The Narrator's Tale, pt. 1

There is a small pub in North London. Its current clientele are vastly different from the sort that I remember. Now, the people in the pub are normal folk who have jobs, families, not the trapped men and women I remember from my time in the place. You see, I first went into the pub thinking it would be something completely different—as these stories so often start off. I was in the vicinity of the pub one Wednesday afternoon looking for a specific type of bread called challah. It is a kosher bread; sweet, with a golden color.

Going to North London felt like being in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, with towering trilby hats perched atop bushy bearded faces making up most of the pedestrian foot traffic. After buying the challah, and after a lackluster meal at a kosher restaurant, I decided that I would return to the outside world—the world largely free from Lubavitchers prowling the streets in Mitzvah Tanks—and what better way to do so than to go to a pub?

I wanted something relaxed. Something not too busy, but not where I would be sitting alone in a darkened room with only me, some sport on the TV, and the bartender. Of course, it had to be somewhere with some other people inside—I find that thinking to yourself is best done when there is ample opportunity to be distracted by people around you. So, using what I had learned in my time in England, I figured that my best bet would be something off of the main road. Walking away from the groceries and bakeries lettered with Hebrew, I chose a street at random and walked down. The street, it so happened, was called Dark Lane—and, though I had misgivings, I thought this was simply one of those places that had a dark-sounding name, though it didn’t deserve to. (After all, there was a town with the downright Gothic sounding name of Gravesend, and, from what I heard, the dead did not walk the streets in either the day or night.)

At first glance, the street didn’t seem bad at all. In fact, it seemed downright normal. The townhomes lined the streets in much the same fashion they did in the rest of the country; they all had a mini-garden out front with a few flowers and just enough green grass to break up the monotony of stone walls; the people walked the street in much the same fashion they did in the rest of the country (though, remembering back, I now see that they all crossed to the other side of the street when they went by the pub); and, by all accounts, the cars were parked in the same way they were in the rest of the country. As I say, I had no reason to judge this as anything other than a normal street in London. It even seemed to be a fairly posh and popular area, so I judged that the pub I spotted about a hundred yards down the road would be just the right fit for what I was searching for that afternoon. Perhaps, I thought, I could get a semi-cheap bite of pub grub to compliment the pint for which I yearned. If only I had kept the old adage in mind: “Never judge a book by its cover.”

As I walked down the street, heading towards the pub, I felt the air grow colder and saw the sky grow darker. I didn’t think twice, however, as this was England, and the weather had a tendency to leap madly from one extreme to the other with little to no warning. Perhaps, if I had not been so peckish and distracted, I might have noticed something odd about even the people: Perhaps they might have faded in and out of color; or their outlines may have started fading into the buildings around them; or they might have started stretching, like a figure in a Salvador Dali painting. This is all conjecture, of course, but I believe now that if I had been my usual observant self I would have realized that something was awry about the whole block and I could have averted the crisis that was making its way towards me. But, as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

I walked opened the door to the pub—the front of which was painted black, the name of the pub in gold—and the door shut behind me. There was a sound that could only be described as a vacuum removing from the room all oxygen; and while that would be the proper description, it would, of necessity, be wrong, as I found that I could still breathe. I straightened my jacket, took off my hat, and approached the bar. The barmaid, a younger woman with pale skin, black hair, and gray eyes, who whore a white shirt and black pants, had a glazed-over look in her eyes. “Excuse me,” I said.

She turned and looked at me. Words fail me; she looked at me, that much is true, but she more specifically looked in my general area. The glaze did not leave her eyes, and there wasn’t exactly eye contact through the full time I stood in front of the bar. I ordered a Guinness and she nodded just slightly. Like an octagenarian with bad arthritis, the barmaid stood up, took a glass from behind the bar, and poured the drink.

I looked around. It was a smaller pub than I originally judged. There were five or six other patrons, dressed in all manners of dress. One man wore a zoot suit. Another wore a modern business suit. Another wore what could be described as a country gentleman’s outfit. The women accompanying them were dressed in an equally bizarre array—one looked as if she should have been in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, another as if she had stepped out of Sex and the City and the other looked as if she had been ripped out of a farm only seconds ago. All of them were as nearly dead quiet as one could get without being deceased.

The bartender put the Guinness on the top of the bar. I reached in my pocket to pay, and she shook her head—just slightly. I thanked her and took my beer towards the other end of the bar, to a comfortable-looking chair and a small circular table. I sat, sighed, and looked at the walls. There were six clocks, each showing a different time of day. Underneath the clocks were three calendars: 1891 (November), 1924 (July), and 2004 (March). Each calendar had a date circled in red marker. I looked around the walls for another, working clock, and found none. I pulled out my mobile phone, pressed a button to activate the display, and saw that, not only was I not in a network range, but my clock seemed to have malfunctioned. It was scrolling, and despite my efforts with the settings, I could not fix the problem. I took a sip from my Guinness, put the glass on the table, and that’s when I noticed the picture.

It was an oil painting, done with considerable skill. If I were more than a passing admirer of art, then I would have probably been able to pick out the attention to detail in the painting, the subjects’ anatomical proportions being almost dead-on, the way one of the subject’s face was contorted being a prime example of the understanding of the way the human body changes. Something along those lines, perhaps. But, the only thing I could notice was the glare from the foreground subject’s eye. It was infernal in every sense of the word; one could almost smell brimstone coming from those oil-drops that symbolized eyes. In the teeth, there was just the slightest hint of fangs coming over the lower lip from the top ridge of teeth. The subject stood in a pose of victory, as if he were holding a trophy from a sports competition. He wore a red English hunting outfit, black leather riding crop dangling from his side. In his hands above him, in place of a trophy, there was a black top hat.

Behind him, in the background, there was a shorter, stouter man in a blue uniform that resembled a bell-hop’s. Its brass buttons gleamed in the sunlight streaming in from the room’s windows. This led me to take a look at the room—a momentary reprieve from being caught in the hunter’s leer, one sorely needed to the shock I was to afterwards receive. It seemed to be a large library. Grand, wooden shelves held hundreds upon hundreds of leather-bound tomes. In the center of the room, on a table from which the hunter had taken the top hat from a mannequin’s head, there sat a few books, one of which was open; a small lamp with a green shade was in the center of the table next to a writing pad. If you looked closely, you could see a streak of red leading from the writing pad, to the edge of the desk, down to the floor, and on to the next monstrosity the painting presented to its viewers: Whereas before I only saw the bell hop, now I saw that over which he stood. It was the corpse of a man in a black suit. His back had been ripped open and the bellhop was in the process of ripping out a part of the man’s spinal cord, all of the blood and gore detailed exquisitely in the low tones the painter had chosen for the painting. I looked still closer at the painting and saw that, dripping from a long, almost viscous cloudy-white string from his lip was a tendril of drool, about to make contact with the gaping wound in the man’s back. I looked at the frame of the picture and saw that it was called “A Sacrifice and Its Reward.”

The Prologue to The Narrator's Tale

Saturday rolled around and I realized that it was my turn to tell a tale. I knew exactly what I was going to talk about, and, in order to keep it a relative surprise for you, Dear Reader, I will not, as of now, make the reveal. I left my block Saturday afternoon, today holding my umbrella, for I no longer trusted the weather to stay constant, to go down to the Sub-Pope’s Flock and was almost knocked over by the obscenely strong wind. I looked across the courtyard and saw, coming out of the block across from me, The Writer, who did fall over from the wind. I waited for him to stand up and then called his name.

He looked across, waved, and walked over. “So,” he said, “little bit of a wind today, right?”

“You might say that,” I said. I buried myself as deep as I could into my pea coat, attempting to resemble a turtle.

We walked in silence towards the foot path, saw a rabbit thrown into the air by a gust of wind, and decided that we should take the bus.

The main frequenters of the bus were students in the daytime during weekdays, and chavs and generally drunk teens on the weekends. Today was no different, as we went to the bus stop and saw four guys in track suits drinking from bottles barely hidden in their pockets. They each had a very fake gold chain hanging from their neck and, when we walked over, they nodded to each other and stared at us.

“Fucking hell,” I said to The Writer. I glanced at him and noticed that he’d turned paler than I thought a person who wasn’t a corpse could manage. “Don’t worry, I’ll handle this.” I gave a brief head nod to one of the chavs. “Sup,” I said.

They continued looking at me without making a move. This was good enough for me, and I decided that it would be best if I just took a seat on the bench and waited for the bus to come. We didn’t have to wait long, as one just cleared the hill and turned into the stop. “What do we do?” asked The Writer.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The… individuals over there.”

“Don’t bother them, they won’t bother us. If they bother us, then we’ll worry about it.”

The bus pulled up, opened its doors, and we boarded. The chavs boarded. We took seats towards the back, they took the seats immediately behind us. If I didn’t know better, I would have said they were trying something. The bus started back down the hill.  After a silent ride and a couple of stops, I hit the signal. We got off, and the chavs got off behind us. My adrenaline going—mostly amped up by The Writer, who had been whimpering for the entire ride down the hill—I spun around, held my umbrella like a rapier, and jabbed the closest chav in the stomach with the metal tip, saying, “Have at you, rogue!”

The man collapsed on the ground and the other two bent down to help him up. One of them, who was wearing a red tracksuit, said, “Oi mate, wha’d you go and do that for?”

“You were going to attack us, don’t think I don’t know.”

“Bollocks to that,” he said. “We was goin to grab a couple pints from the pub is all.” He nodded at the pub in front of which we were standing. “Mate, you need to work on your issues before you go and piss off the wrong man. Go on, Tim,” he said to the one on the ground, “get up and I’ll buy you a drink.”

As the three chavs limped into the pub, I turned to The Writer, and said, “You just had to start whimpering on the freakin bus, didn’t you?”

“I’m not the one who attacked an innocent man with an umbrella.”

“No, but you are the one who kept gently rocking back and forth, whimpering and muttering ‘I don’t want to be stabbed’ under his breath.”

The Writer stiffened. “No I didn’t.”

I grunted and walked towards the Westgate and towards the Sub-Pope’s Flock.

When we arrived, no surprise, The Stalker was already there. The Student, The Drunkard, and The Traveler were all at the bar, having been on the bus that left just before ours. We all got our drinks and joined The Stalker at the bar. “I feel,” said The Traveler, “that I should apologize for our trip to London.”

“Er?” I asked.

“I feel that the day could have been better spent elsewhere, and since I’m the one who suggested the National Gallery, I’m responsible for the events of the day.”

“Balls to that,” said The Drunkard. “I licked a Da Vinci. How many people can say that?”

“And I,” said The Writer, “got a valuable four hundred words written.”

I turned to The Writer. “We were there for two hours. You only got four hundred words written?”

“I—yes. How many can you get in two hours?”

“Anywhere from fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred. The hell do you do with your time, Writer?”

He turned red in the face and sputtered for a second before The Student said, “And I didn’t get kicked out of the Gallery, which I consider an achievement.”

The Stalker slurped from his cider. We all turned to him, but he didn’t respond other than another loud slurp.

“I,” I said, “apparently joined some sort of secret organization.” I pointed to the banana button on my jacket.

“Yeah,” said The Traveler, “what’s up with that? Where did you go when we were getting into fights and arguments with guards in the Gallery?”

I shivered, remembering the men with bowler caps who apparently struggled with figuring out what life meant. “The only thing I remember clearly was an empty warehouse and a man giving me what he called an Erisian Apple.”

“Wait,” said The Stalker, slamming his cider down on the table and leaning forward. “What did the apple say?”

“Hail Eris.”

The Stalker burst into laughter. The strange thing was, his laugh was actually comforting. One of those full-body, deep, belly laughs. I expected a titter, maybe something high pitched, reminiscent of a cackle, but The Stalker’s laugh was the laugh of a normal, well-adjusted—though maybe a bit too enthusiastic—person. “You’re shitting me,” he said.

“Fraid not,” I responded.

“They thought you were me!”

“Er,” I remarked.

The Stalker continued laughing.

The Drunkard looked between us and took a drink from his whiskey. “You know,” he said, “you do look sort of alike. I mean, in a passing glance sort of way. Yeah, I think that if someone had a blurry enough photo of one of you, then the mistake could be made. I’ll be damned.”

“Hail hail hail hail hail, Eris Eris Eris Eris Eris,” said The Stalker, finally stopping his burst of merriment.

“That’s what the pensioner said.”

The Stalker nodded and grinned. “She’s probably a part of the same Cabal as the guy in the bowler cap.”

“So are you…?”

The Stalker nodded, took out his wallet, and brought out a laminated business card. It read, in part: “The bearer of this card is a genuine and authorized POPE; So please treat him good and right FOREVER.”

“Wait a second,” said The Student. He leaned back, threw his head back, and burst into laughter, and said, “The Principia Discordia!”

“That’s right!” said The Stalker. He held up his glass and said, “To Malaclypse The Younger!” Then he took a giant swig.

The Student took a drink from his own glass and laughed some more. “I haven’t read that thing in years.”

“Still good enough to be a POEE Priest! Welcome to the CABAL, man.”

The two clinked their glasses together and said the “Hail Eris” thing, clinked their glasses together, said it again, clinked, and said it a last time before draining their glasses.

The rest of us at the table exchanged profoundly confused looks. “Any idea?” I asked.

“None at all,” said The Traveler.

“Barman!” shouted The Student. “Another round for the POEE POPE and I! There’s a fiver in it for you if you bring em here so we don’t trip over ourselves coming up there.”

In another moment, The Stalker had another cider, and The Student had another ale, and the bartender had a fiver in his pocket. “So,” I said, “you mind telling us what’s going on with this stuff?”

“You’ll have to read it,” said The Stalker.

“You’ll thank us when you do,” said The Student.

“Noted,” said The Traveler. He then clapped his hands together, rubbed them, and pointed at me. “Your go, Narrator.”

I took a drink and cleared my throat. “Now, necessarily, words may fail me when I tell this tale, and for that, I apologize in advance. I begin, though, with an invocation.”

“Jesus Christ,” said The Drunkard, “are you serious?”

I shot him the best approximation of what I thought would be a chilling glare. “Quite.” I cleared my throat again. “O God of Alcohol! Great thou art in thine wisdom and ability to unhinge the tongue—”

“That’s what she said,” said The Drunkard.

“Hey. Knock, knock,” I said.

“Who’s there?”

“Go fuck yourself.” I cleared my throat again—it was starting to get raw. “I ask thee now for thine guidance and mercy. Allow this in front of me to let the flow of words proceed unhindered, like a roaring tide; let them not trip over each other in the influence of too relaxed a tongue, but work together in the sense of something that works together really well. Amen,” I finished the invocation with a sip of the ale in front of me.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” I said, “I shall tell you a tale the likes of which we have not yet heard. So far, we have had tales of bloodshed, heartbreak, er, racism, drunkenness, and shit-flinging; today, we shall explore the more fantastic, the less concrete. We shall dip into realms that, so far, none of us have wanted to talk about. The ream of What-If.

“Perhaps you all know of the trope in murder mysteries, or ghost stories, of a picture whose eyes follow a passer-by. Well, I posit to you the question: What if it were not just the eyes that followed the passer-by, but the entire world of the picture? What if someone were sucked in by a picture, not in the figurative, but in the literal sense?”

Our Trip to The National Gallery, Pt. 2

I woke up on the steps to The Student splashing cold water on me. I sat up, shook my head, and looked around. No sign of random men in bowler caps, so chances are that I was safe for the moment. “Urgh,” I commented.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked The Student. “I come out here for a breather and here you are, passed out on the steps with a banana peel stuck on your face.”

I looked to my right. Sure enough, there was the banana peel. “I had a very, very weird dream.”

“Have to do with banana peels?”

“Well, I’m not sure that was a dream.” It occurred to me to look at my bicep. I unbuttoned the top two buttons of my shirt, peeked down, and sure enough, there on my left bicep, was a very small puncture, swelling like a small mosquito bite. “I think it was about a blue jay flying around singing Iced Earth lyrics.”

The Student pointed at my feet. “And the apple with ‘Hail Eris’ on it? You been reading The Principia Discordia?”

“I don’t know what that is.” The apple was still there, so all of that probably happened. I checked the rest of my person and found a plastic banana pinned to my blazer lapel. There are some days when you walk around as if everything were normal for a few hours, and then, all of a sudden, you desperately wish that you had just stayed in bed that morning. For whatever reason, I didn’t feel that in the warehouse, but I sure as hell felt it now. “I could tell you why I’ve got a banana pinned to my jacket, why there’s a banana peel at my feet, and why there’s an apple with Copperplate Gothic writing on it, but you wouldn’t believe me. Let’s just say that I’ve had a very interesting time of it while you all have been prancing merrily around the Gallery.”

“Prancing merrily?” asked The Student. He burst into laughter and sat down on a bench—by this time we walked down the steps and found a group of benches next to one of the fountains. “Hardly. The Traveler got into a fight with an Irish guy after making a pass at his girlfriend; The Drunkard is, as of five minutes ago, trying to explain to a guard why he felt the urge to run up and kiss a Da Vinci; and The Stalker… well, for all I know The Stalker is prancing merrily around the Gallery.”

Well, all told, it certainly did seem that everyone had an interesting day in the art gallery. I folded my legs underneath me on the bench (it was really a comfortable position and made the back feel better—try it sometime) and said, “Well, okay then.” It was the only thing that seemed appropriate. “And you? Anything interesting happen? I’m guessing you avoided making a pass at women.”

The Student nodded. “I felt it was for the best to go against my instincts today. Way I figure, if I don’t do anything for a few days, maybe I can reverse the trend and get, you know, some actual good responses. Something beyond, ‘Oh look, here comes my boyfriend,’ and then an ensuing mad dash to get to safety.”

“Worth a shot, if nothing else.”

We saw The Traveler walk out of the Gallery flanked by a couple guards. He saw us, waved, and shook hands with the guards. Whistling the Ode to Joy while walking down the National Gallery stairs after being flanked and escorted by a couple of guards was just about the last thing I expected to see from The Traveler, but, of course, that’s what happened. “Hello, gents,” said The Traveler. “How’s things? Good Lord, Narrator, where’d you get the bruised mouth?”

“Same place I got the banana and Erisian Apple,” I said, holding the two objects up. “Also, this nifty banana pin.” I pointed at the pin.

The Traveler, wisely, didn’t pursue the matter further. I asked him what happened with the guards and the affronted Irishman, and he responded that while it almost came to fisticuffs between the two of them, with the help of the guards as a tough mediating entity, the whole occurrence was in the past and everyone parted with no hurt feelings.

Soon, The Drunkard exited the Gallery, joined us, and had essentially nothing but obscenities to say about the way the institution was handled. “Motherfuckers think they’re so fucking high and fucking mighty with their damned superior accent. Balls. Balls!” he shouted, shaking his fist at the National Gallery as if it were his nemesis in a comic book. “Baaaaaaalls!”

The Stalker appeared behind us—despite the wall behind us and the fact that none of us saw him exit the Gallery, or even come down the stairs, or approach us from behind. One day, I thought, I would have to follow this man and get some idea of how he managed to do what he did.

We all determined that, though the trip wasn’t a complete flop, it was a let-down, and the only way to salvage the journey would be to head to the nearest pub and have a conciliatory pint. After the pints, we would head back to Canterbury, and pursue our own endeavors—scholastic or whatever else.

On a whim, we decided to leave from London Victoria instead of Charing Cross. We walked in the station and I realized that, like airports, train stations are largely the same no matter where you go. We found our train—in a spot of luck, it happened that a train was due to leave in a couple of minutes. We boarded and found that most of the seats were already taken. We split up around the second carriage and took what seats we could find. I managed to snag a window seat, and so at least had something to look at during the return journey.

The train was quiet. What conversing there was on the train was done in low tones. A drink trolley came down the aisle way a couple of times. A couple times, I almost nodded off to sleep, but whenever my eyes shut and I felt that heavy feeling that immediately precedes sleep, I jolted awake, the command of the man in the bowler cap ringing in my ear. Of course, that whole situation was absurd. I looked around me and at the other passengers in the car. Surely there wouldn’t be people on this specific train to whom I was to give an apple. Why, if I had told The Student the situation, then he probably would have been able to tell me that, in reality, it was an ages-old British custom to give marked apples to people passed out on the sidewalk. You see, he would have said, it started with George III, who figured out that when someone was hung over, the best food to help them was an apple—and, being a benevolent ruler, whenever he walked by someone unconscious on the street, he dropped an apple to help speed them on their way when they woke up. Yes, I thought, that was surely it. Comforting to know that your rulers cared about you, the mere peasant.

From the seat in front of me, I heard a mobile phone go off. It was “Baby Elephant Walk.” I twitched. I hate that song. Always have since my parents tried to force me to learn it on the piano with the witch of my instructor. We passed out of the city and into the more leafy suburban areas that were, in turn, about to give way to the rolling countryside. “Oh hello, dear,” said the woman in front of me. It sounded like the voice of an older woman. A chill went up my back, and I stood a little bit and peeked over her chair.

Indeed, she had a bush of grey hair, the musk of the elderly, giant pearl earrings, red glasses, and wore a floral shirt and blue trousers. The man in the seat next to her read a newspaper and looked entirely disinterested with both the contents of the paper and whatever it was the woman was doing. Judging by the wedding rings and the man’s impatient sigh whenever the woman spoke, I figured they were married. I sat back down.

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. Now I was just listening out of curiousity. “I’ll have to invite her over for tea whenever we get back into town. Sorry? No, we’re just on the train right now. Rather packed.”

I looked out the window. The train passed by some fields where the main crop seemed to be large, thick sticks. The English stick harvest would be quite the success this year, I guessed. Occasionally, I saw a few horses standing in the fields with blankets over their backs. “Lazy horses,” I thought. “Can’t go out and get their own blankets. Have to rely on humans. Scum.”

“I’m sorry,” said the woman, “how much are they asking? Forty-five thousand pounds for the shipment? Of the rockets? Just the Kalashnikovs? You’re putting me on, Deidre.”

Now I sat up and leaned forward. Did I hear that right?

“No, Deidre, I know what Kalashnikovs cost, and twenty crates are not forty-five-thousand pounds.”

Guess I did.

“Well you can tell them that I’m not some bump on a log. They’d better do their homework before deciding—yes, you’re right, I apologize. All a part of the dance to do this bargaining back-and-forth, isn’t it? Really, I don’t understand why these deals can’t be straightforward anymore. I’ll tell you what, you tell them to lower their price or throw in some more incentives or the deal’s off.”

There was a pause. I looked around. No one seemed to even be stealing a stealthy glance at the woman. Was London Victoria a hub for weapons deals at the hands of old ladies? Were the pensioners I saw on the streets actual crime lords, and should I stop growling at them when they were walking incredibly slow on the High Street? My entire world-view had been shattered in the course of overhearing a minute-long conversation, and I desperately wished that one of my friends were nearby to help me work through what was going on. I looked down at my hand at the apple. Seemed likely that this was the couple to give it to.

“What, Deidre? Oh, they’re on the other line. Yes, you take the call, and I’ll be waiting.”

Now was probably my chance. I stood up again, and said, “Ma’am, excuse me.”

The pensioner looked up and gave me the warmest smile I’d gotten since the last time I saw my grandmother. “Hello, dear. Oh, you’re American, aren’t you? Simply splendid, and here I thought you all didn’t travel outside your country.”

Yes, I bet this woman could make one hell of a chicken noodle soup. “Oh, we do from time to time.” I held out the apple. “I was told to give this to you and your husband, ma’am.”

The woman took the apple with a bitter look on her face. She turned it around in her hand, saw the words printed on the skin, and nudged her husband. “Look, Harry.”

The man folded up the newspaper and saw the apple. “Oh, blast.” Now he took the apple in his hands and turned it, then sighed, “Lad,” he said. “Be glad we know the adage about not shooting the messenger, because right now, I am right pissed.”

The woman jabbed him with her elbow. “Harry! Language.” She turned to me. “I apologize for Harry, dear, we were just so looking forward to going to Jamaica over the winter holiday, and now it seems we won’t be able to. Did you get any instructions from the man who gave you this apple?”

“No ma’am, they just drugged me.”

She studied my face, then looked at my jacket lapel. “Ah, I see from your jacket that you’ve been inducted.”

I looked down, saw that the banana button was still there, and blushed. “Er, I guess so. Forgot I had that thing on.”

I moved to take it off and the woman stopped my hand midway. “No, you don’t want to do that. The Organization are very, very keen on their members wearing their pins at all time. Tradition and whatnot, you see.”

“Um, well, yes.”

The woman smiled again. “Well, thank you, dear. Harry, I expect this means they’ll be waiting for us when we get home. Do you have their money?”

“In my backpack.”

“Cyanide capsules in case Robespierre is with them?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” The woman sighed. “That Robespierre is an out-and-out psychotic.”

I sat back down in my seat and wished very, very hard that the two would not need to use their cyanide capsules. “Oh good, you’re back, Deidre,” the woman said back into the phone. “I’m afraid that the deal is going to have to be called off. Yes, I know horribly inconvenient, but that’s the way these things go. Why? Because my instincts tell me that it was time to call the deal off, and you do not get to where I am today by not knowing when to trust your instincts. No, I’m not snapping at you. Right, we’ll talk later on. Hail hail hail hail hail Eris Eris Eris Eris Eris, dear.”

I sat back and leaned my head against the back of the chair. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Maybe I should start going to Friday night services more often. Maybe all of this—getting drugged and interrogated about my identity and then given an apple, hearing a weapons deal—was all divine retribution for not going to shul. Perhaps I should have listened to The Traveler when he talk about admiring religion instead of inwardly laughing at him.

I looked back outside and, just for a second, saw a gigantic ape holding an apple sitting on a white, fluffly cloud. I blinked and the hallucination was gone, but it was enough to make me desperately wish that I had a nice, stiff drink in front of me. Looking out the window, the only thing I saw was sheep looking like nice, fluffy pillowcases standing in the middle of the fields. A stiff drink and then a good nap. That’s what I could use.

At the next stop, the person next to me and the older couple got out of their seats and left the train. As she stood, the woman turned around and said, “Remember what I said about the pin, dearie.”

The husband turned to me and said, “Remember that you got lucky about this not being a bad day. By all rights I should have shot you for bringing the news that ruined our trip to Jamaica.” He reached into his jacket pocket and showed me a dillinger.

“Oh put the pop gun away, Harry. Let’s go before the train gets moving.”

Then they left.

The Student came over from where he was sitting and sat down next to me. “Did you make some friends with a couple of pensioners?” he asked. “Nice of you, I’m sure they don’t have a lot of people to talk to at their age and without much in the way of social events.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Oh,” I said, “I’m sure they have plenty going on in their life. Really, the worst mistake you could make would be to underestimate the elderly.”

The train got moving again, and we were an hour out of Canterbury when I suddenly fell asleep against the window.

A Public Service Announcement From The Justice Trio

SquidJew stands in the middle of a set created to look like a dentist’s waiting room. He wears his uniform—blue t-shirt, jeans, and purple squid hand puppet/hat. In one hand, he holds a toothbrush; he points his other hand at the camera. His face is his usual look of abject confusion and general unawareness of the situation at hand. He squints his eyes and reads stiltedly from the teleprompter.

SQUIDJEW

Hello there, children and adults.

Music, of the elevator variety, starts to play.

SQUIDJEW (cont’d)

It’s me, your friendly neighborhood SquidJew!

He sighs.

SQUIDJEW (cont’d)

Really? Don’t you think Stan Lee’s going to sue us for that?

DIRECTOR (OS)

Just read the script, SquidJew

SquidJew clears his throat.

SQUIDJEW

And I’m here to talk to you today about a dastardly

villain the likes of which you’ve never even dreamt

about.

Killman 3000 enters the frame. He wears a mask of Herr Shark—a scarred Nordic-looking face with an SS hat on. In his hand, he holds a white cue card that says “PLAQUE & GUM DISEASE.”

SquidJew raises his fist in the air.

SQUIDJEW

Herr Shark! I though we got rid of you at The Battle

of The Docks! But now? You are back.

Killman takes off the mask and laughs.

KILLMAN

Ha. Ha ha. I got you so good, SquidJew. Better than the time

when we fought The Prankster and the Legion

of Foolishness.

SquidJew flips the toothbrush in the air and then hits the cue card with it.

SQUIDJEW

Oh, shit, no, that’s later. Erm. Yes! You are quite the joker.

But you know what’s not a joke?

KILLMAN

(stiltedly)

Gum disease and plaque.

SQUIDJEW

My, your intellect is as powerful as they say.

KILLMAN

It doesn’t take a superhero detective to know what’s good

for your health, SquidJew.

Number Four walks in the shot draped in an Australian flag flipping his bowie knife in the air.

DIRECTOR (OS)

You’re not supposed to be here!

NUMBER FOUR

Can it, mate. Oi SquidJew, where you keeping the vodka? It’s

going to be a long, lonely night.

SQUIDJEW

Um. Ask Archie.

NUMBER FOUR

Nah, can’t. Scared the hell out of him when I skinned a rat

earlier today.

KILLMAN

Son of a bitch, Four, why’d you do that?

Number Four shrugs.

NUMBER FOUR

Beats going out and buying rat traps. See if I do you any

more favors.

Number Four leaves.

DIRECTOR (OS)

Screw it, just go from the last line. “Good for your health

SquidJew.”

SquidJew clears his throat.

SQUIDJEW

And that means brushing your teeth at least twice a day.

He hits the cue card with the tooth brush.

SQUIDJEW (cont’d)

After all, you don’t think Killman 3000 and I got to where

we are today with bad teeth, do you?

KILLMAN

I should hope not, SquidJew.

BOTH

So remember, kids, and adults, brush your teeth! You can’t

take a bite out of crime with falsies!

The lights dim, director shouts cut, and FADE OUT.

Our Trip to The National Gallery, Pt. 1

Monday and Tuesday passed without much in the way of interesting events. The Writer managed to smooth things over with his flatmate—after a lot of cajoling on his part; it turned out that Stasia was well under the impression that The Writer was a complete lech. (That may have been true; I don’t know the man all that well other than his bizarre thoughts on classical music and his ideas on writing.) He went back to normal life of avoiding talking to his German flatmates and getting tossed out of windows by a livid Greek woman.

I didn’t see The Drunkard, so I am left with the conclusion that he either found his way to being on very friendly terms with his French housemates, or they found some reason to reassemble the guillotine and decapitate him. After The Stalker’s punishment was up, I wasn’t to see him until Wednesday—which is probably for the best. The Student went in and out of madness, occasionally leaping out of bushes and screaming about how deconstructionism was missing the point completely, or how one simply could not read postcolonial literature in any way other than such and such. All told, The Student just really needed to go out on a date or two to relax.

Wednesday morning came and I left my flat earlier than I had planned. It had yet to become properly cold, but at this point, I was under the impression that it simply could not get colder than this. Oh, what a fool I was. I huddled in my pea coat and took up a brisk walk into the train station on the west side of town. I arrived in about fifteen minutes, bought my train ticket, and waited, leaning against one of the large white pillars in front of the station.

After I had been there for about ten minutes, watching the entranceway, The Stalker stepped out of the lobby wearing his usual black hoody, black jeans, and black tennis shoes. “Well hello, I was wondering when you were going to show up,” he said.

I blinked—after nearly urinating on myself upon seeing him walk out of the lobby—and said, “What? I didn’t see you come in.”

“Of course not,” he said, taking a paper cup from the pouch of his hoody and taking a sip. “But I saw you come in. I guess we’re a bit early, aren’t we? Lovely day for waiting around, I think. Not cold enough for the wind to settle into your bones if you’ve been sitting, observing, for too long.”

I was suddenly very glad I was not in a position where The Stalker could toss me onto the railroad tracks. “I guess so,” I said. “So, you looking forward to the Galleries?”

The Stalker nodded and leaned up against the other white column. “They usually provide ample opportunities for people watching. I believe that I could spend an entire week in each wing, and still get something new out of seeing the way people react to that which is on the walls.” He sipped from the paper cup again. If it weren’t so cold, I would have thought it was cider.

“But wait,” I thought, “it could be mulled cider. The bastard could be sipping on mulled cider at nine in the morning. Why, why would he be sipping on mulled cider at nine on the morning? Just to screw with you, Narrator. Just to mess with your rapidly-deteriorating mind.”

Thankfully, The Student walked up to the train station and gave the two of us a wave. I returned the gesture and said, “No need to go inside, there are machines right here that will give you tickets.”

The Student laughed and, after crossing the parking lot, said, “Nah, I hate dealing with machines. I’d rather deal with inept agents than poke a screen that’s got no personality.” He patted me on my shoulder and walked inside.

“Do I make you nervous, Narrator?” asked The Stalker.

“No. God no. Why would you ask that? I’m completely at ease. More at ease than they are in the military, I can tell you that. Ha!”

The Stalker sipped at his paper cup. “Good. Because I’d hate to think that I made you uneasy. Anyone save for The Writer, that is. I don’t think I like that man.” He looked across the street at the row of brown brick townhomes for a moment. “I might just have to toss him off Tower Bridge.”

My knees almost buckled. Him saying such a thing in such a calm fashion—as if he were saying “I’m going to have to toss this trash in a rubbish bin fairly soon”—made me doubt, and not for the first time, the sanity of being around this man in relative privacy. (There was, of course, a taxi rank, this being a major train station; but they probably wouldn’t have even noticed, most of them throwing a stick and watching a blue-eyed merle chase after it.) “Oh,” I said, “no, you don’t mean that. He’s nice enough in his own right. Eccentric and full of himself, but not an altogether bad guy.”

“I find him boorish and unnecessarily arrogant. Detestable qualities in any person, and I would have said the same thing about The Drunkard, but, to be fair to him, he saved me from being decapitated, so—”

“Wait, so they actually had a guillotine?”

The Stalker furrowed his brow and cocked his head to the side. “Of course they did.”

“Oh.”

“Did you not think the French would have a guillotine?”

I scratched my head. “Well, it seemed a bit, ah, ridiculous.”

“I assure you that it did happen. I stared at Madame Guillotine and was prepared for my life to end at that moment, but cooler heads than theirs prevailed.”

The Student walked out of the lobby, putting his train tickets in his wallet. “Did you just say Madame Guillotine?” he asked.

“Indeed I did.”

The Student nodded. “Okay, just checking.”

Soon after, the remaining members of our party arrived at the station (The Drunkard among them, head intact), bought their tickets, and we all boarded a train just as it pulled into the station. The journey, thankfully, was nothing like our first trip to London, and the train did not at any point feel as if it were about to fall apart under its own weight and the friction of its wheels against the track. We arrived at Charing Cross, further, without any hint of trouble from chavs with dogs that had names of weapons. We ate sushi from a take-away place near the station and made our way to Trafalgar Square to go to The National Gallery.

Arriving at Trafalgar Square, I was struck by one thing in particular: the disturbing amount of pigeons. I was prepared for the sight of Nelson’s Column and the gigantic stone lions, as well as the Rastafarians (and there were quite a few of them perched on the steps leading from the street to the Gallery), but the pigeons were in the Square en masse. It looked like they had staged a successful invasion and were clinging on to their newly-won territory for dear life. I, of course, was the only one dumbstruck by this. All the rest of my group moved along as if there were absolutely nothing to see. The Traveler turned around, saw me standing there, and said, “Hey, Narrator, you coming, or are we going to have to come drag you to The Gallery.”

I pointed in front of me. This seemed an understatement so, arm and finger outstretched, I spun around in a single rotation. “The birds!”

The Traveler gave up and walked on. Eventually I managed to get over the pigeons and followed up the steps and into the Gallery.

It wasn’t a bad-looking building by any means, but, to be honest, I found the Museum much, much more impressive. Sure, there were great works of art in this building, in their own right a testament to the intellectual and intellectual achievements of mankind, but, come on. Take a look at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and then the Rosetta Stone. The Stone takes the cake any day. The Writer and I were the only ones who felt this way—apparently—as The Drunkard ran off giggling like a kid on a playground (I know, I wouldn’t believe it either, but I was there), The Stalker sidled off towards whatever dark corner he was going to go people watch, and The Traveler… well, The Traveler was interesting.

I have no doubt that he felt an appreciation for the art in front of him. However, everything had to have a purpose beyond the aesthetically pleasing, and for The Traveler, art’s purpose was chat-up lines. He walked to the information desk, bought a brochure detailing the more important works on display that month, and sat down on one of the benches next to the gift shop. I turned to The Writer and said, “What do you think he’s doing?”

The Writer looked around him. “Couldn’t care less, honestly. I’m going to go do some writing in the café. I don’t have the time to waste looking at pretty pictures.” He then stalked off to the right and down some stairs that led to the Gallery’s café.

I walked over to The Traveler, sat down, and said, “What are you doing?”

“Studying,” he replied, turning over sheets in the brochure faster than he should have been able to read them.

“For? I didn’t realize you were in an Art History course.”

He sighed and flipped the brochure shut. “My friend,” he said, “I don’t believe that you are fully aware that, as foreigners in this land, we have the Accent Effect.”

I cocked my head to the side.

“You know how, in the States, when a Scottish or Irish or English or any foreign guy opens his mouth he’s flocked over by women? Well, my friend, we’ve got that effect.”

“Bull. The Midwest non-accent that you and I have barely—”

“I say, sir,” The Traveler said, affecting an accent that I can only describe as Plantation Owner circa 1840, “when you find yourself against the wall, the only option you have is to find yourself a way to climb over that wall. Now, sir, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make the acquaintance of some quite lovely European women.”

And with that, I was left to my own devices. I wandered around the Gallery for about half an hour and saw very few things that caught my eye. One of them, an Indian painting from the 20s featuring a tiger prowling through jungle undergrowth, caught my eye only for the fact that it was the cover of an English textbook I had in my freshman year of high school. I took a picture of it, caught a dirty look from a guard, and moved on. I went around looking for some surrealist art—something by Dali, or his ilk—but found nothing. I apparently passed through hundreds of years of stylistic changes reflecting the times of which they were a part, but the only real difference I could tell was from medieval to the oil-Rennaisance-y paintings, to the more modern ones where shapes got a little less defined. Beyond that, I am a bit of a clod when it comes to art. I continued wandering through the building (and, a few times, I think I saw The Drunkard laughing maniacally and dashing through the wings with the speed of Sonic the Hedgehog), and thought about what I could do to waste some time. I could, by all means, go join The Writer in the café, but I thought better of that option: at best, I’d find him hunched over his notebook (one of those black ones that cost twelve quid with the elastic bands that keep them shut) in a look of dismay at not being able to find The Muse or whatever; at worst, I’d find him in the throes of creative ecstasy and be verbally assaulted for daring to interrupt him in such a loutish manner. I could go find The Traveler, but he was trying to work his magic; The Drunkard would be impossible to keep up with; and spending time with The Stalker was directly out of the question.

So, in the end, I decided to head out to Trafalgar Square and wander around until I got a call from one of my companions enquiring as to my whereabouts. I left the gallery, buried myself in my coat as much as I could, and shivered. It had warmed up, but, of course, there was now a stiff, cutting British wind passing through the Square. I sat down on the steps to the Gallery and looked around me. It was fairly easy to tell who was a tourist and who was a native: the tourists were huddled together and shouting “fucking wind!” and variants thereof, whereas the natives were one step away from skipping around and singing about how lovely the weather was that day. Taking my attention away from the people in the Square, I looked up at the column and thought about how, when you compared the size and height of the thing, it was a bit of a letdown that the statue of Nelson wasn’t gigantic. (Of course, that may have been simply because of how high up it was. The statue was probably capable of riding one of the lions like it was a horse.)

And then, I stood up and stretched. That’s when a man in a black suit and bowler cap calmly walked up to my side and asked, “Sorry to bother you, do you have the time?”

I took out my phone, got out that it was just past ele—and then the man stabbed a needle into my left bicep. I looked at him, the world started going wavy, and I said, “What’s that about? Don’t have your tea time scheduled in the factory? Limey!” and burst into laughter.

“Bloody Hell,” he said. He took out a walkie-talkie and said, “He’s not down. No, I don’t know why. He’s poking me with his mobile phone and laughing like a prat. No I don’t have another dose, and if I did, it’d probably kill him. I’ll—oh sod it.” He punched me in my mouth and I hit the steps.

The first thing I felt when I woke up was a slap to my face. I shook myself wide awake and looked around me. First observation: Tied to a chair. Second observation: Tied to a chair in the middle of an unfurnished and unlit warehouse. Third observation: The only two people in the warehouse with me were seated at a table about eight yards away and way on the other side of the place. I grumbled, and one of them looked up, pushed a button on the desk, and went back to scribbling something with what looked like a quill ink pen.

A door opened on one side of the desk. Another man in a bowler cap and suit walked into the warehouse. He made his way towards me, the sounds of his shoes clicking and reverbeating off of the cement walls. He stopped short at ten feet, crouched and said, “Hello.”

I tried to say something, but couldn’t quite get it out. Fourth observation: I had a ball gag in my mouth. This did not bode well.

“Oh yes,” said the man. “I think you’ll find that it will be quite difficult to say what you want to say. Until we figure something out, that is.” He stood up and paced back and forth for a moment. “Giraffe. The green giraffe frolicks happily until what?”

I cocked my head to the side.

“Until what?” The man shouted. He walk forward and yanked the ball gag forward.

“Penguins dance!” I shouted. First thing that popped into my head.

“Good,” said the man. He nodded and removed the gag from my head. “Had to make sure you were on the level, what?” He then took a banana peel out from his back pocket and slapped me in the face with it. “Are you who you say you are?”

“What?”

He slapped me in the mouth with the banana peel again. “Do not make the mistake of fucking with me, gent! Are you who you say you are?”

“Yes. I think.”

He slapped me in the mouth with the banana peel twice. “Yes, or no, matey.”

“No!” Wait, yes I was. I was/am The Narrator, and I think I’ve said that to the man before. Had I? I don’t know anymore.

“Correct.” He put the peel away and this time took a Ziploc bag of ten sugar cubes out of his jacket pocket. “We are never who we say we are because we, that is, us, that is, ourselves, changes by the moment. Can’t very well be who we say we are if who we say we are is going to change the moment we say who think we are, yes?”

I nodded.

“Right. Now. Utmost importance that you pay attention to exactly what it is that I’m going to say forthwith. Follow?”

I nodded again.

“In seventeen seconds, from the time I stop talking, you will receive an apple. On this apple, the words ‘Hail Eris’ will be printed in the Copperplate Gothic font. You are to receive this apple, take the apple, and, this is more important than anything else, do not smudge the letters. You will take the Eris Apple and give it to a pair of pensioners on the train you will be taking this afternoon. You’ll know the pensioners when you see them.”

“How do you know what train I’m going to be taking?”

The man grinned, showing neon green teeth. “Oh, we know lots of things, my pedigree chum. Pull this off, and you may know lots of things as well.”

A couple of seconds passed and an apple dropped out of nowhere. I tried to move my arms, but as they were tied, I couldn’t. “Oh right,” said the man. He moved to the back and cut the ropes that bound me. Now, I moved my hands and picked up the apple. Sure enough the words “Hail Eris” were printed on the apple in black Copperplate Gothic.

“Welcome to the club, old bean,” said the man. And then, par for the day, he punched me in the mouth.

The Epilogue to The Student's Tale

I would hazard a guess that you, Dear Reader, have some idea of what our reaction was to this story. The Traveler sat back in his chair, eyebrows arched and arms folded over his chest. The Writer scratched his head and said a bemused, “Huh.” The Stalker, as per usual, slurped at his cider, which never seemed to run out. The Drunkard had passed out halfway through The Student’s tale. I sat, open-mouthed, gawking at the story.

Judging by the blush on The Student’s face, and the way he stared at the tabletop, this was not the reaction he had been hoping for. “I, uh,” he said, “get really tired of literary criticism.” He drummed his fingers on the top.

“Well,” said The Writer, “ten out of ten for style. It’s very… you.” I must admit, I was a bit surprised to hear The Writer give out praise—but then again, it wasn’t such a big shock; after all, the two shared some common ground when it came to writing. The Writer was all for the literary methods and narrative style of some of the more serious writers, and The Student spent a good amount of time reading the same people The Writer probably did. “Not a fan of giving Stephen King any praise,” he continued, “so I’d suggest leaving that out in the second draft—after all, you don’t want to give best-sellers any credit, do you?”

The Traveler grunted, but beyond that, kept his opinion to himself. “Student,” he said, “I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting from you, but that was really quite well done.”

“Indeed,” I said. “It’s certainly easy to tell that you have a low opinion of academia.”

The Stalker murmured something into his glass. We chuckled, again, not knowing exactly what he said.

“Well then,” said The Traveler, “let’s digest that vignette and I’ll see you all on Wednesday. Shall we say half-past nine in the morning at the West station?”

We all agreed, and I said that I would tell The Drunkard when he woke up.

I made it a mental note to never ask The Student’s opinion on a novel of note—mainly out of fear that he would forget how to speak and find that his only recourse was to chuck feces at the library.

The Student's Tale

Just seven miles away from Harvard, the renown home of American academic thought, there was a large auditorium. It was in a hall made of marble—white, flawless marble. At the front of the building—which was built to resemble the Parthenon—there were gigantic columns, a large set of stone steps, and, at the top of the building, reliefs of scholars from throughout the ages. Walking up the steps and into the building, there was a horde of men and women—largely from their late 30s to their 60s—dressed in dark clothes, like a religious cult going to make their sacrifices in the temple.

They congregated within a great room, a vestibule of white marble, ferns and even trees potted in large, brown, earthen urns. The mass conversed, though one could not pick out individual conversations. Language was lost in this place; its high marble ceilings and walls created the perfect anonymity for those who should want it. Lights hung in chandeliers, bulbs incandescent and burning with electricity—for the owner of this construction could not stand the thought of wax dripping on to the carefully preserved marble, bought and shipped from all over the world and, supposedly, only coming from ancient pagan temples.

The lights dimmed. Conversation stopped. A few seconds later, the lights went back to their normal volume. Conversation remained halted as a dark-skinned man walked from a door on the second floor balcony holding a gong. The mass turned to the man. The man, holding a percussion hammer, bowed to the mass and then struck the gong. Once. Twice. Thrice. The low tones cascaded around the antechamber. The great doors towards which all of the people in black faced swung open. The great oak creaked against the giant brass hinges as the doors took their journey. Slowly, calmly, the mass filed through the doors.

The next room was an auditorium. The carpeting, seats, and walls were all of a deep, rich crimson. The seat-backs and the stage up front were all of the same dark oak of the now closing doors. As the mass took their seats in the auditorium—tonight, the boxes were left empty save for a group of five people sitting in one—as the great crimson curtains drew back, revealing a podium made of black-finished wood, thin, with a top positioned at just the slightest angle, and a microphone coming out from the surface. A man in a well-tailored black suit walked from stage right and stood behind the podium.

Silence fell across the auditorium as the man began to speak in a deep, sonorous voice. He greeted the audience, told them that he was very pleased to be speaking in front of a group of such distinguished peers such as they. He told them that he was to be discussing the use of the obscene in James Joyce’s ouvre (and yes, he used that word; and yes, the throng lapped it up). He outlined his forty-five minute speech, his own meager attempt to probe the mind of a genius—as he put it—and then began.

It seemed a very well-worked thesis, that idea of his. He spoke to the silent, watching audience, looking on as if they were children around a campfire listening to a ghost story right before bedtime. Such a display of oratory on such a mundane subject they had not seen before. The man, it seemed, legitimately cared about what he was saying, believed that what he had written was, if not the Gospel on the obscene of Joyce, something that came close to getting at the Truth of the Matter.

After the forty-five minutes was up, and the man closed on his topic with a sentence that, honestly, only half of the audience understood (and only a quarter of the remaining half even thought about), he folded the stack of papers from which he had been reading and placed them in his jacket. He gazed out at the crowd, gave them a minute to think about all that he had said, left them wondering if, since he wasn’t saying anything, he had a final thought, a final joke, a final something to take the edge off of the unbearable silence. After a minute, he asked, “Are there any questions?”

A bearded man stood up towards the back of the auditorium. He wore a black sweater, a black beret, black glasses that had frames in the Golden Ratio, and wore a black goatee that came down to a point. He cleared his throat and asked, “Do you expect the erudite among us—and I trust that we are in fact present tonight—”

The crowd laughed for a moment.

“Do you expect us to accept this load of tripe you have said? Do you believe that we are so naïve to accept everything, especially your tenuous position?”

The speaker fidgeted. In his practice runs, no one had said that he was being trite, or that he was expounding doggerel, which, it seemed, was what this man was saying. “I think,” he started.

The interjector cut him off with a howl of rage that bordered on the inhuman. It cut through the air and caused all those in the auditorium to blanche. “You think?” he shouted. “Boy, you do not think a conclusion! You do not think a defense! You take a stance! When you think something, or posit something, or—or—or…” Language failed him. He was reduced to a primitive state, some ancestral memory from the primeval past swept through his mind, and he knew what he had to do. He unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his trousers, stuck his hand down the back of his pants, and, judging from what happened immediately afterwards, shat in his hands. Screaming like a mad ape, the man flung his feces through the air with such force and such accuracy that the speaker was hit full-on by the load of dung, directly in his face. He had no reaction.

The audience did nothing for a full three minutes, until another man stood up and faced the man who had flung feces at the speaker. “You call that a criticism?” the new man shouted. “Why, throwing fecal matter at someone is not what we do at this University! That is the sort of behavior one would expect from a college in the SEC, or the Mid-West, but not this place. This is—this is a place of—of…” words failed him. Primordial visions of long-dead ancestors evolved just beyond apes passed before his eyes. In the jungle, there was a dispute over a banana. The new man saw what he had to do. He unbuttoned his trousers, defecated into his hands, and flung his dung at the first interjector.

This set off a tidal wave of fresh bodily waste. All of those in attendance at the symposium stood as one, defecated, and threw feces at each other. The people in the sole-occupied box took advantage of their leverage and, screaming about the proper methods of deconstruction—which, they claimed, the speaker had clearly and wisely utilized in his defense of his thesis—began urinating on the crowd below them. After five minutes, the pretense of language was mutually abandoned by all those in attendance, and the crowd began screaming and howling like animals at a zoo. They scratched, they leapt, and, above all, they continued flinging crap.

When all was said and done, the only thing the janitorial staff could agree upon, the only bit of good news they all shared, was that at least none of the academics had a case of diarrhea that night.

While this happened, across the street, in a dimly lit bar called The Pen and Paper, there was a small group of about twenty men and women reclining in leather chairs, clutching glasses of scotch, beer, and other tipples. In the corner of the bar, mounted on the wall, there was a television showing baseball scores. The Red Sox had lost to the Yankees in the final game of the ALCS—again. “Damn Yankees,” said a man sporting a large, fluffy brown beard.

The entirety of the bar’s custom raised their glasses and echoed the man’s toast.

“I’m not sure about my eighth chapter,” said one man, sitting across from an older woman with her gray hair pulled back into a pony tale, “in which Richard leaves the nursing home. I feel there should be a stand-off with one of the orderlies. Instead, he—”

A younger woman, curvaceous and attractive, sitting at the bar tapped her glass on the countertop and said, “Please, Don, don’t talk about work at night.”

“Agreed,” said another man sitting a few stools down from her, who, until then, had been glaring at his reflection in the mirror over six consecutive whiskeys. “We spend so much time in the morning and afternoon thinking about our false realities, putting them into computers, or notebooks, or whatever. So much time confined to the same spot every day, the same time every day, all so that we can continue writing word, after word, after word, just so the stories won’t play themselves over and over again in our heads and drive us mad. In the evening, let it drop. Dull the mind a little bit. Watch some baseball.”

A highlight of the game showed Stephen King sitting in a seat on the first base line, wearing a Boston Red Sox slicker and clutching a notebook and pencil in his hands. “Stephen King works at night,” said the man at the table.

The door opened and Stephen King walked into the bar. “What about Stephen King?” he asked. He walked to the bar and ordered a juice—after all, he hadn’t been drinking in years. (Good for him.)

The bar grumbled in response.

“The squares,” said a woman by one of the windows facing the street, “are throwing their shit around, again.”

“How can you tell?” asked the woman at the bar.

“Spilled out onto the street.” A splatter hit the window. “They need to work on their aim some more.”

The door swung open and an apparition entered. It closed the door behind it and spoke in a British accent, “Evening, all.”

A man sitting alone at a table reading by candlelight looked up, saw the ghost, and stood. He threw the book at the specter—the book, of course, passed right through it and hit the door—and shouted, “Get the fuck out of here, Dickens! No one wants you here! Go back to London and haunt your own God-damned people, you windbag fuck!”

The ghost of Charles Dickens looked at the man and said, “Vulgar language—”

“Is absolutely necessary! We don’t want you here, with your Chuzzlewits, and Cratchets, and motherfucking Twists. Go back to that racist shitbag, Kipling! I spit on you, and put a black year on your head!”

Dickens disappeared, and the man apologized to the bar, then sat back down. A good portion of the rest of the night was spent with a few of the bar-goers playing darts or pool. Occasionally, someone would make a comment about how evil and corruption was destined to take over the world, and King would retort that that was unnecessarily bleak and that maybe they should count their blessings (after all, they weren’t having their spines sucked out by aliens, or being turned into mindless zombies by aliens, or didn’t live in a haunted hotel, or etc. etc.), prompting a grumble from the more morose writers in the bar.

Outside, in the street, the academics kicked each other into the dirt and called each other imbeciles who had received their PhDs from diploma mills. By this time, thankfully, most of them had run out of shit to throw, and resorted to simple, old-fashioned name-calling.