Virgil was still the frog boy…December 18, 2007

This story isn’t exactly a story, it’s an exercise that I completed for a class this semester. The stipulation of the exercise was this: somewhere in the story, you have to say “Virgil was still the frog boy.” We got together during finals week and everyone read their story. Some were about kissing frogs, one incorporated the frog suit from Super Mario Brothers 3, which I thought was rather clever. Anyway, here was my addition to the pot:

Because common arithmetic failed to explain the situation, Dr. Sound developed an entirely new set of mathematics. The problem was this: in past two months, the earth’s rotation had slowed to a halt. Physicists across the world were reacting to the situation in unexpected ways. A physicist in Holland, after sixty plus hours of mulling over formulas in a small lab without sleep or sunlight, continued to pluck at her head in frustration even though all her hair had been plucked out. In New York, only days after the crisis was announced, another physicist released into Central Park his German Shepard, his toucan, and his beloved ant farm before driving his car and himself into the East River. Every representative of the department of physics at the Sarbonne in Paris absconded to a bomb shelter in order to wait out the crisis.

Dr. Sound dropped a mirror into the fishbowl on his worktable as he was accustomed to do every other day in order to exercise his Beta-fish, Virgil. The black, tasseled fish jerked back and forth in zig-zag lines from one side of the mirror to the other. Beta-fish are easily confused and they will eagerly attack other Beta-fish, especially if the enemy moves and looks exactly like they do.

“We’ll be alright, Virgil,” said the old man into the mouth of the fishbowl. “We’ll be fine ‘cause we’re not scared.  Are we?” Dr. Sound’s new mathematics would soon provide the formula to explain why the Earth had stopped. He worked for hours in the low light of the kerosene lantern, feverishly penning the final lines of the formula. Sigma equals a triangle with a squiggly line through it which yields three dots in a row, is less than or equal to a little smiling frog-boy drawing, divided by gravity, times the cubed root of Hamlet, equals a sketch of an upside-down umbrella. With a remainder of plus or minus two elephants.

“Eureka!” blurted Dr. Sound. The completed formula spanned over thirty three pages of graph paper, but the gist was easily summarized into this statement: on an infinite linear timeline, the predictability of all observable events falls to zero.

            Dr. Sound turned on the radio. White noise on one station. Emergency broadcast system on the next. None of the stations came through except one: a rational, aluminum voice was reading from the book of Genesis. Dr. Sound knew that soon the Earth would halt completely and gravity would loosen its grip and all things not fastened to the Earth would float away forever, including oxygen.  The air was already thin and his breaths were shallow.

He flicked a lighter and held it to the hand-rolled Cuban cigar in his mouth.  The flame was small, but it did the job.  And through a ring of smoke he noticed that the fish had stopped fluttering around the fishbowl.  He leaned closer and saw that the mirror was cracked. A thin trail of translucent blood hung weightless in the water. Above it a slick black lump barely penetrated the surface. Virgil was still.

“The frog-boy symbol,” he muttered. The cigar fell from his mouth and smoldered a black hole into the wooden desk. Dr. Sound was looking at his math. The smiling frog-boy hovered just inches from his nose, burning like a coal. It was an error. He ran his finger up the lines and labyrinths of symbols and meanings, trying to find the source of his mistake. He made a correction, then another, and the further back he went the more mistakes he found. His worn, yellow pencil scratched out rows of false symbols and it scribbled in new symbols, tearing paper, cracking graphite, until it slipped from the sweaty hand that held it and spiraled slowly, quietly, toward the ceiling.

The Cake Man

(This is a revamped version of the story by the same name that I posted a few months ago. Feel free to leave comments and feedback.)

I pull the wrinkled paper from my back pocket and unfold it.  Alvis writes like a chicken.  Two weeks ago, when I received the letter, I had to decode each word.  Now, I re-read it for the hundredth time and hope that somewhere in it I’ll find a clue, something telling.  He wrote, How’s the acting business?  Don’t give up on finding work.  Dry today, maybe, but when it rains it pours. Alvis is reliable as the mail when it comes to delivering motivational platitudes.  Still planning to be in the neighborhood for Christmas?  Hope we can get together and talk, I could use your expert advice.  And here his handwriting got smaller, more concentrated: Hate to ask, but would you mind stopping by the place to make sure everything is ok?  Jim-Jim and Girl Spider Man are still in the back somewhere.  Find them a good home.  Signed, Fondly, Alvis Borgchild.  And underneath that, in careful print: Alvis Borgchild.

A trickle of sweat rolls down my crack as I lean on the flank of my truck in the empty parking lot.  Have I come to the wrong place?  Is this a joke?  No cameras are visible—if this is a reality show it’s not a very good one.  Taken in panorama, the familiar landscape is more lonesome than I remember: grassy land rolls out flat in every direction to a grey, tree-topped horizon.  The bakery I stand before is condemned.  The broad windows have all been shattered, shards jut up from the frames like broken teeth.  Bold white words have been spray-painted on the blackened, red-brick walls.  I inspect the graffiti closely, particularly the first “a,” and feel as if I am misreading the words:

“CäK Man BurnN HeLL!!!” 

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READ THE REST OF “THE CAKE MAN”

Big Bang DaisyDecember 15, 2007

There is a region on the Atlantic coast of France where salt water daily sweeps in and back out again with the tidal pull. A small castle sits atop the hazy hill in the distance. There are two or three other hills on the horizon, but they are occupied by nothing more than grass and sheep. Everything in between these hills is sand. If the tide is low we may continue on the secret path of solid earth, which is invisible among the wasteland of quicksand that waits still and silent like a spider’s web. We follow the path carefully, but quickly, for the tide will soon return and the tall hill before us will become an island. We walk up rocky slopes on a narrow path that winds us around to the back side of the hill to the ancient fortress that is called D’Ahania, which was built before the dark ages of France.

It is no longer a fortress of warfare. It is a scientific laboratory and scriptorium for the once famous, now forgotten, Casey Dooley. The entrance to the exterior courtyard is modest, no drawbridge or heavy doors, but a single iron gate that has no lock.

The courtyard is a lush, Babylonian garden. In all directions sprawling green things explode their various colors. A bent and grey old man sits on a tree stump in a thick patch of blossoming sunflowers, stargazer lilies, moonflowers, passionflowers, and many of them come up to his chin. His bony face registers no emotion but his body language suggests that he is relaxed: hands flat on his knees, head bowed as if in prayer. This is Casey Dooley. His story is long and wrought with heartache, but we don’t wish to know his heartache just yet. We are interested in what Casey is doing now: he is intent upon the effect of the breeze on an oddly shaped flower.

Today is his one hundred and first birthday. It is his ritual every Saturday to come into the garden and trim down the flowers in order to arrange them into bouquets to place in parlor of the chateau. He knew each flower by its scent, and he knew the ideal firmness of the blossoms that were the ripest for pruning. These were necessary skills because Casey, in his old age, had grown almost completely blind.

The flowers have not been clipped today. For the first time in a decade, he sees, not with his mind’s eye, or with his hands, or his nose. He sees with his eyes. This morning, he mistook the flower for a yellow dandelion, but upon further inspection he saw that there was a red-brown-ish center to the flower—at which point he assumed it was some sort of daisy. There are long, translucent, thread-like things that stretch out in every direction and curl in a smooth arcs that extend to form a watermelon-shaped sphere around the starburst. It has a peculiar smell, a must and pinewood odor that is salty and sweet and altogether unfamiliar.
“What are you looking for?”
“Detail,” says Casey. Then he looks up, turns his head. Everything is the same shade of darkness. “Who said that?”
“Don’t be afraid,” whispers the vibrant, orange flower….

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READ THE REST OF “BIG BANG DAISY”

The miracle of toxic wasteDecember 1, 2007