8 LEGS UP
C. W. Clark
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Smashwords Edition
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Copyright 2011 C. W. Clark
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
There are dreams of a better life, and there are dreams of children walking hand in hand together. There are dreams of fame and power and sacrifice and fancy, and then there are dreams of black pudding. That last one was mine. This particular topic may not have been truly a first for me, but I can say with a great deal of confidence that it wasn’t my usual fare. I reserved that honor for more important things like heroics and seducing women with my undeniable machismo. But on this occasion, it was a rolling sea of black pudding that captured my subconscious and undulated around me in gooey swells. I was lying atop the creamy, dark ocean, kept in place by the dense substance and a raft of pudding skin that had formed beneath me. I rose and fell with the peaks and troughs, simply being, or just as likely ceasing to be. The pudding finally tired of supporting me and soon after my rubbery float disappeared beneath the surface, I was called down into its depths. It beckoned me with promises of butterscotch and banana at the bottom, but I resisted my fate. I thought buoyant thoughts and felt myself regaining my place at the surface. The ocean threw all manner of enticements at me but I refused to succumb to the temptation. I willed myself to stay on the surface and enjoy the convenience of breathing air.
Angry at my defiance the pudding yielded to eight long cylinders of scorn that pushed up past the tension in the surface to tower over me. They were long and segmented and curled around my still form with a slow certainty. The world flipped and my pudding ocean leaked down around me in long, spiny strands. I looked wildly from side to side, unable to see the entire picture, but getting enough of it to form an image in my mind. I was held fast to the underside of something huge and furry. In the distance, a pair of long, black fangs as large as mountains hung down past the horizon of fur. They seemed too curved toward me, too much like they were reaching back toward me with those hollow points glistening with a luminescent green fluid. There was a lurch, and I felt myself jerked upward, my ass and one of my feet having been absorbed into the flesh of this thing. Another lurch and then another drew me further in. I could only watch helplessly as the light from that world disappeared as I was slowly, inescapably drawn inside the body of the beast.
****
“Dude, you were dead.”
“Yeah, that makes plenty of sense since I’m talking to you right now.”
“Maybe you’re a ghost,” Marty said as he pushed his finger into my shoulder, rocking himself back with a little shove. He was built a bit like a weeble, with his center of gravity firmly ensconced around his midsection. His long, spindly appendages seemed like they were an afterthought of his construction. “Nope. Not a ghost. But you were dead. I checked with the mirror and everything.”
“You were baked out of your skull, man. You were latched on that bong like a third lung.”
“Nah, man. I can hold my weed. I saw you dead, and now I see you alive. You’re fucking Lazarus, man!”
“Right. And for my next miracle, I’ll turn Old Milwaukie into Guinness. Face it man, you just got some bad weed. Someone cut your shit with lawn clippings. Hell, last night was the first time I blacked out on that stuff. You need to find a new dealer.” Marty fidgeted in place on the seat beside me like it was on casters or something. There’s nothing worse than smoking ragweed when you’re just looking for a good mellow. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was still riding the green wave the way he was playing solo twister over there.
“You think so? Do you remember that spider?”
“I remember a dead spider.” And that was about the last thing I did remember from last night’s little blowout. We were feeling pretty tuned in to Mother Nature and ran across some big brown thing all curled up under the bed. Marty launched into some long-winded discourse of how it was obviously an Homo Arachnis, “cause it’s a spider that lives in the home”. He had a hell of a documentary accent, so I went with it. To the best of my recollection, last night’s stimulating conversation went something like:
“Too bad it’s dead. I would love to see this thing running free. I mean, eight legs, all moving at once.”
“I know,” Marty had said “I only have two hands and they’re like all over the place.”
“I bet we can bring it back to life. Too bad I don’t know any insect CPR.”
“Dude, only one thing you gotta know. Google.”
He was right. Google is the second brain we all wish we had on permanent standby. We did some searches and found this really cool website with recipes for bringing dead things back to life, as well as one for some killer peanut butter chunk brownies. The recipe, the one for raising the dead, involved drawing all these shapes around the “deceased”, which we laid out reverently on the kitchen linoleum. On top of that, we had to utter a jumble of words that sounded like an Aborigine reciting the Gettysburg address backward. I remember pronouncing them in all their guttural glory and they came out easy, which is odd since I have been known to have trouble with some of the bigger words in English. Somehow these damn things just about spoke themselves. It was toward the end that I blacked out, but not before getting a cramp in my stomach that felt like someone was trying to pull an octopus out of my bellybutton. Then there was nothing.
“What did you do with it? The spider? Throw it away?”
“No, man. You don’t remember? It fuckin got up and walked away. You brought it back to life, and then you were dead.”
“You’re such a retard,” I said, stopping the truck in front of a blue dumpster that had been tastefully covered in graffiti penises. I toyed with the idea that maybe, just maybe, some punk kid was trying for a rocket ship motif, but if so, they put the airbags in the wrong place. What kind of messed up kid thinks slapping willies on a dumpster will make him cool? I flicked the lever to my right, and the lifts rolled down in front of the truck to get ready to embrace the trash box. I felt a little bad for the truck at having to touching the filthy thing at all. Maybe I should invent some lift-condoms or something for just such an occasion.
“Dead spiders don’t get up and walk again, and neither do dead garbage men.” I caught myself staring at a speck that slowly made its way onto the dash from the ceiling. It dangled and then thumbed its nose at gravity and floated back to the roof. “It was just bad shit last night. Bad shit.” I went ahead and pushed the lift forward. Just sitting around is for suckers. If you’re not doing, then you’re getting done, and I’m not ready for anyone to do me. Well, not guys at least. Or ugly women. Well, really ugly women, anyway.
****
You hear stories of the old age express and all the baggage cars of memory it leaves behind as it gains speed toward the great train station in the sky. You think, that will never happen to me, and then find yourself asking “what will never happen?” Mine must have jumped the track and plowed into an oil refinery or something because my memory for the rest of the morning was moth-eaten and ragged. The afternoon was damn near completely gone. I must have been operating on autopilot because I had made it back to my apartment, but I’d be damned if I could tell you how, why, or if I ran over anyone on the way. In fact, the first thing I recalled after the dumpster of shame was standing in the kitchen of my apartment and staring at the floor. It was, at one point, such a nice floor. It was a faux white tile design that had been lovingly glued down to the subfloor just before I moved in. I liked to theorize it was to cover up the blood stains of the previous tenant, but that was all conjecture. Now, an intricate network of big sharpie figures squatted on the linoleum like bloated tattoos. Each design was drawn at one of four points around a central circle as, from what I could recall from the depths of the weedy haze, an oh-so inspiring website demanded that each one be precisely aligned with the four corners of the globe. Of course, this had led to a huge debate about how a sphere could actually have corners, so we settled on lining it up with a compass. Since we couldn’t find one of those, we pretty much rock-paper-scissored our way into where east was and filled in the rest.
At the top, the defacto north, was a symbol that looked an awful lot like a robot snowflake. It was all crossing lines and right angled shapes at the tips. To the east was an ornate cross that looked like it was being scaled by a moose or reindeer. Watching this spectacle were two crude figures, one with a spikey sun for a head and another that just might have been a duck. I wasn’t really clear on that one. At the bottom was a circle with black and white figures of a bear, a turtle, a buffalo and a fish all drawn with jagged arrows through them. And the west was something that looked an awful lot like a lump of crap being sprinkled on by flowers. How quaint, it even had stink lines. Between those were little dancing stick figures, performing acts I’ve only seen while flipping through the pages of the Kama Sutra book as a teenager and then later as an adult and probably sometime last week. I can’t remember if those were from the website or something Marty and I thought would spruce the whole thing up. Geez, I’ve got to stop smoking that shit.
The circle itself was decorated at intervals with alternating lines and squiggles. All in all, I found myself fairly impressed with what we were able to do while baked like a loaf of French bread. The total design space took up about three square feet and completely and utterly ruined any chance I had to get my deposit back. I pinched the bridge of my nose with a thumb and middle finger and closed my eyes forcefully. I still didn’t feel right. Something felt like it was missing, or I was missing something, or something was missing me, or, oh hell, I don’t know. I opened my eyes again and saw this hazy after image of the design turned forty five degrees. The blue-white figures faded slowly, but not before it registered that the stick figures were all wrong. They were no longer in pairs, and there were no longer just eight of them. I mourned the death of monogamy as I counted another six figures enjoying little stick orgies before the afterimage disappeared for good. I tried squeezing in the same place again, but all I could muster from that was a bit of a headache and a sore nose. I couldn’t ever get that ghostly blue porno to come back. Ah well, what do you expect for free? One thing I knew for sure is that there was no longer any dead spider in the center of the circle. Whether it got up and left on its own or Marty and I taped its legs to toothpicks and pretended it was a cross-country skier, I couldn’t recall, nor did I particularly care at this point. I was tired and felt like weasel crap. I needed to find my bed.
****
I dreamt of a woman, neither old nor young. She was a mother, or at least really enjoyed hugging children that looked an awful lot like her, and was dressed in light beige animal skins with blocky bird shapes sewn in around the hem. Long tresses of golden hair hung down freely to her waist. The children she held all had dark hair, braided down the back with tanned skin drawn tight over their cheekbones. The woman’s skin was the same, and they all looked completely famished, surrounded on all sides by a desolate landscape without food or game. Her children, sons, were perhaps in their late teens or early twenties, but they were small and weak from hunger. She drew them close to her, and they shared their sorrow together. A man plodded unhappily toward the group, his spear dragging the ground and burdened not by game, but by his own shame.
The woman pulled herself away from the children and embraced her husband. She then faced her sons and husband and told them what they must do to survive. Her sons were speechless, and her husband was outraged and ashamed. They knew she was far wiser then they and was powerful and special - a favored of the gods that walked the earth. And so they had to obey.
She was slain with mercy and love and stripped of her clothing. They formed a line in the field, the youngest son with a spear, the oldest with a rope tied to a large, wedge-shaped rock, and then the husband, with his wife’s body. The youngest son moved forward, breaking the crust of the earth with the tip of the spear. The eldest son then followed him, dragging the rock in the groove made by the spear and churning the dirt out each side. Then the husband followed, dragging his wife’s body along this trench. This continued for row after row, the family weary in heart and body, but refusing to fail their mother by not honoring her sacrifice. As her body dragged along the earth, pieces of flesh were snagged by rocks and old roots, and fell off into the grooved channels, until finally nothing was left of her at all. Even her hair, bleached white by the sun that day became one with the ground. Why I was tormented with this gruesome spectacle was beyond me. I couldn’t think of any mother issues lingering in my subconscious. We were close enough, for a mother and son, but she passed away years ago, and I never once felt like spitting on her grave. Nevertheless, the dream ran its ugly course, and I continued to watch it all.
Her family abandoned the spear and rock and got down to their hands and knees on the earth. With their hands, they filled in the grooves, burying their mother and allowing their sorrow to be fully unleashed. There was wailing and sobbing and even singing as their tears dampened the earth they pressed on top of their mother’s remains. When all had been done in the field, the exhausted family returned to their tiny home.
The dream showed me glimpses of the days that followed. The first morning, there were green shoots in the once barren earth. A few more days and those shoots were higher than a man and boasted long, flat, green leaves. Even more days passed, and the plants had birthed ears of corn, complete with the same pale hair as the woman. The kernels of the corn were not uniform by any means, at least not the yellow ears I was used to, but different hues of red, brown and black, ghostly reminders of their origin. But to the People, this was life, and the family rejoiced and sang praises to their mother’s spirit. Time moved on, and other families moved in to share in the bounty of food during this hard time. They were taught to praise the Corn Mother, as they called her now, and to replenish the earth with her seeds. The corn brought birds that had travelled wide and far, and they in turn brought other seeds that grew grass and trees. This brought the plant-eaters, so the people could hunt and grow strong, and…
I opened my eyes with a bit of a start. That was most definitely not the dream about the bored housewife with an unhealthy fascination for the trash collector and his incredible Velcro pants. It wasn’t even one of those random dreams where I found myself battling a mountain of alien cannibals for the last yellow Twinkie on earth. And don’t ask me why I should fear alien cannibals or why they would want a Twinkie anyway. It’s just a dream, after all.
I pulled off the covers and staggered to the kitchen. Dreaming about matricide really worked up an appetite. I was famished and set about pouring myself a bowl full of Frosted Woman Flakes as quickly as I could. Normally, I’m not too keen on eating human flesh, even if it’s soaked with milk, but somehow this felt okay. I scooped a spoonful out of the bowl and lifted the golden, crunchy flakes to the sky in an offering of thanks before popping them into my mouth. They’re gr-r-r-r-reat.
I turned away from the counter with the notion of sitting down at the little two by two card table, which had been unceremoniously shoved off to one side of the kitchen to make way for the magic graffiti, when something changed my mind. Directly in the center of the table sat a brown and white house spider of impressive size. Normally, the sight of a plump spider wouldn’t faze me a bit. I was okay with them, they were okay with me. There was a miniscule chance that the sight of a plump spider in the middle of my table might trigger some primal instinct to give me a minor case of the creeps, but that wasn’t the case. It was the sight of a plump spider in the middle of my table giving me the finger that did the trick. Okay, fine. Spiders don’t have fingers. But it was certainly giving me the leg. My new friend was about the size of a half dollar, and it stared at me with every one of its eight tiny eyeballs. It stood stock-still with a single forelimb extended theatrically into the air.
I set the bowl down on one corner of the table and dragged out a chair. It made a horrible noise as it sputtered across the linoleum, but both of us kept our eyes locked in a mortal embrace. He, I was only guessing here since I didn’t take the time to turn it over, refused to flinch. Could this be the dead spider from the other night? I had no way of really knowing. The last time I saw that spider, I thought it had about twenty legs, so my memory wasn’t that much help. It could have been. The thought of a zombie spider was ridiculous, and unless this was an arachnid messiah, coming back from the dead was impossible as well. More than likely, it could have been just playing dead or hibernating for the winter when we found him curled up and dry on the floor.
I sat down on the chair and reached out with the back of my hand to shoo him off the table. He immediately crawled onto it without any hesitation. The tiny legs tickled my skin as he perched contentedly on his new roost.
“You’d better get off little fellow. I’ve got to use this hand to eat, and I don’t think either of us wants you near my mouth.” To my astonishment, the spider hopped off and repositioned himself in the center of the table. As shocked as I was to think it was flipping me a bird, I was double that when I embraced the idea it actually understood me. I daresay that I entered stroke territory when it followed up understanding me with its next trick. It began to pivot on its legs so its abdomen could wag freely in an excited motion. I was eating breakfast with the world’s smallest puppy.
Visions of mental institutions began to dance in my head. Something was definitely either wrong with the world or wrong with me. Black-outs, crazy dreams, and dancing undead spiders all pointed to a single, unhealthy conclusion. I was nuts. I began to hyperventilate before willing myself to calm down. There was a logical explanation for everything. I was simply hallucinating. That’s all. There were millions of chemicals out there that could cause these. Whatever they used to cut that weed, it was still running around in my skull. That made me feel a little better, but even so, if it didn’t stop soon I was going to end up in the hospital or the psych ward. I wasn’t sure which one I’d have preferred.
The green numbers on the microwave told me that without a doubt, I had to get to work. “All right Scruffy, you be a good boy today,” I said, embracing the hallucination with a dismissive humor. I retrieved a grey button up shirt and pair of jeans from the half-dirty pile on the floor and put them on. I tended to save the fully dirty pile for weekend wear. Stepping into my muck-waders and dragging on a baseball cap completed the ensemble, and I looked back over my shoulder at the obedient arachnid.
“Stay put, I’ll be back before too long. Oh, and if you need a fly or something, there are plenty lying around.” He gave me the leg again as he watched me leave. I was beginning to get the impression that it wasn’t a hateful gesture, rather an arachnid version of a wave. I looked back one last time and instantly regretted it. I imagined I could see his little black eyes quivering with sadness. I refused to feel guilty for leaving my imaginary pet spider home all day long. It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t sane. Guilt rode me like rodeo champ all the way to the office.
****
My main responsibility at work was to drive the truck that picked up the garbage and to make sure that we didn’t miss any of our appointed rounds. Usually, this job took a CDL class A and B license, nerves of steel and a keen eye for time management. We all had the license, but the other criteria were in short supply. They picked me because I had, so far, actually managed to keep the truck on the pavement for the entire route. Not a ringing endorsement by any means, but the alternative would leave the city full of rotting trash and angry citizens. Marty tried driving the truck once before and only narrowly averted lawsuit by Waffle House. He did not keep the truck on the appropriate section of pavement and apparently the proprietors of Waffle House 451 took exception to this. Who would have thought bringing the dumpster inside the restaurant through the kitchen wall and turning the front tire into a giant onion ring would cause such a stink? There was the usual shouting and pointing of fingers as well as some looks from the patrons that seemed to say “I wonder when that will be on the special.” Thanks to Marty’s choice of parking spaces, it took half a day to extract ourselves from the deep fryers. It only took about half a minute to extract Marty from his driving privileges. After that I drove the trucks.
I arrived at the depot on foot after six blocks of arduous walking and removed the padlock before sliding the gates apart to the “P-U corral”. There was a yard full of mint green haulers arrayed before me, all decorated with their own patterns of splattered filth. Through chemical reactions and a failure to properly wash the trucks, the refuse had eroded into the paint to form intricate markings that were as unique as fingerprints. I paid homage to the zebra truck, the melting cow, and screaming orca before stopping in front of the painted lady. This had been my ride for as long as I can remember. She was a magnificent hauler, decorated by a matching pair of purple and orange paint stains in the back shaped conspicuously like giant boobs. I was, however, brought up a step or two short by a newly installed hood ornament. I had to search back in my memory to make sure, but I was fairly certain nothing was perched in front of the driver’s side of the windshield yesterday.
As thoughtful as it was for someone to decorate for me, I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with the new décor. Seated on the hood was something that looked an awful lot like a pre-teen girl, dressed from head to toe in a bipolar outfit of red and black. Even her hat was split right down the center. She was reclining against the glass with her dark hair spread out in a fan behind her. Her legs weren’t long enough for her feet to make it over the edge of the hood, but luckily for the sake of all that was decent, she had them crossed. She was way too young for the Basic Instinct shot. Her legs, arms, and face were all well-tanned, but her most striking feature was the two huge brown eyes that bored into me when she looked up.
“So, you are the Daddy-Long-Legs-Man I’ve heard of. Can’t say you’re entirely what I expected, but then who am I to adhere to expectations?” She had a small voice that screamed innocence, and I might even have believed it if I hadn’t seen the look on her face. There was something there that could not have been formed in such a short existence, a kind of parental disapproval that only time and experience could produce.
“That’s a great question. Who the hell are you?” I replied with false bravado.
“Take a guess.”
“Someone who really enjoys the smell of garbage? Or maybe you’re some kind of trash-man groupie, here to ask for an autograph and, if you get real lucky, a pair of my underwear.”
“Wow, good guess, but no. I wanted to see the new harbinger of doom for myself.” She stared at me with those oddly deep eyes for a moment. I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, but made damn sure I didn’t give her the satisfaction of letting it show. If there’s one thing you learn in the city, it’s that you need to make everyone else believe you’re prepared for anything. “Didn’t Grandmother tell you?”
“Look, girl, I don’t know a thing about this ‘harbinger of doom’ thing, or who Grandma is, or who the hell you are. What I do know is that you’re making me late on my rounds, and you’re getting butt prints on the hood of my truck.”
“It bothers you to have a clean spot on your truck?”
“No, but it should bother you. I can’t even begin to describe the crap that has dribbled on there.” She seemed to catch on finally and slid off gracefully. She only stood about five foot nothing and all of it contorted in a moment of sullen backside checking. She frowned at the results of her investigation. I noticed that the color of her shoes and socks was split down the middle like her hat. It struck me then, as she bent to one side and then the other, that anyone seeing her from the side might believe that she was dressed in a single color. Which color you saw depended on which side you saw her from. It’s so hard to keep up with the fashion trends these days.
“I can’t say you make a great first impression, but even so, I’ll be keeping an eye on you. I’m not sure how this will all go down, but I’m not ready for this world to end quite yet.” She walked to the back of the truck, waved over her shoulder, and then disappeared from view. I cut around to the other side, but she never appeared. It wasn’t like there were a lot of places to hide, and a quick glance under the truck revealed nothing but empty space and tires. The next five minutes were spent in the corral looking under all the trucks, but she’d disappeared like a fart in a tornado. Even the clean spot on the hood was gone if it was ever there to begin with.
****
“Hey, Tim. ‘Bout time you showed up. What took you so long?” Marty was dressed in the same fashionable grey shirt, jeans and muck-waders we all wore on the job. He hefted himself up by his wiry arms, planting his butt and its cargo of a full, round belly into the seat beside me. He resembled a furry basketball with limbs. At six foot three, I towered over him when we stood side by side. Even so, I felt insubstantial next to him that morning. He just seemed a lot more, well, solid than I did. I looked him in the eyes appraisingly. His eyes were oddly free from the red irritation that had taken up residence there for as long as I’d known him.
I asked him point blank. “Marty, am I nuts?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I mean more than normal.”
He gave me a serious look for a moment. Even though I’d seen him almost every day since high school, I just noticed how old he was beginning to seem. His face was creased around his eyes and deeply across the center of his forehead. The three days of growth on his face was spotted with grey and he looked ever so tired. Usually a man looks this way only after hard lovin or hard livin. My money was on the latter.
“Tim, I haven’t smoked so much as a joint since the weekend. I know, it’s only been two days, but that’s the longest I think I’ve gone in years. Seeing you die, or believing I saw you die, has really messed with my head. I don’t know if you were right about that green being spiked, but it feels like I saw something I wasn’t supposed to, like maybe a peek into the future. So, now that you know that, am I the one who should be telling you if you’re crazy?”
It took me while to answer, but since Marty had gone all honest and vulnerable on me, I couldn’t shortchange him. “I dreamed of corn being grown from a dead woman, I feel guilty about leaving Scruffy, my pet house spider hallucination, home alone, and I just had a conversation with a twelve year old girl who told me I was going to destroy the world.”
“Dude, you’re nuts. I think maybe I should drive today.”
“What, do you intend on finishing off the Waffle House this time?”
“Guilty as charged. Let’s get our crazy asses moving. I don’t want to be stuck in this truck all day.”
Chapter Two
The day was a short one, meaning that we pulled an easy route that morning, and nothing much happened along the way. I dropped the hauler off at the depot around three o’clock with the sun still pretty high in the sky and life, as strange as it was, took a moment to cut me some slack. I had enough time to get back to the house and shower before heading out to the library a few blocks away. Scrubbing away the grime and stench was perhaps the most important social contribution I could make. It was only polite, after all. Being around garbage, the smell gets in your hair, your clothes, and even your skin. Whether you touch it or not, it touches you, so any time you make a public appearance, etiquette dictates a good ole-fashioned hosing down. My insanity was still in rare form as Scruffy was still on the table looking quite contented with himself. There was a small insect husk; I think it was once a silverfish, lying beside him. I told him to make sure he cleaned up afterward and headed out once more.
It was nice enough to walk now that the sun had gone behind the buildings, and I took advantage of the travel time to organize my thoughts. They were scattered far and wide and wandering aimlessly in my head. Bringing them together was like herding cats who were all trying to bury a turd on a marble floor at a rocking chair convention. It was total, utter chaos. Just your average start to an exciting week. On the one hand, I was quite sure I had gone mad thanks to some chemical reaction that was slowly eating away at my brain. Someone had put Drano in the dime bag Marty had brought over, and everything odd that had happened to me since was simply result of that. On the other hand, much of what I had seen, heard, and dreamed all seemed to be connected. And what was even more perplexing was that I could not recall ever hearing of such things before in my life. Now, I am a simple man with an above average intelligence, at least insomuch as I can keep a truck on the road most of the time, and know from countless discussions over booze and blunts that the human brain cannot just pull stuff from thin air. It has to take bits and pieces from things we’ve encountered and play Mr. Potato Head with them. That meant that I had to have encountered something about dead corn women, grandmothers, and apocalyptical daddy long legs before.
Life had become much too complicated for me all of a sudden. I hoped that somewhere in this new world of mine that I could find some answers or at least some assurance that things would even out. There was always rehab or religion, but I’d always been a do-it-yourselfer kind of guy. I considered I might get lucky in the reference stacks with information. I fantasized that I might get lucky in the reference stacks with Annie. Things were looking better already.
Annie was the single hottest thing in horned-rimmed glasses. Only they weren’t horn-rimmed, I just said that because of the librarian stereotype. The glasses were actually squared off at the edges, but they added just the right amount of contrast to soft angles of her face. Throw in some sandy blonde hair cut at the shoulders and a figure that, well, how do I put this? You know how a supermodel is all airbrush and fairy dust? Well, there were enough little imperfections in Annie’s figure to make you believe it was real and tangible, but not nearly enough to keep your heart from stopping every time you saw her. Her body was long, slender and curvy in all the right places. She didn’t flaunt it, though. She wasn’t one to dress for attention, sticking mostly to long dresses and slacks with layered tops, but that just added to the excitement. It was the difference between someone handing you a box with a picture of what’s inside printed on it and someone handing you a wrapped gift and teasing you with hints. Today, she was wrapped in a white knit turtle neck and a pair of form-fitting slacks. Happy birthday to me. Was it unhealthy to wish you’d grow up to be a pair of pants?
Annie gave me one of those smoldering, over the top of her glasses looks as I approached the desk with the sign “reference” tacked to it.
“Annie, right? Do you remember me? I’m Tim.” She pointed to a sign to her right that read “quiet please” indicating that I had put a little too much energy in that greeting. I turned it down a few decibels. “Sorry, umm, did I mention my name is Tim?”
“Yes sir. I believe we established that already. Several times in the last few years if I recall correctly.”
“Right, but don’t bother with the ‘sir’ thing, just call me Tim.”
“Okay, Tim. What can I help you with today?”
“Oh, yeah. I need to do some research.”
“On?”
“Well, I’m not exactly sure yet. I need to find something that can tell me about Daddy-Long-Legs-Man, someone connected to him called Grandmother. Oh, and also a lady who let herself get plowed into the ground to grow corn.” The look I got was one part disbelief and two parts resignation. Something about her manner begged for me to make an explanation. “They are stories or characters in stories, and I’m just trying to locate where they came from. You know, what they mean.” I gave it my biggest “I’m not a psycho” grin. I don’t think it worked.
“This may take a few days to find something, especially if the reference materials are at one of our branches. Please write down your phone number on this card, sir…”
“Tim.”
“Right, Tim. Please write down your phone number, and I’ll let you know when we find something.” I spent another half hour or so browsing the shelves and randomly wracking my brain to find a way to shed the stench of moron that seemed to billow out from me each time I replayed that conversation in my head. Even in my self-loathing, I couldn’t help but feel a little giddy knowing that Annie asked for my digits. Small victories.
It was probably ten o’clock that night when my bed called to me like a lonely woman. I left a beer half drunk on the counter and staggered back to the bedroom to accept the mattress’s horizontal embrace. It was by no means a soft bed, nor was it particularly comfortable. There was a huge indentation on the left side complete with a jagged spring or two poking through that jabbed me viciously if I dared roll over the wrong way. Still, I couldn’t complain too much. It was free and probably old when given to Louis the Sixteenth’s least favorite stable boy, but that night, it was the most welcoming thing in world. I crawled in, eager to abandon the insanity of the last two days, and fell asleep.
****
I dreamt again as the omniscient observer, drinking in the blissful life of a cloud whose sole purpose was to hover above the grass and the teepees and the seemingly content villagers and their scrawny dogs. I wasn’t really sure the scrawny dogs would have called it a blissful life, but they seemed happy enough in a trailer park canine kind of way. And, indeed, the scene arrayed below me looked an awful lot like an ancient mobile home park, only with dignity. I found myself idly wondering if tornados feasted on these long before they developed a taste for plywood and vinyl. Ah, well, the fleeting thoughts of a cloud are many.
The people below me suddenly sprang into life, becoming animated and running anxiously toward the southern edge of the tribe’s boundaries. I floated along with them, keeping pace with an old and weathered Indian chief who was leading the procession. He was much like I’d seen in those westerns as a kid, only not at all like that. For one thing, his outfit wasn’t off of some rack in the moldy depths of Hollywood’s anus, and for another, this man actually smelled of wisdom. Oddly enough, wisdom smells an awful lot like Old Spice with a dash of dish soap thrown in. This was not at all like the foolish redskins America was force fed in the early nineteen hundreds. You wouldn’t see this man standing by the side of the road, shedding a tear at garbage rolling across the plains. He’d grab a spear and an axe and go get him some litterbug scalps.
As solid and immutable as he seemed to be, his resolve wavered as he approached the honored visitor who came to share a warning with him. The messenger was youthful but far from handsome. In fact, in profile he was disturbingly alien in shape and reminded me of a Picasso version of Marty. He had a surprisingly round body and thin, spindly legs and arms. His hands and feet were large and strong, making him seem completely disproportionate. He had long braids of black hair and smooth, tanned skin that peeked out from a buckskin vest with raccoon hide tassels. Nonetheless, it was clear that this was a man to be respected.
“Iktomi,” the elder began. “Why have you come to my people today?”
“Wise chief, I bring grave news,” he said, his voice a melodic tenor. I noticed for the first time how ancient his eyes looked. “Soon, not this season, but maybe the next, or the next after that, there will come a new man to the People and this land. He will be the Long-White-Bone-Man, and he will be different. You will know him by his skin with no color. His face and body will be covered with hair. He will wear clothes from no animal and carry sticks with fire in them. He will promise you god and give you the devil. He brings sickness and death.”
“This is terrible indeed. Why is this come?”
“The People have become wicked. They spend their time quarreling with one another, coveting this land and that. They forget their ancestors and the way.”
“Is there nothing we can do?”
“Do not be swayed by his gifts, no matter how shiny they seem. Do not take water from him, for in it is also fire. Do not suffer him to live in your land.”
“And this will stop the Long-White-Bone-Man?”
“No. He will come, and the People will be cast onto the stones and will break.”
“Then, there is no hope.”
“Stay strong my brothers. Keep our ways and our gods in your hearts, and when the next world comes, you will ascend.” With these words spoken, Iktomi turned and sprinted off into the grass with an unnatural speed and agility. Within seconds, he was scurrying hand over foot up a nearly invisible thread and disappeared into the sky.
I stayed a cloud, sometimes thundering, sometimes gleaming in the morning sun. I think I was even an awe-inspiring shade of pink once in the setting sun. I followed Iktomi, and with each fluffy incarnation, I watched the scene repeat itself in the northern woods, where he called the invader Hu-Hanska-Ska, near a great blue ocean, where he called the invader the White-Spider-Man, and in the desert, where he named the invader Daddy-Long-Legs-Man.
****
My eyes felt like a convenience store toilet seat as I weakly tried to pry them open. The crust had grown thick during my time in the sky, and I practically needed a shovel to get my lids free. Long-White-Bone-Man, Hu –something-or-other, White-Spider-Man, Daddy-Long-Legs-Man. Those names brought the natives of this country to their knees. Those names, obviously referring to the settlers, wiped out the teepees and drove their occupants to prison camps, bringing them nothing but misery and death. Well, and eventually casinos, but that’s not the greatest of consolation prizes. Sure, it was just a dream, but it disturbed me a lot more than I wanted to admit. I wasn’t around during that time - hell, my great, great grandfather probably wasn’t either, but I felt a bit responsible nonetheless. There was something about the whole thing that tickled at the back of my brain, like a parasitic idea working its way in one nibble at a time. It was too slow and deliberate to be able to pinpoint exactly what it was, or what its intentions were, but I could feel something wrong, something creeping up on me.
The clock assured me that it was only a quarter until four and chastised me about dwelling on the demise of the Native Americans when there were so many useless things I could be contemplating before I left for work. In retrospect, I should have chosen a time when I’d only had fifteen minutes or so to devote to it. Topics such as the end of the way of life have a way of leeching onto you like terminal cancer. The doctor tells you you’ve got three months to live and that gives you plenty of time worry and moan over what-could-have-beens. If given the choice, I’d sign up for the end where I only have time for the quick “Oh shit” before the lights go out. And yet, this morning at least, I didn’t get a vote. So, there I sat, perched upon a beaten up bed with no other choices than to watch SpongeBob Squarepants or to mull over the what-wases and what-will-bes.
What brought on these dreams? Who was that chick at the truck yard? Why did she refer to me as Daddy-Long-Legs-Man? Just because I’m a white man? There were so many other white men to choose from, why me? Could I really be the instrument for the big finale?
It was all nonsense. These were just crazy dreams from not eating right, or working too hard, or too much television, or working too hard at eating the television. If arguing with myself didn’t get me an all-expense paid vacation to my local loony bin, then the half-sleep images that popped into my head certainly would. I should have just watched SpongeBob when I had the chance. I turned on the TV to try to break myself out of this unpleasant reverie. The exciting world of infomercials was in full bloom, and I flipped the channels until I came to a particularly interesting one.
“People!” it boomed “This is a limited time offer. If you call within the next ten minutes, you can get a genuine, Franklin Mint commemorative end of the world coin. Each coin is cast in twenty four carat gold with a picture of Daddy-Long-Legs-Man on one side and the garbage truck known as the Chariot of Doom on the other. These are limited quantities, and only one thousand will be minted before the earth splits in two and God uses both halves for his bongo drums. Call now.” I turned the TV back off, bemoaning the fact that I could officially add mentally unstable info-dreams to my list of weird.
I decided that I despised sitting on my bed contemplating the relationship between the end of the world and commemorative coin collecting. I mean, it wasn’t the first time anyone had put the two things together, but my head was throbbing like my skull had shrunk two sizes last night. I got up and headed toward the kitchen to finish that beer I had generously left myself on the counter. There is nothing quite like warm, stale beer to make you truly appreciate a headache.
I stopped cold as soon as the dim fluorescents flickered into life. The deeper, inner processes of my addled brain began to hum and click. Something did not compute and after a brief flirtation with mental gymnastics and linear algebra, I finally gave up and simply accepted things as they were. Scruffy, my drug induced hallucinatory spider vision, was still in the kitchen and perched in the middle of the table. Nothing unusual there, all things considered. I had a pretty good recollection of telling him to stay and, from all available evidence, he had. It seemed that I had neglected to tell him no parties while I was asleep. Scattered on the tabletop with Scruffy were six of his closest friends in various stages of celebration. They were rigid little statues, like a bachelor party full of wild and crazy guys caught in the act and terrified that if they were the first to move, it would be up to them to come up with a good explanation for the dead stripper dressed as a wombat with a cattle-prod jammed halfway down her throat. All fifty six eyes stared at me intently as I made my way around the edge of the kitchen to the counter where the oversized can of brew sat. As I moved, the spiders slowly lowered themselves onto all of their legs and rotated in place to keep me directly in front of them. I could almost believe that maybe Scruffy had brought his family, which was cool with me since I am one who can appreciate how important family could be to a spider who just moved in with a new roommate. But, if that was the case, then his ancestral tree had more branches than a federal bank. There was quite a varied and mixed bag of spidery species on the tabletop. Two of the new ones were miniature versions of the original Scruffy; one was black and looked like it could be a widow. I opted to not check the under carriage to make sure. Some things are just better when taken on faith. One other looked an awful lot like the black one, only it was dusty brown in color. There was also a small, green one, and finally a small, black one with white dots. I had to admit, this was just what I needed to distract me from contemplating my place as the universe’s future executioner.
I reached the beer, and, even though I felt a little vulnerable doing so, risked looking away from the spider jamboree long enough to check inside the can for any other eight-legged visitors. Thankfully, it was clear, and I drained the remainder in two gulps, wincing as it went down. I closed my eyes and counted to five, looking back at the table suspiciously. My new roommates hadn’t moved a bit. “Hey guys,” I started uncertainly. “Umm, is there something I can help you with?”
Scruffy turned to one side and then the other, taking a poll from his new companions and then he seemed to shake his body “no.”
“You can understand me?” The headache came back with a vengeance, and it had invited a dizzying sense of disbelief to help share the rent. Of course, as a manifestation of my subconscious, these delusions should be able to comprehend anything I say or think. I put this to the test by concentrating on them creating a cheerleader pyramid, complete with pom-poms. Instead, Scruffy bounced up and down in acknowledgement of my question. This seemed to catch on with the others and before long, they were all bouncing up and down like rock stars. I stared at the spectacle, a Tim Burton rendition of the oompa loompa dance near the chocolate river, only with more legs and less desire to knock one in. This was bizarro world, population me, and I felt my knees begin to buckle. Obviously, I wasn’t in control of my subconscious.
I staggered to the table and dragged out a chair, plopping my ass down on it and planting my elbows on the tabletop and my noggin in my waiting hands. To my horror, I realized my faux pas and looked out from between my fingers. The spiders were now all backed up to the other end of the table and were watching me with undisguised suspicion. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean to disturb your dance.” Once again Scruffy started rotating in a “no” gesture and the others followed.
“I guess that means you forgive me. That’s good.” I paused a little, remembering that they were just hallucinations. I was certifiably nuts to be talking to them. That didn’t stop me from asking, “Are you guys real?” They bounced up and down, touching their abdomens to the tabletop before rising again. “I don’t suppose you guys can talk or spell?” Again they all started rotating side to side.
“Yeah. I didn’t think so. Well, we’ll figure something out. I bet you guys know more about what’s going on than I do.” The bouncing started all over again. Great, they could have at least lied to make me feel better. I considered playing twenty questions, but since I didn’t even know where to start, and my skull was about to explode, I settled for dropping my head on my arms and apologizing to the universe for my transgressions.
I must have nodded off again, because the next time I sniffed consciousness, it was seven o’clock. I left the little table and its occupants, got dressed and headed out to work. It was odd how quickly I’d adapted to it, but having half a dozen imaginary spiders living in my kitchen seemed like no big deal. In fact, I hadn’t felt this much a part of something in a long time. I thought that I should get them something nice today.
****
Inside the truck corral, there was a small office building. We kept routes, itineraries, a first aid kit, and what we called the “grab bag”. All too often, when emptying a dumpster into a truck or the contents of the truck into the dump, one of us would spot something that should never have been thrown away. There were all kinds of things that should have been recycled and passed on to future generations, but for whatever reason, ended up swimming in a lake of garbage. We rescued these things and put them into a closet in the rear of the shop. Whenever one of us had a use for one of these items or just needed a last second gift, well, there it was. I took a moment to rifle through this treasure trove for something my new friends might like. We were fresh out of flies, at least the ones that I could easily catch, and so I was driven to dive into the stacks for something else. I ignored the Lego Indiana Jones adventure set and briefly considered the old turntable as a good exercise machine. I finally settled on a DVD with a picture of a baby on it and the words, My Baby Can Read. I mean, they seemed smart enough, and who knows, there was nothing else for them to do all day while I was at work. It’s not like there was a manual for caring for your hyper-intelligent spider colony. Anyway, if it didn’t pan out, then I’d just swap it out for something that required fewer brain cells. I dropped the DVD into the pocket of my slacks and headed out to the truck. I had the feeling that this day would be something special.
I hadn’t gone ten steps before stopping to think about what I had just done. I had spent nearly ten minutes going through a storehouse of knick-knacks and second hand treasures to find just the right gift for half a dozen figments of my imagination. I felt shaken and a little off balance. Whatever they had started out to be, and no matter how the logical portion of my brain explained it otherwise, Scruffy was becoming real to me. All of them were becoming real. Madness wasn’t something that you could just explain away with clever arguments. It made you a believer. I had hoped that all of this had simply been a result of a foreign substance in the marijuana, but that seemed less and less likely. Hallucinations didn’t grow in number the longer you were away from the chemical. This was something deeper and more personal. This was making me late for my route.
****
I had always picked Marty up at a little convenience store just about a half-mile walk from his trailer. It was close enough that he didn’t need a car, which was good, because Marty really should never be allowed to drive again, ever. His last automobile netted him eight lawsuits for wrongful injury when he rear-ended a clown car in the middle of the Big Top Circus. Luckily, the circus had not filed the proper paperwork to set up camp where they had, and the case was dismissed. Even so, Marty was politely informed by the judge that if he wanted to stay out of prison, his days behind the wheel had better be few and far between. The very next day, there was a boot affixed to the tire of his wreck. That wasn’t so much to keep him from driving it away, since that was beyond his car’s capacity in its current condition, but instead served as a none too subtle warning. It was a modern day chastity belt, and Marty didn’t have anything to offer the local locksmith in exchange for its freedom. The half-mile walk wasn’t a punishment or anything. I mean, I would pick him up at his place if the clay roads didn’t have canyon-sized potholes in them. I could just imagine the flack I’d catch if I bottomed out the trash-mobile and had to get a tow.
Marty, it seemed, had decided to take his sweet time in getting there this morning. I waited for about half an hour before calling his number. The computer operator kindly informed me that Marty must have forgotten to pay his bill again and had been temporarily disconnected. Another fifteen minutes and I left. It wasn’t like this hadn’t happened before. Marty was probably baked out of his skull again, back on the wagon. To be honest, this was a good day to be alone. I could work through my mental issues and decide whether I was fit to interact with others of my species. Besides, the truck did most of the work anyway.
I alternated routes every other day as the corporate contracts demanded, and that put me right back at the penis dumpster this morning. I rolled the truck into a chalk sausage fest. It was no longer just the dumpster that was covered with the graffiti now but the wall above it and to both sides and even about twenty feet of pavement in front of it. I felt like I was trapped in a Chippendale’s nightmare. The hairs on my neck and arms stood out in protest of entering this obvious shrine to some phallic god, this unnatural obsession that I had stumbled upon. Abandon all hope ye who enter the hallowed ground of the Cult of the Wayward Willie.