I’m not sure, I don’t really know anything, Joyce doesn’t tell me any of this, but the border-scenario is what I imagine for her as we walk to Professor Wigglestep’s Lab.
The lab is an empty but cavernous building that has been stripped, just a few hunks of two-by fours lying around, and stray red-blue-green-yellow plastic balls from the ball pit, we rustle up the stray balls, corral them into the pit, less a pit than a depression in the floor, the balls are hard and brittle, and deflate easily into hard shapes with uncomfortable nubs and corners but we sit on them anyway, Joyce puts her hands behind her head and closes her eyes, I just start talking, tell her everything I know about the park, give her an oral tour of the north section, tell her about the stilled boulder at the World Pavilion near the Polar Coaster, she’s seen it but hasn’t tried to spin it, I tell her about me and my mom, about the Whirling Whales, about the washed out road, about how I took care of Dick.
She says, Stop it, the kids down near Muffet’s Market told me about Mr. Philips, how he died of a heart attack.
That’s the story Mr. Matheson told them, I’m giving you the real deal, I say, and I pout, blood filling my cheeks again, blood always wants to break out from beneath the surface, that’s what I think about while picking at the splintered edge of the ball depression with my pocket knife.
Joyce must feel bad for calling me out like that and finally starts telling me stuff, she talks about some books and blogs she used to read, Jungian treatises on the nature of reality, stuff on cultural appropriation and radical politics, she tells me her utopian visions for the park, she makes it all sound so cool, I’m mostly listening and she uses the word opportunity, I do envy her big social ideas, her ability to include everyone who deserves to be included, but I can’t go fooling myself or anyone else, not anymore, I’m in this for me and no one else, then I think about Mr. Matheson and wonder if he’s still working on the tractor, working on it by himself.
I’m still picking at the frame, twisting the knife, turning the wood dust, still more than a little sore that she’d dismiss my dispatching of Dick story so quickly, and just when I’m thinking that maybe she doesn’t understand me at all, we’re somehow back on the subject of Cinderella’s Castle, she has a plan on how the two of us could take it over, not for personal glory, no never, we claim it so we could lead the park, instill some order, the right kind of order, a new golden age of civilization, a pax Fairy Tail Land-a, Joyce doesn’t use those exact words but it’s what she means.
I say, Okay, what’s the plan, Stan? I’ll be your Achilles to your Helen of Troy, I’ll be your Rasputin to your Anastasia, she doesn’t laugh until I say, I never was any good at history, we should just re-write it all now anyway, no one cares.
Joyce digs underneath her legs and pulls out a red pit-ball, it’s not in ball shape anymore, caved in, a half-moon, a half-eaten rotted poisoned fruit, she says, Okay, this is the Castle.
tour: south
It’s early dark, the dark before, everything covered in dew, I walk by Muffet’s Market, there are two dudes in football or lacrosse gear, asleep, maybe drunk or stoned, toad or leaf lickers, snores echo in their helmets, cleated feet stick out the market front door, too bad it wasn’t that someone dropped a house on them, wish I was that strong, my machete is out, I think about having some pre-Castle-coup fun, a little hacky hacky, but I’m not working alone today, stick to the plan, a two-pronged attack, with me walking to the Castle’s front door and Joyce sneaking in through the back, it’ll never work.
Down by the south end of the park, by the old entrance, I hate it down here, it’s easy to get sick, it’s commoner than the cold, thick in the air here, like pollen, common, the want the need, to be seen with everyone else, to be park popular, park important, to live in the Castle, or settle near it, to be in its shadow, as if that’s enough, I mouse it past the Old Woman in the Shoe, Humpty Dumpty, Three Bear’s House, and Granny’s Cottage and weak, curled-up thoughts of relocation fill my head, oh my poor little head, no, I’m staying where I am, we will never live in the Castle, I’m only helping Joyce get to where she wants to go and then I’m going back, recede into the background, a man behind the curtain is something to be.
Past the Cuckoo Glockenspiel, the empty Storybook Animals pen, the petting zoo, to the Swan Boats, and there, across the bridge and up the hill is the Castle, I sit at the foot of the bridge, I could be the grumpy old troll who lives under the bridge, I really don’t care about other people answering my questions three, it’s hours past midnight, waiting for the sun to rise from the east, waiting for the sign.
cinderella’s castle
Something went wrong, Joyce must’ve got caught, failed, bailed, I don’t see her anywhere, everyone on the grass hill is awake, this was a mistake, what was our plan exactly, anyway? a mistake I’m going to make worse, I run across the footbridge, the hero who knows he’s going to die, a Grimm or Aesop hero, not fucking fraud Disney, I run in slow motion, show my import, the weight of the hero’s every step, machete raised and sharpened, hungry, greedy, the tip cuts off chunks of sunlight that fall to the ground, everything dies, the green hill ahead of me is a hive, crawls with people, everyone fights each other, every person for himself, they’ll be ready for my army of one.
At the other end of the bridge, my first combatants, a tall girl wearing a plastic but reinforced viking helmet and brandishing a wooden chair leg versus a short hamburger of a dude in a suit of armor made of duct tape, he swings a metal fence post, I yell and offer some manic machete swings that connect with no one, nothing, the two combatants join forces to face and fend my attack, she whacks my arm with the chair leg, fucking ow! I drop the machete, it clangs like a gong, get the hook, the hamburger dude is slow with his bulky fence post, he doesn’t swing so much as he pushes, he nudges, nudges me aside so they can finish the serious fighting, I’ve been dismissed as a threat so easily, it’s because I’m out of my element, out of my elephant? why am I here?
I’ll have to do this without my weapon, the machete gone, someone swooped in and took it already, damn, a costly casualty I wasn’t expecting, I run up the hill and don’t stop for the plethora of battle engagement invites thrown my way like casual insults, I run past warriors sporting the everyday household items as shields, as weapons, blunt instruments most of them, but there’s one person waving around a whisk-spatula combo that looks sharp enough to pierce through pseudo duct tape armor.
Word of my gauntlet-run passes through the epic unending battle scene, the word is a virus, a worm, I sense it more than hear it, everyone here is here every day, fighting the same person or the same people, they’re a group, a whole, an entity, they know when there’s an intruder, interloper, outsider, a me making a go at them.
Near the top of the hill, almost off the grass, just ahead is the rotunda where Cinderella’s pumpkin cart pulled a u-ey, turned around and went back down the hill, I’m close, the front door isn’t far, the Castle is a cartoon capping on a hill, gleaming white with purple and teal spires and turrets, it’s shaped like a crown with a swirl of marble staircase leading to its great wooden doors, the doors are closed, I’ll open them, I will.
I’m still on the grass, haven’t made the swirl, the front stairs where the fighting is the most intense, a blur of the thwarted and the thwartees, a cluster of jousters and their tree-branch or golf-club lances demand that I halt who goes there, these masked riders riding piggy-back on their masked rides block my path, circle me, shepherd me backwards, lost sheep, I’m blinded by someone’s pocket laser pointer, I stumble and bumble, then broadsided by two park-issued baby carriages, the trundling plastic wheels take my legs out at the knees, I’m down, I lose my breath, I’m effectless useless and all the other-lesses, this might be it, everyone moves in, picks me up, swallows me whole, spits me out, rejected, I roll down the hill, I roll down forever and into the pond, I can’t swim, it’s only knee-deep.
I limp hom
e, the battle renews behind me.
heidi’s hill
He let me in but this place isn’t big enough for the two of us, he let me in but he isn’t talking to me, he pretends to be busy whittling something, a goat maybe, what is it with fucking goats?
I sit at the mini table, my chin plays the bongos on my knees, I say, She never showed, she’s not at the Polar Coaster either, she must’ve made it without me.
Mr. Matheson sits on his bed, it’s small enough to be a couch cushion, he shrugs and almost hits his head on the ceiling, he says, I’m sure she’s fine, you should probably just leave her alone, you’re going to have to leave, I’m sorry, but I’m busy.
I’m a cast of a thousand questions, I say, Maybe I was enough of a distraction out there on the hill for her to get into the Castle, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t really care about the Castle, the Castle can suck it, those damn dirty apes can have it, but I hope she made it, maybe she’s still waiting for me to show up, should I try coming in from behind like she did?
Mr. Matheson is wearing his park-issued Heidi’s grandfather outfit, his brown hat is too small, his legs too white and veiny, he says, Visiting hours are over, kid, scram.
Mr. Matheson gets in moods, funky funks, he probably has his lederhosen in a bunch because I left him with the broken-down tractor in the middle of the Slipshod Safari, I say, You blew it by shutting the tractor off, don’t even remind me.
I stand up, tall as Paul Bunyan, and lurch around the place, I say, What if Joyce ditched me, used me? if I let that happen, if I allowed that happen to me, it’s so stock, cliché, right out of a middle-schooler’s YA novel of the week, it’s like Jill pushing Jack down the hill, or something.
He says, Just go.
I’m still soaking wet from the dunk in the pond, I lost my machete, he has one tacked onto the wall, a real big knife sitting there on the replicated and miniaturized wall, Heidi’s wall, Heidi was a story about an orphaned girl being taken care of by her grandfather, a grandfather who lives like a recluse in the swiss alps, Mr. Matheson isn’t the grandfather, he just plays one in the park, he told me the story once about Heidi’s grandfather learning to love her and there’s other crap about Heidi helping some girl in a wheelchair walk because of goat milk and the mountain air, but I stopped listening, stopped caring about Heidi, the story was as stupid and small as the Heidi House, everything is so stupid and so small.
I say, All right, Mr. Happy Pappy, I’ll go, I know what to do now anyway.
It’s true, I do, I know what to do, I say, Thanks for helping with the tour earlier, really, I appreciate it, I brought you a bounty, more a snack than a bounty to be honestly honest, your favorite kind of snack, picked just for you.
I empty my pockets onto the mini-table, my pockets were full of mushrooms, a mix with a fix, a medley of mushrooms, it takes all kinds, a bit soggy and loggy but he’ll eat them, even the ones he shouldn’t eat, the ones with the great green caps, big as garbage can covers.
end of the tour: boulder safari castle boulder
I’m back here, outside my mist tent and the World Pavilion, opposite the Polar Coaster, I’m back here, at the center of the park, its core, the heart, the one-ton heart, this here granite boulder is my crystal ball, in it I see my past, the past is passed.
The past, I left Heidi’s Hill and went back to my the Slipshod Safari, avoided the booby traps and snares and crawled inside my elephant, it’s the elephant in the park, inside the elephant was my room, darker than any closet, inside were the supplies, and the surprise, inspired by Mr. Matheson I put on my old Fairy Tale Land uniform, the one I had worn when I was that little shit working the Whirling Whales, it all still fit, the baggy blue shirt was still baggy, the tight pants were still tight, I walked to the Castle, my arms loaded with barrels and bullets, fingers itching triggers, I walked to the Castle as determined as an earthquake.
Even through the lens of my handy-dandy boulder crystal ball, my assault on the hill and the Castle is fuzzy, it was like that scene in the cartoon movie about a secret society of rabbits, cartoon movie but not a kid’s movie, not some anaesthetized fairy tale that you’d find here or in other parks, this movie was real, there was this scene near the beginning of the movie, the end of it all came at the beginning, the farmers ploughed the rabbits and their warren all under, there was rabbit screaming, wide bulging rabbit eyes, rabbit terror, frozen rabbit expressions gone all swirly in a flood of torn throats and blood and dirt and bodies, my ears ringing afterward, just like after my run up the Castle hill, and after, it was all quiet, the park cleared, I was alone, I was alone, dripping the rabbit blood, standing outside the great wooden doors, at the top of the swirled marble staircase, I was alone, dripping the movie blood, knocking on the great wooden doors, no one answered my knocks or my calls, Cinderella wasn’t home, she didn’t live there, I knew this, standing there alone and outside the great doors yelling let me in felt like the end to a different story, a different fairy tale, the wrong one, so I opened the doors even if I wasn’t supposed to, inside the castle everything was small, it made me angry to think that this is what everyone was fighting over, it was only one room with mirrored walls, some fake suits of armor, a dingy red carpet, a shoddy throne, Joyce was there, huddled and hiding behind the throne along with the pumpkin driver dressed in service orange and a phony Cinderella with painted-on apple cheeks and a few other kids that used to work the park, Joyce was wearing her old Polar Coaster outfit, the one with the penguins, she wouldn’t look at me, but tried to talk me out of whatever it was I was trying to do, she tried to tell me it was okay that we could still live in the castle like she promised, I knew better, and I made like that movie again, I ploughed her and the rest of them rabbits under, the end came so quickly, and then I just left, I’ve learned it works that way sometimes, I came back here and covered the boulder with the blood from my hands and my clothes and my hair, there was enough blood so that I could turn and spin the boulder again, it’s a wheel and has always been greased with blood.
The boulder, the one-ton boulder is my mirror mirror on the wall, it’s showing me the future now, I will survive, no one will care or come after me for what I did because there’s no one left, I told you that already, there’s no one left, I’m the last one, it has to be that way, what I’ll do is this, I’ll dig out my bike from out behind the employees shack out behind the World Pavilion, the bike is beat up, a little small for me, the spokes and chain will have some rust but the gears will still work, still turn, it’ll be the only thing that still turns, I’ll get my bike out from behind the shed and ride it around Fairy Tale Land, ride it around the park for a lark, to wherever I want, and it’ll be just like when I was riding my bike up and down that closed road, you and no one else will be there.
Acknowledgements
Thank you first and foremost to my family, most of whom make it into these stories whether they want to or not.
Thank you to Erik, Helen, Sandra, and everyone at ChiZine Publications. Extra-hot-sauce thanks go to el presidente Brett Savory, who is shorter than I am. Brett has always believed in me, even when I was talking ridiculous trash about winning contests and the like. Brett is one of the good people.
Thank you in particularly alphabetical order to friends, editors, and co-conspirators who have all helped me and these stories in some large way: Jessica Anthony, Stephen Barbara, Laird Barron, Kevin Brockmeier, Mort Castle, Michael Cisco, Neil Clarke, F. Brett Cox, JoAnn Cox, Dave Daley, Don D’Ammassa, Ellen Datlow, Kurt Dinan, the Elitist Horror Cabal, Steve Eller, Brian Evenson, Neil Fallon, David John Gutowski, Jack Haringa, John Harvey, Stephen Graham Jones, Nick Kaufmann, Brian Keene, Mike Kelley, Matt Kressel, Carrie Laben, John Langan, Sarah Langan, Jennifer Levesque, Seth Lindberg, Nick Mamatas, Paul McMahon, Stewart O’Nan, Helen Oyeyemi, Kathy Sedia, Charles Tan, Lee Thomas, Jeffrey Thomas, M Thomas, Ann Vandermeer, Sean Wallace, Kevin Wilson, Dave Zeltserman, and You
r Pretty Name.
Copyrights
“The Teacher” (ChiZine, 2007)
“The Two-Headed Girl” (Interzone and Fivechapters.com, 2008)
“The Strange Case of Nicholas Thomas: An Excerpt from a History of the Longesian Library” (Lenox Avenue, 2004)
“Feeding the Machine” (Phantom Magazine, 2006)
“Figure 5” (Weird Tales, 2007)
“Growing Things” (original to this collection)
“Harold the Spider Man” (original to this collection)
“Rhymes with Jew” (Jigsaw Nation, 2006)
“The Marlboro Man Meets the End” (LitHaven, 2005)
“The Blog at the End of the World” (ChiZine, 2008)
“The People Who Live Near Me” (original to this collection)
“There’s No Light Between Floors” (Clarkesworld, 2007)
“Headstones in Your Pocket” (Weird Tales, 2009)
In the Mean Time Page 21