Bonfire Night

After the meal, we walked out of the college into the bitter, cold night and made our way down Tyler Hill to see what this Bonfire Night was all about. I learned that most of the British holidays involved a low-grade pyromania—whether it involved attempting to blow each other up with low-yield explosives and inevitably failing (Christmas), making a fruitcake and setting it on fire (also Christmas), or building a gigantic fire and then setting off fireworks (Bonfire Night). I attribute this to some sort of primordial urge to be entertained in the desolation that is Britain in the winter.

The historical basis for Bonfire Night runs as follows: A while back, a few guys from the minority Christianity got fed up with being oppressed by the majority Christianity. Being English and thus obsessed with fire, they decided to blow up Parliament. Doing so, they hoped, would kill every Parliament member of the opposing sect of Christianity (as well as the King), and thus open the way for their sect to take the reins until the other sect got their shit together and did the same right back at them. Their plot was discovered, and, being the barbarians the English are, the King ordered the leader of the plot—Guy Fawkes—to be tortured and killed six ways to Sunday.

In the modern era, they mimic this brutal slaying by building a wooden effigy and tossing it in the middle of a gigantic bonfire. And then, being English, they stand around in relative silence and murmur, “My, lovely fire this year. The Council have done a smashing job of it. Let’s go queue for a potato” and so on and so forth. After the fire dies, there is a fireworks display. In some towns, where the locals are more adventurous, the custom is to chuck flaming kegs down a hill; because, hey, why not?

It was quite a schlep from campus to the bonfire field. Such a distance that we found it took us over an hour. Though, that isn’t indicative of the distance so much as it is indicative of The Writer refusing to move faster than a light saunter while complaining through the entire journey. (It is a proven, scientific fact that the rate at which one complains is identical to the rate at which a group is slowed in their travel. Thus, The Writer’s constant complaining made us walk roughly half as fast as we would have otherwise.) However, we finally made it to the Bonfire festivities after weaving through neighborhoods and side streets.

The makeup of the field was as follows: At the far side, about one hundred yards away from the entrance, there was the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. It was one of those train rides for children—you know the sort, they’re built in every state fair across the States—except it was called The Rio Grande Railway and was laden with American flags. To the left of the train, and a few yards closer to the entrance was a carousel. Across from that, to the right of the train and about seventy yards away from the entrance, were a line of food and game booths that stretched to the entrance. The main fare of these booths were potatoes and various sausages. Near the carousel, there was a place selling cotton candy.

On the other side of the field, nearer the bonfire but opposite the entrance, were a few lawn-type games. From what I could tell, it looked like there were horseshoes being thrown. I didn’t hear any screams of pain and anguish, so I assume that lawn darts were not part of the festivities. And then, as I believe I’ve covered everything but the mass of people, there was the bonfire.

The bonfire was massive. Before this, the largest one I’ve seen was about five feet tall; and the largest one I’ve built was half a foot tall. (I never had an aptitude for building things. Lego blocks eluded me in their complexity.) This flaming behemoth stood about twenty feet in the air and forty feet in diameter. By the time we arrived, it hadn’t yet been lit, but there was a palpable sense of impatience—British impatience, that is: the sense that, if something didn’t get started soon, someone might start grumbling under their breath. Carnival music, sailed through the air, making me feel perilously close to madness. I looked to my right and saw The Stalker twitching. “Hey,” I said. “It’s cool, man. It’s just music.”

“No,” The Stalker said. “That’s not it.”

“Then wh—”

He pushed me aside and into The Drunkard, who knocked over The Student.

“Cotton candy!” The Stalker yelled, throwing his arms into the air like an Olympian who just broke a world record. “Cotton candy!” He bolted into the crowd and made a beeline for the cotton candy booth, knocking over elderly folk and children in the process.

“What in blue hell was that?” asked The Drunkard.

The Student groaned from the ground and said, “Would ‘the strangest thing I’ve ever seen’ suffice?”

The Traveler helped him up. “Maybe. I’d be more tempted to call it batshit insane and leave it at that—for this is England, and you may very well see stranger things before the night is out.”

Mericfully, the carnival music cut out and was replaced by a relatively melodic, high-pitched squeal from the speakers around the grounds. “Let the fire,” someone announced, “be lit.”

Four men holding torches[1] walked to the bonfire and touched their flames to the base of the construct. The fire caught and roared upwards. It was at this time that I noticed the effigy of Guy Fawkes. As the flames licked up, they caught engulfed the avatar and the fire increased threefold. My guess is that there were two things that could have caused this: The first, and this is my preferred explanation, is that the centuries of English hatred of this man made the effigy especially vulnerable to fire. The more plausible, and therefore more boring, explanation is the thing was doused in gasoline beforehand.

Regardless, the bonfire was now engulfed and, even from this distance, I felt about fifteen degrees warmer. Remember that the remaining five of us were about fifty yards from the bonfire. This meant, in my mind, that everyone within a fifteen yard radius (and the closest you were allowed to be to the fire was ten yards) had been incinerated in the blast. This, of course, was not true, but it was the first experience I had of seeing the British in their natural character: Extreme discomfort in the name of tradition. I’m not entirely sure if this is admirable or if it is an indication that they possess some protein deficiency resulting in a masochistic complex. Now better because of the warmth, I clapped my hands and said, “Okay, who’s up for some cotton candy?”

“Nope,” said The Drunkard, taking out the largest hip flask I’d ever seen and having a massive swig from it. “I’m going to get a potato.” He walked off towards the potato stands.

“I find the idea of cotton candy repugnant,” said The Writer. “Really, humanity? Sugar around a stick? That’s the best you can do? Really?” He snorted. “Go rot your teeth. You might fit in better with these barbarians.” Then he walked off. I watched him closely. Sure enough, after feinting that he was going towards the sausage stands, he went to a cotton candy booth.

“What a schmuck,” I said.

“Fuck it,” said The Traveler. “I haven’t had cotton candy since I was a kid. Wanna go, Student?”

“Nah, there’s some vin chaud over there, so I think—yeah, wine time.”

“Hey,” The Traveler said, “be careful. We can’t carry you up that hill.”

“I only brought ten quid. Chances are I won’t get smashed off of that.”

The Traveler and I walked towards the cotton candy booth to which The Stalker had bolted. That’s when I saw the train laden with American flags. “Well,” I said, “that may just barely beat The Stalker’s weirdness.”

The Traveler looked at the train and sighed. “You’ll find,” he said, “that the rest of the world knows of only three Americas. The first is New York City. Everyone there, they think, behaves like the cast of Friends.”

I wretched.

“I know,” he said, “disgusting, isn’t it? But, what are you gonna do? They don’t like Seinfeld over here. The second America—Los Angeles—is where all of the scumbags come from. That is where materialism, mindless entertainment, and Starbucks originate.”

“And the third America?”

“The third America is the Old West. Everyone not living in New York City or L.A. either does not exist or rides around on horses shooting at each other with six-guns and shouting ‘yahoo.’ That, my friend, is why you are currently staring in shock at a carnival ride called The Rio Grande Train Company.” He paused for a moment. “Honestly, I’m just surprised they got the amount of stars on the flag right. Sometimes they just have a blue square with U.S.A. in the middle.”

I started humming our national anthem and successfully ignored the ill-natured look the Traveler was shooting at me. We queued for the cotton candy and saw, at the front of the line, The Stalker.

He was bouncing. Literally. There was no figurative play of words here, the man was bouncing. His mouth moved up and down rapidly, and I’d be willing to bet that the man was saying “cotton candy” over and over again. I nudged The Traveler and pointed. His jaw dropped. The line moved forward, and The Stalker walked to the counter, and shouted “Gimme cotton candy!”

“Candy floss?” I heard the man behind the counter say.

“Sure, just give me that sugary goodness.” By now, The Stalker was yelling quite loudly—loudly enough to beat out the music from the carousel, the Hellish cacophony streaming forth from speakers around the grounds, and the shouts and screams of children. “I’ve been a good boy, just give me the candy.”

The Traveler and I turned to each other and said, “How about a potato?” at the same time.

We quit the line, stealing one last glance at The Stalker, who had by now buried his face in a giant pink lump, and fled to the potato stands. Along the way, we ran across The Student, who was leaning up against a tree and sipping from a cup. I went up to him and, without speaking, took the cup from him and drank. “Er,” he said, “what’s the idea?”

“I need this more than you do,” I said. I pulled a couple pounds out of my pocket and gave them to him. “Go buy yourself another cup. After seeing what I’ve seen—well, it’s nightmare fuel.”

The Student turned to The Traveler and said, “What, did you guys see someone get disemboweled?”

The Traveler, pale-faced, said, “No. The Narrator exaggerates a little bit, but it was, nevertheless, quite frightening. Go, my friend. Go and fetch a cup of wine for your health, and we will tell you.”

The Student shook his head, pocketed my coins, and walked off.

The wine took the edge off of my madness. I was still a shaken man, and in the recesses of my mind, I could still see The Stalker, as if in the midst of some cannibalistic ritual, revert to some primordial, barbaric state and bury his face in a sticky lump of pink goo. No doubt that you do not find this as odd as I do. You, like The Student, probably think me quite mad for behaving the way I do after seeing this, but I can only respond with that motto of the man who suffers: You weren’t there.

The Traveler, it seemed didn’t have the same sensitivities that I did, as, by now, when I had finished the cup of mulled wine, he had regained his complexion and, though he was glancing over his shoulder, he seemed normal. “I wonder if that Dutch girl’s here.”

“My good man!” I shouted. “How can you think of women at a time like this?”

The Traveler sighed. “I have a penis, and I have the urge to copulate. I know that, somewhere deep inside you, you have such urges, and once you stop going mad from seeing The Stalker and the cotton candy incident… you’ll…” he turned pale again. “Oh. Oh, God. The horror.”

“Yes. View it in your mind’s eye and know my pain.”

At this time, The Student returned to us with a couple more cups of wine and said, “Okay, so what did you see that’s got you all weird?”

“The Stalker was eating cotton candy.”

He blinked at me. “That’s it?”

“It was in an eldritch fashion! As if C’thulhu, rising from R’lyeh and yearning for the dreams of man, were feasting instead of a being with whom we are familiar.”

“Okay, Lovecraft, you know something?”

I shook my head.

“Normally, I’m not one to say, ‘go get laid and your problems will be solved,’ but you really, really, need some release. Listen to yourself,” he took a sip from the wine, smacked his lips, “this is good wine, by the way—listen to yourself go on about The Stalker eating cotton candy. Worst case, he just stuck his face in there and started eating.”

“And that is exactly what he did!”

“Then who gives a damn? He eats like a kid. Jesus, pull yourself together. Look at The Traveler: He’s kosher.”

I looked at The Traveler, and he was back to normal. I took a deep breath. Was it truly so weird that The Stalker was devouring cotton candy in such a way? Yes. Was I going to let it ruin my night? Hopefully not. I took another deep breath and nodded my head. “You’re right. I’m bored and letting it get to me. Imagination’s a powerful thing, and mine’s running amok right now.”

“Good,” said The Student. “Now, when do the fireworks start? The bonfire’s not keeping me as warm as it wa, and I’m about to start shivering. I hate shivering.”

“Think,” said The Traveler, “of all the long-winded prose you’ve had to read over your career in academia. All of the two-dimensional characters excused because they’re in Works of Literary Art. All of those damn Russian authors who can’t tell a plot from a hole in the ground. Think of all that, and your hatred will make you warm.”

“There you guys are,” shouted The Drunkard. He held a hefty baked potato in one hand and a plastic fork in the other. “You gotta get a potato. One pound per—damn good deal, I think. Hey,” he said, poking The Student in the shoulder with his fork, “why are you twitching?”

“Doestoevsky. Doestoevsky, Chekhov.” The Student raised his hands in the air, still clutching the mulled wine, and shouted, “Tolstoy!”

The Drunkard, slowly, deliberately, stared at both myself and The Traveler and said, “You need to leave this man alone, or he will, mark my words, burn down a bookstore.”

“Narrator!” shouted a voice from my right. I turned and saw Zaf walking with a couple of his other friends. At this time, he was going out (ish) with a girl from Thailand, and she flanked him on his right. On his left was one of his friends, a Greek woman whose actual name I had no chance in Hell of pronouncing, but I and everyone else just called Natalya.

I gulped and muttered, “Guh,” along with a weak wave. About ninety percent of the time, when I was around a woman I found attractive, I lost all vocal faculties and resulted to uttering monosyllabic words. Occasionally I managed an atrocious joke, but that was about it.

“What are you going up to?” asked Zaf.

“The Hell did you just say?” asked The Drunkard.

“Er, Drunkard,” I said, “Student, Traveler, this is Zaf, er, his girlfriend, and Natalya.”

“No, no no,” said The Drunkard, “you’re not getting off that easy. The hell did you just say?”

Zaf responded with a huge grin and said, “Hey, dude, it’s all okay.”

The Drunkard grunted, took out his flask and took a swig. “I’ll give you English lessons. Five pounds an hour. Best deal you’ll find here. I’m not a shyster like the damn Brits—you can’t trust the Brits with money, I say; they just go around spending it on bullshit like those bizarre haircuts they have.” A tall British guy walked by with his hair gelled and crested at the top in a bizarre mockery of a faux-hawk. “See?” asked The Drunkard. “You can’t trust a guy like that. You can’t trust a people that allow that sort of haircut to exist without mockery. Who can you trust? Me. I’m a journalist—the most honest profession in the world.”

Zaf laughed and gave me the perplexed look I had come to recognize as “I don’t understand a word of what was just said.” Natalya, who acted from time to time as an interpreter of the English-speaking world, translated. After she was finished, Zaf said, “Ah. Well, no thanks. The Narrator can help.”

The Drunkard looked at me and said, “You’d better fucking help. The guy sounds like he stepped out of the 80s.”

I shrugged. “I’m working on it. Languages are hard.”

The Drunkard spat out what sounded like a factory floor.

“Er,” I responded.

“That means ‘kiss my ass’ in Klingon.”

I burst into laughter. “You know Klingon? You fucking nerd.”

I then found myself upside down and in a temporary rubbish bin. After pushing myself out, I dusted myself off and said, “Hey, I play WarCraft. I was just saying tha—”

“Watch it,” said The Drunkard.

I held my hands up and nodded.

An explosion sounded above us and a burst of green light temporarily illuminated the grounds. We looked up and caught the fading outline of the first burst from the fireworks display. All told, it was a decent enough show. Coming from Knoxville, I wasn’t that impressed. (For those that don’t know, Knoxville created a holiday for the sole purpose of shooting off fireworks. And, because it is such a center of creativity and originality, it is called Boomsday.) Everyone else in the group, though, was. Eventually, The Writer (the traces of cotton candy still sticking to his face) and The Stalker (utterly clean faced and slurping mulled wine) joined us and we all watched the spectacle as one.

I looked around and saw that, overall, the rest of the people gathered in the field were having the same experience.

The fireworks exploded overhead, and, right after they finished, it started raining. “Well, well,” I said to no one in particular, “looks like the weather’s going to put out the fire.”

The Drunkard turned and gave me an exhausted look. “I’m sorry?”

“Er, you know. Cause the fire might spread and…” I looked at the rest of the group and cleared my throat. “Look, I never said I was a smart man.”

The Drunkard patted me on my shoulder and said, “I’m heading back to campus, anyone want to come along?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some more reading to do,” I said.

The Student and The Writer said they’d go back as well—we three, it seemed, turned in much earlier than the rest of the group—and so, under the steadily increasing rainfall, we left for campus.

---

[1] Note: The word ‘torch’ in England means ‘flashlight.’ This is absurd to the level of Kafka, and I shall be damned if it creeps into my vocabulary.

Tex-Mex in England

The above is about half t of an essay I turned in for Ranting in Literature. One day, I was walking through the School of English building, trying to find a professor’s office, and I saw the essay printed out and displayed on a corkboard with comments like: “This kid is nuts!” and “Ha ha!” scrawled all over it. I do not expect to get a good mark in the class.

The next day, around five, our group met at one of the bars on campus for a meal before going to Bonfire Night. By this time, each of us was feeling a bit homesick and we decided to go to the bar that featured Tex-Mex cuisine—a tribute to the cheap Mexican restaurants sprinkled around the entire United States.

On the way, I asked The Student what he was doing the other day that had him disappear from the pub in such a rush. He shrugged and said, “Oh, you know, nothing important. I just had to, ah, take care of something.”

“Liar,” I said. “Your pants are aflame.”

“Fine. I had a date.”

I punched The Drunkard in his back, to which he responded by putting me in a headlock and said, “Do not do that again.”

Quickly turning purple—it appeared that The Drunkard had a terrifying natural strength—I choked out, “Okay.”

He released me and said, “Okay, what’s up?”

I wheezed, tried to respond, and coughed. I pointed to The Student and doubled over for a second. “Date,” I managed.

“You got a date?” asked The Traveler.

“Yeah,” said The Student, blushing a little.

“Hey, good for you, man. Didn’t we tell you the Law of Averages would work in your favor?”

“That’s not the best way to express congratulations,” said The Student, “but I’ll take it.”

“Next time,” said The Stalker, “don’t order red wine with a pasta dish.” He didn’t look back while talking. “It makes you look pedestrian.”

“You were following us?”

“No,” said The Stalker. “I was… in a good position.”

The Student and I looked at each other. It was one of those moments that bespoke a vast well of sympathy between comrades.

Without much more conversation, we stepped into the bar. (To be fair, it was an incredibly short distance from Dickens to the bar, and we’d already hit the entrance to the place by the time The Stalker, yet again, weirded all of us out.)

We hadn’t been in the place before, and so we expected a dimly-lit place with soft mariachi music playing in the background, a TV showing Mexican dramas over the bar, and a few murals of men in fields and women carrying baskets of God-Knows-What. It would have been an added bonus if Poncho Villa were featured on the walls somewhere, but we weren’t getting our hopes up. When we walked in, we were dismayed to see that it was a typical campus bar with the default beers (I’d worked up a craving for Negra Modelo, so this was a very strong blow) and little hint of joyful Mexican hospitality. The walls were colored in purple, green, and a strange off-dull-yellow color that I don’t believe I’d be able to see in nature.

The Student let out one of what I considered his trademarked sighs (they possessed a unique, heavy, thoroughly disappointed quality) and said, “Bienvenidos, muchachos. For table six?” in a faux-Mexican accent.

I patted him on the back and said, “There, there, Juan. There, there.”

The Traveler, unfazed by the dearth of Mexicanness, walked to a table, glanced at the menu and went to the bar. The rest of us dragged another table to the one he chose, and glared at the menu. “I bet this shit comes with black pudding,” said The Drunkard.

“Black pudding doesn’t exist,” said The Writer.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” responded The Writer. “It’s a cultural misconception. Really, Drunkard, I thought you would have been smart enough to realize that, England being a civilized country, they wouldn’t eat fried blood.”

“Actually,” said the Student, “black pudding’s still around.”

I glanced at The Stalker, expecting to see him licking his lips at the mention of fried blood, but he merely watched the proceedings with his hands in his hoodie and an eyebrow raised.

“Lies,” responded The Writer.

The Student shook his head. “Go down to Wetherspoon’s. On their breakfast menu, you’ll see that you get a serving of black pudding with the English Breakfast. Just because a country has modern buildings and—well, semi-modern roads doesn’t mean they’re above tradition, Writer.”

“Yeah,” said the Drunkard. “You might want to lay off being a wiseass from time to time. Might be tempted to toss you in the fire tonight.”

The Writer snorted. “Oh, yes, I’m truly afraid.”

The Drunkard leaned forward and said, just above a whisper, “Crackle, crackle goes the fire, motherfucker.” He hung his jacket up on the back of his chair and went to place his order at the bar.

The Writer turned towards me, “Narrator, he wouldn’t toss me in the fire, would he?”

I shrugged.

“Damn you,” he said, “give me an answer. Shrugging isn’t an answer, shrugging is putting off an answer. It’s a ‘maybe!’ I hate maybes!”

The Stalker said, “I just might help him,” and walked to the bar.

“Et tu, Student? Will you throw me in the fire?”

“You keep on referencing Shakespeare in common conversation, I just might.” He put his jacket on the back of his chair, shook his head, said, “Utter schmuck,” and went to the bar to order.

The Writer turned back to me. “And you?”

“I’m Switzerland,” I said. Now, it was my turn to go to the bar.

I ordered a chile con carne enchilada and a Mexican-style beer called Sol. I got the beer and realized something was missing. As the rest of my group went to the table, I stood at the bar, looking confused until someone came back to me. He was a tall, built guy with his hair gelled up to the very odd hairstyle prevalent in this country that I can only describe as the crest of an exotic bird; he wore his Union polo with the collar popped, and I blame these two things for the occurrences that followed. “Hey mate, you all right?”

“Welcome back,” sang a voice in my head. “You thought it was your ticket out.” I shook it off. “Um, yeah. There’s no lime in here.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Welcome back,” sang the voice again. “There should be a lime.”

“No mate, there shouldn’t be one.”

“It’s a Mexican beer,” I reasoned, “there should be a lime.”

“Which one of us is behind the bar? I think I should know a little more than you about beer.”

“Ba-ba-ba, Bar-bar-Barino,” John Travolta sang in my head. Suddenly, I felt my head snap back. I was back in Brooklyn. Horshack was there. Epstein was there. More importantly, all sense of social decorum, kindness, love for my fellow man, and tact imploded. “Look here, motherfucker,” I said, virtually shouting for no reason. “You keep pulling this superior shit on me, and I will leap the fuck over this bar and smash your Goddamn head in, capiche?”

The man had the audacity to snort. “Mate, a guy like you, I’d be surprised if he could leap over a stick.”

Well, I had to prove him wrong. I leapt over the bar, put him in a headlock, and said, “Listen: You know anyone workin at K-Bar? Motherfucker in a neck brace?”

The man gurgled.

“Answer me, asswipe.”

“Yes,” he choked.

“That was me. I put him in that neck brace. Now, I don’t know your English customs over here, so maybe I’m out of line. Maybe you should treat your customers like shit, thinking you can handle it all cause you got some fuckin namby pamby accent. But, brother, you think your shit don’t stink? I will take that bottle of Sol, stick it up your ass, and prove to you, once and for all, that your shit stinks.

“So here’s what you’re gonna do: I’m gonna let you go, and you’re gonna write a letter. A missal, if you will. And you’ll address it to your manager, detailing what a gigantic prick you are and requesting that you get some lessons in Goddamn courtesy. After this, you’re gonna go get me a nice, sliced lime to put in my drink so I don’t get the dry fuckin heaves every time I take a sip of Mexican piss beer. You get me, pal?”

The man nodded.

I let him go, walked around to the front of the bar, cleared my throat, and said, “Thank you.”

He took out some paper and penned the most impressive confession of arrogance I had ever seen. After I read through it, I nodded, saw that he put it up on the corkboard near the back, and got a slice of lime for my beer. “Now listen,” I said, coming out of the Brooklyn accent a little bit. “I’m gonna come back later tonight, and if I don’t see that letter still up there, then we’re gonna have trouble. Understand me?”

The man nodded.

I looked around and saw that most of the bar was staring at me. I gave them a wave and what I considered a winning smile. I took the receipt for my food and beer, walked back to the table, and sat down.

The group stared at me. “What?” I asked.

“You ever consider therapy?” asked The Traveler. “That’s not the display of a sane and well-balanced man.”

“The last well-balanced man in my family,” I responded, “was run over by a horse-and-carriage three months after arriving in this country. As a rule, we try be as unbalanced and mad as humanly possible—all in an attempt to stave off death, mind you.”

“That,” said The Student, “may be the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

“I never made any claim in regards to my intelligence.”

The food arrived much sooner than I had hoped it would—for seeing your food arrive after five minutes is always a sign that it has been sitting in a refrigerator, waiting for someone’s order to set it free. Still, the food looked fine, with one exception: They had Englished up the Tex-Mex.

Now, chances are that my readers will know what I mean by ‘Tex-Mex.’ There is the main part of the dish—enchiladas, for example—followed by some sort of side, usually rice or beans. In the case of my current whereabouts, I assumed that beans were something the British could get a handle on. (Beans for breakfast were seen as a normal thing in this country.) However, they put chips near the enchiladas. Chips, that thoroughly British food staple, that cuisine to which they clung as if it were more important than their monarch. This may seem like over exaggeration, but I issue a challenge to those doubting readers: Go to a British-supremacy website—anything run by the British National Party will do—and view the absurd amount of comments decrying the “Chinky” or the “Paki” and instead hoisting up the “good British chippy.” For example, there was one comment that read, “Sometimes, my mates want to go down to the Chinky for food. I tell them, ‘No thanks, lads. Just drop me off at the chippy.”

Anyway, they tossed chips in with the Tex-Mex. I stared, gaping-mouthed, glaring at the bizarre and eldritch concoction which lay before me. I looked around, saw that my companions were munching away on their burgers, tacos, and quesadillas without showing any signs that the chips also residing on their plates were alien. The Drunkard looked up, saw me and said, “What’s up?”

“There are chips on my Tex-Mex.”

“Yeah,” he said. He took a swig from his Sol. He had no lime.

He had no lime. I jumped up from my chair, pointed at him and said, “You’re Hellenizing! You’re assimilating! Have you no pride? Have you forgotten where you come from? You have no lime in your Sol and you are happily eating chips with your God-damned Tex-Mex! Dear Lord, Drunkard, I be—”

The Traveler stood up and pushed me down by my shoulders. “You need to shut up,” he said. “This is just Tex-Mex. It’s not a big deal. Look, take a bite.”

I did so.

“It’s not even good Tex-Mex, is it?”

I shook my head. The food was bland. The cheese was different, more—I don’t know, plasticky. The beef, while definitely beef and possessing the typical properties that beef was supposed to have, was lackluster. It was bland. It was… English. “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

“Okay,” said The Traveler. “What is it then? It’s English. This is English Tex-Mex. They’re five thousand miles away from good Tex-Mex; you can’t expect them to get it right. What you need to do is calm down, enjoy yourself, and eat.” He returned to his plate. “And get laid. You’re way too tense, man.”

I ate, but didn’t really enjoy it. The Traveler was right, though. I was tense. I was bored. The little schoolwork I had—consisting of reading a book a week for my Ranting in Literature course, and thinking in general for my Philosophy of Life course—was not exactly fulfilling. I needed something else to occupy my time. Right then, I figured it would either be a job or… well, something else. But that was for another time. Right now, I had the bland Tex-Mex in front of me.

Ranting in Literature

It was something I’ve noticed a while ago. There were certain authors whose novels—in some cases, whose entire oeuvres—were little more than extended rants about one subject or another. Sometimes, the rants would be well-reasoned and civil—hard to call a rant, really. However, there were those authors who were so worked up about what they were doing that they could not help themselves and let all of their rage loose upon a poor, unsuspecting reader.

As I progressed in my Bachelor’s degree, I noticed that these authors tended to do the same sort of things to their main characters. More often than not, the protagonist was a symbol of that which the author hated. The man or woman was intensely stupid, stubborn, bigoted, greedy, headstrong, relentlessly religious—whatever the theme of the novel, the character embodied. The character never showed a desire—off the bat, at least—to change. They were happy in their ways, as their ways tended to bring them success. The narrator of the novel showed a thinly veiled hatred for the character’s beliefs—so thin that it was, in effect, cling film.

Throughout the novel, there would be plot points surrounding the character—usually pertaining directly to the character’s family, but sometimes extending to the world at large—that propelled the character into seeing that something was wrong. However, the character, being so incredibly dense, would never actively do anything about these events. In one example, Oil!, Plainfield looks on blankly as the Bolsheviks control Russia, unions form for the betterment of employees, and owners of drilling companies declare war on their Red Menace. And, of course, Plainfield blithers on in his course, knowing full well that the union cause is right, but, darn it, he can’t up and change the way he runs his business. Wouldn’t be good for profits.

In this example, we see Upton Sinclair jumping up and down, using Plainfield as a paper doll against a backdrop of a chronology of the 1910s, shouting about the evils of capitalism. It is nothing more than a rant, a tract whose main complaint is that the capitalists in society are cold, heartless sons of bitches backed by religion (did I mention that the evangelists get shouted about a lot, too?). They, Sinclair says, don’t give a damn about anything but profits, and should be strung up from a tree—for they are spineless.

Now, it doesn’t necessarily make for a great narrative to see a character whose spine seems to be made out of Jell-O—especially since all of the other characters in the novel seem to evolve and show the capacity for change throughout the book. But, that is not to say that these novels should be ignored. They shouldn’t. Books like Oil! and Babbit by Sinclair Lewis stand as examples of what a nation needs in its political atmosphere. With few examples, there is a dearth of such brazen calling-out from the left in the United States. Michael Moore does it, but Moore has the misfortune of not being, ah, photogenic.

It is, of course, easier now to spot out inconsistencies in arguments, to see when someone is cherry-picking information. So, what can you do? Do you make documentaries like Moore, only to get shouted down by the even more bombastic right for supposedly hating America? Do you create paper dolls of characters in an attempt to show the wealthy and governing body’s corruption and bigotry? (The answer to that should be, of course, no. There was a time and a place for that, and that time was the 1920s.)

So, once again, what can you do? I believe the solution to this problem is infinitely more varied and difficult than anything politicians and commentators are doing. We have an entire history of back-biting and vindictiveness in politics. Smear campaigns have always been the norm in election seasons: Jefferson was referred to as a half-breed, in an attempt to get voting Americans to believe that a half-Indian was going to be their president. What we’re facing now, with the Bill O’Reillys, Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and, Keith Olbermans, is the consequence of two hundred and fifty years of infighting: The dangerous possibility that those on the right and on the left are approaching a point where they will refuse to work with one another. Congress isn’t helping the situation at all. Turning anything resembling an objective eye towards this Congressional year will show that the representatives are too afraid of losing their seats to do anything. With the exception of one man from the House who voted for the health care bill even though he knew his district would probably vote him out—because “it was the right thing to do” in his opinion—none of them show any spine. They toe the party line when doing so damns their countrymen. And why? They’re backed and financed by lobbyists. Congressmen leave Congress millionaires, sometimes going to lucrative positions in corporations.

So, what can Americans do? Stop listening to bombastic twits on TV and the radio. No one on the left wants to turn the United States into a sharia-run Islamist state. And, I would hope, no one on the right wants to starve out workers for profits. Stop feeding cable news networks with ratings. When you do, Glenn Beck is allowed to insinuate that a Muslim Senator works with terrorists.

Perhaps that is what the modern political literature—satire, maybe—needs to show. The time for straw man and paper doll arguments has ended—and it must end if there is to be any sort of civility in political discourse in the future.

The Decision

We met, as usual, in The Sub-Pope’s Flock, across the public square from the Cathedral. I stood outside for a moment. Maybe, I thought, I shouldn’t go in there. There was the pressure of knowing whether or not anyone thought my story was any good. Could I take the criticism? More importantly, would The Stalker be waiting for me, prepared to kill me? “Hello,” said The Stalker from behind me.

I leapt around, bursting immediately into a heavy sweat and whimpering. “Hi there,” I responded. He was back in what I considered his normal clothing. Where the dress shirt and normal people clothes were slightly disconcerting on him, this was even more so, considering that it was now obvious he was hiding something worse than sinister—something normal.

“You and I both know what you saw yesterday,” he said.

Hearing this took some weight off my shoulders. “So,” I said. “Are you Hyde, or Jekyll?”

The Stalker snorted. “Apt comparison, I guess. Although, I would assume that one such as yourself—who I, up until now, assumed was an intelligent man—would not need to ask the question in the first place.”

“Hyde, then.”

The Stalker shrugged. “Persisting in the black-and-white picture of my existence, are you? Fair enough. If you want to think of me as Hyde and other-me as Jekyll, then so be it. Regardless,” he said, clearing his throat, “I think that it would be best for you if you did not mention what you saw. It would complicate matters for me, as I have worked quite hard to project an image upon all of you—an image that I have my own reasons for showing.”

“And what are they?”

The Stalker responded with a grin revealing stark white teeth. “Absolutely nothing sinister. Just remember: it would be for the best if you were never mention what you saw to the others. I’ll know if you do.” With that, he brushed past me into the pub.

Now that the thing I was most worried about had already happened—and I escaped without any puncture wounds—there was relatively nothing to fear from criticism. I followed in The Stalker’s trail.

When I walked in, the others were already in the middle of debating stories. “Ah,” said The Traveler, “there’s The Narrator. I hope you don’t mind that we already started, but we were all anxious to get going.”

“No worries,” I said. I went to the bar, ordered an ale, and sat next to The Drunkard. He had black bags under his eyes and was struggling to keep his head up. “Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

He craned his neck towards me as if it had cinder blocks tied on. “Late night. French ordered two crates of wine. Wine hangover. Awful.”

I patted him on the back and he belched.

“Okay,” said The Traveler. He sat across from me and massaged his temples. “Over the course of the last half hour of debate, we’ve established two things. One: The Drunkard is on the verge of puking on the table.”

At this, The Drunkard nodded and groaned.

“Two,” continued The Traveller, “The Writer despises every other tale but his own.”

“You leave out the principal reason why,” said The Writer.

“Which is?”

“Because no one dares take the bull by the horns and create something worth listening to. All of this was worthless. Mere entertainment. If I wanted mere entertainment,” said with such a sneer that no amount of italics could portray, “I’d go into a Border’s and pick up the latest New York Times best-seller.”

The Student, in a sing-songy voice that I would never expect to hear from him, said, “Go fuck yourself.” It had a nice ring, the way he said it. Almost as if it belonged in a nursery rhyme.

“Okay,” said The Traveler. “Everyone needs to calm down. We’re done with the first round’s debate. Voting time.” He took out his messenger bag and put it on the table. From the inside, he took out a pad of white paper, ripped off a few sheets, and passed them around. “On this paper, you are to write the name of whoever you thought had the best story. And,” he added, “do not write your own name. That’s just not sporting.”

And, of course, everyone but one person wrote their own name. It became clear this happened when The Traveler announced that The Writer received one vote. Of No one in our group other than he would given him a vote. Even if his story had been an amazing one—and it hadn’t been bad—we wouldn’t have voted for him solely out of spite.

One vote remained, and the only person without a tick by his name was The Drunkard. His head lolled next to me, and he hiccupped and groaned to himself as The Traveler picked up the last piece of paper.

All of us leaned forward. Would this final vote show that we were all petty sons of bitches who wouldn’t admit the merits of one another’s stories? Or would it instead show that someone among us was capable of admitting that theirs wasn’t as good as another’s? “And the final vote is for The Student,” announced The Traveler.

“Huhzah!” shouted The Student.

I turned, slowly, to look at him. “Huhzah?”

He blushed. “Well, we’re in Britain, aren’t we?”

“Fuck,” said The Drunkard. “I shouldn’t have voted for you.”

“So, Traveler,” said The Stalker, “by virtue of The Writer receiving a vote, I assume this means that, apart from The Drunkard, we each voted for ourselves. Rather unsporting, don’t you think?”

“Ah,” said The Traveler. “Well. You see, it’s simply a matter of forseeing trends and being able to—”

“Bullshit your way around them?” asked The Writer.

The Traveler responded with a nod.

“So, now that I won, you all owe me a drink.”

“Nope,” I said. “The terms of the first round stated that the winner of the first round would receive naught but bragging rights.” I stood up, reached over, and patted The Student on the shoulder. “Enjoy them. They won’t get you drunk, but they will make you smug.”

The Student, eyes downcast, said, “But I don’t want to be smug. I want to be drunk.”

The Drunkard grumbled.

“In hangover language,” I said, “that means ‘No you don’t. The hangover is a bitch.’”

The Drunkard nodded in agreement.

There was something in the way The Student stared at the table—I imagined a kid watching his hamster fall prey to a vacuum cleaner—that made me take pity on him. I went to the bar, ordered a drink, and gave it to him. He looked down at the whiskey and said, “This Jack?”

“Would it be anything else?”

He knocked it back without a response and grinned. I’m sure that a liberal enough rabbi would agree that this constituted a mitzvah for the day.

“Well,” said The Traveler, “I congratulate you, Student. It was a hard-fought battle, one that was taken up by the best among us—and The Writer—”

“Fuck off,” said The Writer.

The Traveler grinned wolfishly and continued. “As I said, by the best among us, and the vox populi has spoken.”

The Drunkard leaned over and said, “Christ on a broomstick. Vox populi?”

“Dunno,” I whispered. “Apparently we’re on par with a voting populace.

“So,” continued The Traveler, heedless of our interruptions, “I say to you: mazel tov and enjoy it while you can. For soon enough, it shall be snatched away from you and, God willing, I’ll be able to run around shouting that I’m the greatest.”

“Er, I’m not planning on running around and shouting anything.”

“Oh,” said The Traveler, “you say that now. Right, so. As you know, today is the third of November.”

We all nodded. Well, everyone except for The Student nodded, who turned deathly pale and said, “What.”

“Yeah,” said The Stalker. “It’s the third.”

“Fuck,” said the Student. In a series of movements fast enough to give a hummingbird’s wings a run for their money, The Student was out of his chair, put on his jacket, and fled out the door.

The Writer blinked in incomprehension before saying, “What was that?”

“He’s late.” The Drunkard. “He’s late. He’s late for a very important date.” He slammed his head on the table and said, “Fucking kill me now.”

I patted him on the back, “There, there, pal. It’ll be all right. Soon enough, your liver will shut down and you’ll be dead. Hard to quote Disney when you’re dead.”

I was quite impressed with the way he managed to shove me out of my chair without looking at me, and even had to clap a little bit from the floor before sitting back down in the chair.

“Anyway,” said The Traveler, “I have two things to say—and I guess I’ll just have to tell The Student them when I see him next. First: In two days, it is Bonfire Night. The city is hosting a public bonfire out on Tyler Hill, and I’m heading down there with a few friends. You’re all invited to come along, and I’m sure it’ll be a blast. Hey, we might even get to throw The Writer into the flames.”

“Fuck off,” said The Writer. He must have been having an off day—once a couple of weeks back, he told me, “Anyone who uses the same insult twice in one day should be flayed alive and hung from the Washington Monument.” I decided not to remind him of his suggested punishment, and instead shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

“Second,” continued The Traveler, “in a couple of weeks, I’m thinking about going to Oxford. You see, I haven’t gone anywhere thus far, and am getting quite antsy.”

“I’ll go,” I said. Already, plans were hatching in my head about running around shouting at the university students and calling them nerds.

“Why the fuck not,” said The Drunkard. “Oxford’s gotta have better bars than this hick town.”

“Ah, come on,” I said. “This isn’t that bad.”

“Bullshit.”

“Drunkard,” said The Writer, “correct me if I’m wrong, but Cumberland Rift University is in Eldritch, Tennessee, is it not?”

“Yeah.”

“And Eldritch, if my geography serves me correctly, as,” here The Writer gave a little chuckle that made me want nothing more than to bash his face in, “as I’m sure it does, Eldritch is a town of—not including the university students—three thousand, four hundred people. Is it not?”

The Drunkard finally raised his head off of the table. The look in his eyes clearly said that The Writer should not progress further, but The Writer—madman that he was—ignored it. “So, Drunkard, tell me: How can a town of three thousand—in a dry county, no less—have better bars than a city of forty-five thousand in a country that has, more or less, run on alcohol since antiquity?”

Like The Student before him, The Drunkard was up faster than a human should be able to move. This time, though, instead of someone taking up a coat, The Drunkard took up a very shocked Writer, took him outside, and shoved him in a rubbish bin. After that, neither The Traveler nor I saw The Drunkard until Bonfire Night. The Stalker, The Traveler, and I sat in the pub blinking at each other until The Stalker spoke. “Well,” he said, taking a slurp from his cider, “I don’t think I’ll be joining you all in Oxford. The tension in the group is palatable and I’d rather not be there to see someone impaled on a spire in another city.”

The Traveler nodded. “Fair enough, you’ll be missed.” As he said that, I saw a flash in his eyes that said quite the contrary. That miniscule flash said that The Traveler was thanking God.

“Well,” I said, “I should be going. I’ve got to read a novel that is little more than a 400-page rant against 20s America for class next week.”

“What book?”

“Oil! by Upton Sinclair.”

The Traveler nodded. “What course is it for?”

“The Art of Ranting in Literature. Pretty good class, but stress levels run quite high.” I stood, wished them a good day, and made my way out of the pub.

Outside, it had started raining, and the cobblestone square took on his natural, English tint of looking like something out of a Sherlock Holmes movie. The rain beat down, there was the faint chatter of children, and the slight whiff of vinegar and frying fish from a nearby chippy. I took a deep breath, looked to my right, and saw The Writer’s legs dangling out of the side of a rubbish bin. A small crowd gathered around, taking pictures and laughing. From inside the bin, I heard The Writer shout, “Yeah, laugh now, you French bastards! When I get out I will rip off your frog heads!”

A child walked up and started landing blow after blow of pudgy fists on The Writer’s right calf, laughing while he did so. I let him have his fun for a couple of minutes before I walked up, shooed him away, and helped The Writer out of the bin. He dusted the refuse off of himself, glared at the onlookers and said, “Whiskey time.”

He walked back into the pub, and I made my way to the bus station.

I Stalk the Stalker

The next day was terrible. I appreciate that most of you reading this have had a hangover before. You may think that you have had a terrible hangover. One of the ages, shall we say? But I say: You don’t know shit.

I woke up the next afternoon at two o’clock with very little recollection of the previous night and that special achiness that can only come from a prolonged vomit. My throat felt like I had put it through boot camp, and my shoulders felt like I pitched a no-hitter and lasted nine innings. I was, in other words, in a bad condition.

However, I did manage to get up from my bed and stretch, which I consider a tremendous achievement. I blinked, peeked out the curtains and immediately withdrew my head from the searing pain of daylight, only to let out a high-pitched, terrified scream. Covering the sheets on my bed were deep red stains. To this day, I do not know what those stains were. I checked over my whole body and saw that nothing was bleeding. I saw all of my flatmates that day, so I know that I didn’t kill any of them. I’m fairly sure that, after the episode with the robot in the courtyard, I went straight to bed. This, I feel, is a mystery for the ages—right up there with what’s really in Area 51.

At any rate, you will all know that, when you are hung over, it is nearly impossible to get through the day. It is a challenge to do even the most basic of things, but, at the same time, we must keep up some semblance of being civilized, lest we fall back on something or so forth and—well, to be honest, I see no reason why, when hung over, we shouldn’t say “fuck it” and collapse back into bed.

Which is why, after wandering into my kitchen, seeing all of my flatmates and hearing them talk, I did just that.

When I woke up, it was Tuesday morning and I felt fantastic. Sure, I may have slept through a seminar on Monday, but it was about Joseph Conrad, and I couldn’t care less about that guy—I was in Imperial Literature for Kipling. I showered and decided, completely on a whim, that today was the day that I was going to follow The Stalker.

Fromthe first week all of us moved in to campus, I wondered how this man spent his time. It was obvious that he enjoyed a good cider, but a man could only drink so much cider before growing bored and doing something else. I figured that the man had to have some hobbies. (By this time, The Student had told me about seeing The Stalker walking out of nude model classes in the art building, but I chalked that up to The Stalker trying to better himself through artistic endeavors.) I put on my jacket, threw on my baseball cap, and walked back outside.

I took up a position behind the trash bins, across from The Stalker’s building, and waited. After five minutes, I grew antsy. After ten minutes, I started feeling exhilarated, like I was a secret agent, or a cop, and this was an important stake-out. No longer was this The Stalker, but a Columbian drug lord in his safe house, about to arrange for the goods to arrive in the hands of his distributor—and I was going to be the man to stop him.

After twenty minutes, I grew bored again and was about to leave, when out of the front door walked The Stalker. I didn’t recognize him at first, for he had foregone his usual outfit and looked like a normal human being. He wore a deep red button-up tucked into dark blue jeans and dress shoes. His usually greasy hair was washed, he wore thin-rimmed glasses, and carried himself entirely differently than his usual slouched-over-serial-killer way of walking.

He passed me by and I heard him whistling a tune I couldn’t quite place (later, I figured out that it was “L.O.V.E.” by Nat King Cole). Really starting to see the appeal of hunching over and following someone, I stayed about fifteen yards behind The Stalker, managed to hide myself amongst Turkish postgrads, and followed him to the campus café next to the Computer Science building. He walked inside, I followed, he ordered, and I stood behind a column.

Everything was going well until my cover was almost blown by a bunch of Greeks shouting at me to join them. I headed their way, quieted them down, and kept The Stalker in my sights. The Greeks here have been some of the nicest people I’ve met, but I really don’t understand why they waved me over, as they continued their conversation in Greek. (Greek, if you haven’t heard it, sounds like one continuous tongue twister.)

The Stalker sat at a small table with two chairs next to the windows about thirty feet away from where I was. He sat with his chin in his hand, looking out the window. A steaming cup of something sat ignored in front of him. Judging by his slow swaying motion, he was still humming the song he had been on the way over. I looked around me to see if anyone was turning into a lizard—which would have been a sign that I was on an acid trip; at that moment, it was the only logical explanation for what I was seeing. Sadly, no one was turning into a lizard, the clocks weren’t melting, and no bats flung out of the air vents, so I was left with the realization that I was experiencing reality.

And then, from the library-side entrance to the café, a tall, slender, brunette with a very posh English accent walked in the door, waved at The Stalker, and sat down opposite him, working her way out of her jacket and putting her gloves in her purse. I had to keep my jaw from detaching itself and smacking on the top of the table. What was this? Could The Stalker be some sort of charming Casanova to everyone but our group? If that was the case, was he really The Stalker? If not, then what did that mean for us? Were we just jerks for assuming that he was the most disturbing man on the face of the Earth, not bothering to look deeper, and try to pick out the human beneath him?

But no, I thought, the guy skinned a rabbit. Charming Casanovas do not skin rabbits, as a rule. For the first time since watching health care get neutered on CNN, CNBC, and C-SPAN, I was seeing everything I understood about the world shatter before my eyes.

“Hey man,” Zaf said from across the table. “Is okay? Your face, it’s white.”

I’d gone to great lengths to help Zaf with his grammar, but he stubbornly refused to improve. (According to a mutual friend, though, his Greek was just as bad as his English.) “Yeah,” I said. “Everything’s fine. World’s shattering, but everything’s fine.”

He laughed and went back to smacking the table with his hands and launching into tirades about God-Knows-What in Greek.

From The Stalker’s table, I heard a delighted laugh. I looked over, and The Stalker grinned at the girl, who played with her hair and continued talking.

They stayed there for thirty minutes—my table showed no signs of leaving. I’d learned that Greeks could be in a burning building, but if there was coffee in front of them, they would continue relaxing and chatting until they caught fire. Eventually, after almost giving up hope of overhearing what the two were discussing, I caught the boyfriend bomb.

You see—and The Student can attest to this—when a guy initially approaches a woman, it is nearly all of the time because the guy finds the woman attractive. Women have evolved a counter to this known as ‘the boyfriend bomb.’ When this bomb is deployed, usually in a perfectly innocent and not malign fashion, it usually goes like, “Well I’m moving in with my boyfriend,” or “Just the other day, my boyfriend…” It has the psychological equivalent of a hydrogen bomb exploding in the center of Manhattan. The male brain shuts down, and we’re left with a stupid grin on our faces and something like, “Oh, no kidding? That’s nice,” streaming out of our mouths. (That is, if the male has a modicum of honor—if not, then they are likely to shout, “fuck you!”)

As I heard the boyfriend bomb being deployed, I watched The Stalker for his reaction. I expected a knife to appear out of nowhere and bury itself in a vital spot on his date’s body. Barring that, I expected to see his mouth barely move and then for her to drop dead onto the table, a victim of some unheard-of voodoo spell. However, The Stalker once again surprised me by taking the approach favored by most men in his situation: resigned faux-happiness.

Soon after, the woman checked her cell phone, said something, and got up to leave. They hugged, she left, and the Stalker sat back down in his chair, looking like a wet rag. There was the typical blank stare—in my mind, it always looked like the starer was fully embracing nihilism—and, eventually, the sigh that said, in effect, “Nuts.” The Stalker, then, further surprised me by not glaring out at the world with anger in his eyes—as I tended to do in his situation—or reacting by looking like he desperately needed a drink—as The Student did about once a week—but shrugging, plopping some money on the table, and standing up.

Now, it was here that I realized my position. I couldn’t very well show myself to the man. In the first place, it would make further interactions incredibly awkward between the two of us—more than they already were. In the second place, what kind of stalker would I be if The Stalker saw that I was stalking him? So, I pulled my baseball cap down virtually over my eyes and started babbling in what I thought sounded like Greek.

My table fell silent and stared at me as if I had suddenly gone completely and utterly mad.  The Stalker walked past my table, glanced down at me, and walked out the door, heading back to Dickens College. I wasn’t sure, right then, if The Stalker had seen me. That would become clear later on. I did, though, have to face my table and explain what the hell just happened. “Er,” I began—which is always a terrible way to begin an explanation.

They remained staring at me.

“You see,” I continued—which is a terrible way to continue an explanation. “I’m a jackass.”

“Crazy American!” a couple of them shouted. They returned to their conversation.

I sat back, wondering if “I’m a jackass” could be used to get out of every situation like this. I made a note to use it later on.

Halloween

I came up with a costume idea on the spot. I had a suit already, and because of my physique, I went as Jake Blues last year, and was perfectly willing to do so again. However, I felt that I should do something a bit more unique, something that would simply confuse everyone around me at wherever I wound up that night. I would go as the Spirit of Hanukkah, and all I would need is a cheap trilby hat and a ton of pencils and pens to give out as gifts to anyone who asked what I was.

After buying the necessary goods, I called The Drunkard to see what his plan was. Apparently, and I was just as shocked as anyone else would have been, the French were having a party. “Really?” I asked.

“Yeah, I know, right?” responded The Drunkard. “Fuckers bought three cases of wine. Surprised the hell out of me when I saw them stacked in the corner.”

So that covered where I would be that night. I decided that, since my usual bedtime was midnight or so, I would take a nap before the party, and so I did.

The party wasn’t what I expected. I assumed that it would be a typical student party: rap or R&B (or, this being Europe, techno) blaring from speakers and mixed drinks consumed from red plastic cups. However, I arrived and found that the French existentialists—in their true ineffable fashion—had created a masquerade ball. In that cramped kitchen, there were over two dozen people in flowing ball gowns and the most absurd, antiquated masks I’ve seen outside of period dramas. I stood in the door to the kitchen, staring in awe, until The Drunkard came up to me with an almost equally frazzled look on his face. “Hey,” he said.

“This is Halloween?” I asked.

He nodded. “Apparently.”

He wore a pink polo shirt and some flannel shorts. “Frat boy?”

He nodded and looked at me. “Er. Jew?”

I gave him a pencil and a pen from my jacket pocket. “Happy Hanukkah,” I said.

We stood in further awe for a while more until one of The Drunkard’s flatmates—judging from the corset and accentuated bust, I’d have to guess it was Julie—came over and started speaking at us in rapid-fire French with a huge grin on her face. Her teeth were a deep, dark red and, I guessed that she was quite drunk.

The Drunkard responded in equally rapid-fire French. To pass the time, I looked down at my bottle of kosher red wine (stuff almost the same as Manischewitz, if you know that taste) and decided that it was now or never. I opened the cap, took a swig, and went around giving out pens and pencils. The men got them placed in their masks, the women in their corsets. I got a few slaps, but it was worth it.

Over my time in England, I found that there were a few things that happened when I was at a party consisting of mostly non-English speakers. The most common thing to happen was that I’d be lost in a sea of Greek, German, French, or whatever language formed the majority that night, and, because I couldn’t add to the conversation, I’d start drinking very, very heavily. Tonight, the surreal atmosphere led to me drinking faster than normal. I believe that, over the course of an hour and a half, I finished three bottles of wine. In any case, I was terribly, terribly drunk and passed out in the middle of the floor a few times.

The third time, The Drunkard helped me up, slapped me in the face and said, “Hey man, you think it’s about time you should leave? Maybe get some sleep?”

I gurgled something to the effect that he wasn’t my mother and, furthermore, he could kiss my ass because I was having a fantastic time and everyone loved me—why shouldn’t they?

He slapped me in my face again and, suddenly, I found the light in his argument. “Rigid times I had, Drunky McDrunkerton,” I said. “Splendidly rigid.” I leaned in and whispered (actually screamed) in his ear, “That girl—Jenny—the one from Belgium—she has the hots for me. I mean scathing hots for me. Think I’m gonna have to go kill her boyfriend, but damn son, she does have a sweet ass, yeah?”

The Drunkard patted me on the head and maneuvered me outside the kitchen, then outside the flat, then closed the door on me. This marked the first time I had been kicked out of a party in my life, and, while it was for a thoroughly good reason, I still felt a little miffed. However, I ignored my pride telling me to march back in there—after breaking down the door—and tell them what for. Instead, I walked outside.

It was cold out there. Even through the alcohol coat I wore, I could feel that. I shivered, shouted out a couple obscenities, and walked back towards my block. Standing outside, smoking a cigarette, there stood Zaf. “Zaf!” I shouted. “Malacka!” I burst into laughter and gave him a great big hug.

He looked at me as if I were insane. This, clearly, was a man who had not been thoroughly and completely drunk in a while. I was about to tell him how we needed to get a couple bottles of whiskey and hit the town when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a robot. I of course understand that this was a man dressed as a robot for Halloween, but at that time, I doubt convinced that this was a robot who had come to the planet Earth for the sole purpose of raping our houses and pillaging our women. I ran over to the robot, dropped down on my knees and burst into tears. “Don’t do it, man!” I shouted.

“Er,” said the man in the robot outfit.

“Earth is your friend! Freakin Day the Earth Stood Still was just a movie! Don’t go all klatu barata niku on us, okay, man? Dude, I got some Jack upstairs, let’s go talk it out!” By this time, I was clutching onto the legs of the suit.

“Get the Hell off me, mate,” said the robot.

This made me burst into louder screams. “No, why do you want to destroy Earth? We’re a peace-loving people, we don’t have any weapons, we’re not a target, not a military target. Grand Moff Tarkin, please—”

“Get the fuck off me, man. Jesus! Fine, I’m from the planet Earth,” he said, moving around in jerky movements. “I’m a party robot. Beep beep boop. Where the bitches at.”

“Hey!” I said, leaping up. “Party robots are awesome!” I gave the robot a high five, walked back to Zaf and said, “I love party robots.” Then, I walked upstairs, went into my room, and passed out.

The Epilogue to The Narrator's Tale

I’m not sure what sort of reaction I was looking for. I thought the tale was good, and I certainly enjoyed telling it. The Stalker had no response save slurping from his cider (that was expected). The Drunkard nodded and said, “All that from the ‘Vengeance’ paintings, eh?” The Student said roughly the same thing. The Traveler leaned forward and asked, “Exactly what part of London were you guys in?” And The Writer grunted. It was this last reaction that interested me. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“Hmm?” The Writer responded.

“That. The grunt. What does that mean.”

“I’m intrigued,” he said. “With that, ah, interesting idea of what the result of being sucked into a painting would be… what do you think would be the consequence of, say, getting sucked into ‘Starry Night?’”

“Pants-shitting terror,” I responded. And that was the truth. If I suddenly found myself in the world as envisioned by Vincent Van Gogh, I don’t think I would have been able to cope with the way colors bled into each other. Same with Dali. Appearing in a Dali painting would have been equated with instant madness in my eyes.

“Well,” said The Traveler, “I’d say that’s a pretty decent premise for a story, wouldn’t you guys?”

The Student stroked his chin. “Not bad, I’ll give it that. Seemed like The Twilight Zone would have had a crack at that sort of story at some point.”

“Given the length of time that show was on the air,” said The Traveler, “it wouldn’t surprise me if they had two episodes that had a crack at that.”

“Premise was good,” said The Drunkard. “Execution wasn’t bad, and I liked the narrative style with its touch of Lovecraft over-explaininess of something alien to the day-to-day world.” He sat back and took a drink from his whisky. “Endings are a bitch, aren’t they?”

“Oh I don’t know,” said The Student. “I think it ended fairly well. We established—well, The Hunter and the country gent established—that any attempt to kill The Ravener and The Hunter would be ultimately futile, as they’d essentially, er,” The Student paused. “Huh. What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Respawn,” said The Stalker.

“Yeah, that’ll work. And it’s not like the narrator of the story could have done anything to The Ravener anyway. You know, what with its spine-ripping-out strength.”

“Maybe so,” said The Drunkard, “but I do like a nice fight in a story. All told? Not bad.”

That seemed to be the consensus of the rest of my companions. The story didn’t inspire rage or hatred, so I was happy with the outcome.

The Traveler knocked on the table and grinned. “Gents, I believe that makes the end of the first round. Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?”

Crazy as it sounded, it was the end of the first round of stories. That meant it was—I checked my watch. It was the end of October already! “Holy shit!” I said.

“What?” asked The Traveler.

“Tomorrow’s Halloween.”

A resounding silence hit the table. “Do they even have that holiday over here?” asked The Writer.

“It’s an excuse to get drunk. My gut says yes,” said The Drunkard.

“Okay,” said The Traveler. “Here’s what I’m thinking. Everyone think back to the tales we’ve had so far and decide on which you think is the best. We will reconvene on Wednesday to cast votes and the winner shall, of course, win this round. Necessarily, this does not mean that he wins all around.”

“Then what does it mean?” asked The Stalker.

The Traveler shuffled in his seat. “Er.”

“Bragging rights,” put forward The Drunkard.

We all agreed that this was a more than honorable reward for winning the first round of our contest, clinked our glasses, and said, “To bragging rights!”