short breaths.

“Hi Zach,” she said faintly. “How are — things?”

“Everything is peaches,” Zach said. “We miss you, of course.”

Olivia sank sideways across the bed. She was silent for a moment, then forced out the word.

“We?”

“Yup,” Zach said. “She asks me when you’re coming back on the daily. I tell her I don’t know, but she doesn’t believe me.”

Olivia put a hand over her welling eyes and groaned.

“Mom?”

Edge-of-the-universe-Mac looked in at her from the doorway.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Zach?”

“Mhm?”

“Could you put her on please?”

“Sure thing, just a sec.”

Edge-of-the-universe-Mac took slow steps toward her, stopping beside the bed as Olivia took her hand.

“Hi mom!”

Edge-of-the-universe-Mac stood next to her, mouth moving soundlessly to the words of phone-Mac.

“Jellybean,” Olivia said, “Say more.”

“Where are you mom? Come home come home come home come home!”

Edge-of-the-universe-Mac’s mouth continued to match every word, though the timing was slightly off. Olivia held her hand tight.

“I’m coming home, Mac,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

Olivia could see the airport now, hovering clear beneath the clouds, and she reached it after an arduous trip back up the rope. The terminal and plane were both quite regular, the attendants unfamiliar. Olivia took her sleeping pills as the plane began to elevate, falling asleep to the image of edge-of-the-universe-Mac waving to her from below as she’d ascended the rope. It had felt like goodbye, but Olivia hoped with all her heart that it had been hello.

TIMOTHY DAY loves plants, bad puns, and blanket-forts, preferably at the same time. His fiction has appeared in magazines such as Jersey Devil Press, Menacing Hedge, Cease Cows, Burrow Press Review, WhiskeyPaper, and others. You can visit him online at frogsmirkles.wordpress.com.