The First Story

by C Bradley Owens

  She nodded again, or perhaps she had not stopped nodding. Matt couldn’t tell with all the frenetic energy she was giving off. Then she disappeared behind the metal doors.

  Matt was left, again, with his thoughts. He wondered if John’s father would come, or if he would think it wasn’t manly to be worried about his son. Maybe he was too embarrassed to be seen with a son who couldn’t stand up to a bully with a baseball bat. Matt sat back in his institutional chair and tried to calm himself by cataloging and examining his thoughts.

  There were colors to emotions; he had long ago prescribed to this theory, and he had been working on a chart of colored emotions. It wasn’t an easy task. Emotions were complex, multi-colored in many instances. Red could be anger, but it could be love in a different context. Heat seemed to be the common thread there. Anger created heat; so did love and embarrassment. Maybe John’s father was feeling too much red all at once? The colors in Matt’s mind shifted.

  Matt closed his eyes and tried to identify what he was feeling. There was plenty of red: bright, hot, searing. But there was so much blue too. It swirled with the red but didn’t mix. Yet there was plenty of mixing. There was a purple on the edges of his mind. He didn’t know what purple meant; he had never felt a purple emotion, as far as he knew. There were oranges too. Lots of shades of orange, like sunsets and candlelight, but sharper, harsher. And the yellow. Tons of yellow all over his thoughts. He opened his eyes and tried to find that stupid clock. Why would they put a clock where you can’t see it? That had to be the stupidest thing he had ever heard of.

  He stood and paced through the rows of chairs. It was probably a stupid idea to categorize emotions according to colors, a monumental waste of time, and a childish attempt to to understand a confusing world; however, it made him feel better in this moment, with the unfamiliar purple and angry orange.

  Chapter 6

  A Meeting at the Inn

  The Toy Peddler walked out of the mists of a dreary night and through the large oaken door. His overstuffed sack, flung high on his shoulder, suddenly grew light and airy. He folded it neatly into a small square and slipped it into the pocket of his coat.

  “I ordered you a drink,” the Sister of Monsters said, her words stern and commanding, and she pushed a pint glass full of dark liquid in his direction. The sharp spines of hair above her large, bulbous eyes bristled as the night air rushed past the Toy Peddler and kissed the flames of the candles lining the walls of the room.

  The Toy Peddler sat at the sturdy wooden table and sipped at the foam rimming the glass. “Why have you called a summit?” he asked, a small mustache of foam floating atop his thin lips. He noticed the fine porcelain doll propped up in an empty chair next to him. “Your doll? Did you like it?”

  “I did, as the little girl in your story,” the Sister of Monsters responded. “I am the Sister of Monsters now. You can have it back.”

  “Excellent!” the Toy Peddler exclaimed and took the doll while pulling a corner of his toy sack from his pocket. Impossibly, he dropped the doll into the tiny square of cloth, and it disappeared into his pocket. “I can use that in another story.”

  “That is impressive magic,” the Sister of Monsters said, eyeing the Toy Peddler carefully with her deep, black, predator’s eyes.

  “It is,” the Toy Peddler was straightforward but stared at her from the corner of his eye.

  “Could it hold any object, even objects as magical as it is?”

  “I suppose. What are you asking?”

  “We should wait for the others,” the Sister of Monsters responded and sipped from her own glass, which was half-full of a viscous red liquid that smelled of copper, her eyes fixed on the sack. “And it is a Council meeting, not a summit.”

  The Toy Peddler’s thin eyebrows rose noticeably above the glass he held tilted in front of his face. He asked, “Who else is coming?”

  “I’ve invited the full Council.” The Sister of Monster’s orb-like eyes glistened in the flickering light of the fireplace.

  “It’s that important?” The Toy Peddler asked, taking a large swig of his drink and sighing. The door to the inn flew open and slammed against the wall, leaving an angry indentation where the handle dug into the wooden planks. The Innkeeper frowned, his ruddy cheeks puffing out with the effort, but said nothing as a small, slender, frail-looking figure half-shuffled, half-bounded inside.

  “Did you have to invite him?” The Toy Peddler asked, groaning and finishing off his drink as he held the empty glass up and motioned for the Innkeeper.

  “He is a member of the Council. Be nice,” the Sister of Monsters said and waved toward the door. The spindly figure jumped upward in an awkward half-leap before he headed toward them. He skip-walked into the firelight until his painted wooden face with its permanent, cumbersome grin came fully into view. The Toy Peddler shivered, but he attempted to hide his discomfort behind his own thin-lipped smile.

  “This better be important.” The words came out of the wooden head accompanied by the clacking of the lower jaw as it fluttered open and closed.

  “It is Puppeteer,” the Sister of Monsters said and motioned for the little wooden boy to take a seat. “It is very important. Do you fancy a drink?”

  The Puppeteer laughed a hollow, wooden laugh that echoed around the room like a chill breeze. He pulled at the false crown affixed to the top of his head, amid a circle of painted hair and lifted. The whole upper half of his head rose in a mock greeting. “Of course I want a drink,” the Puppeteer said through the remnants of his laugh. The Toy Peddler tried desperately to suppress the newly created shiver that was currently running down his spine. He failed and shuffled in his seat to recover.

  “Must you be so…unnatural?” the Toy Peddler’s words fell out and landed hard in the room.

  “I can only be what I am.” The Puppeteer’s own voice was thick with warning. “Why? Do you want to stuff me in your sack, offer me in exchange for a dream, a wish?”

  “My sack is the appropriate place for toys, not sitting in a bar having a beer.”

  “Then, it’s a good thing I never fit in your sack.” The Puppeteer’s painted eyes shifted, became painted eyes looking in another direction. His eyes, now looking at the Sister of Monsters, became a painted-on version of a wink, then went back to their original form.

  “Can we just get on with it?” The Toy Peddler asked, shaking his head as the Innkeeper placed another glass full of the same dark liquid in front of him and a glass of equally dark liquid in front of the Puppeteer.

  “You know we can’t,” the Sister of Monsters said, finishing off her own drink and nodding to the quizzical look from the Innkeeper. The heavyset man dipped his own head, his double chin mushing and contorting as he did; then he turned to get another drink.

  “That’s right.” The Puppeteer laughed again, his countenance suddenly happy as he lifted the glass to his wooden mouth in an ungainly manner that seemed impossible given the loose construction of his arms, and then he poured the beer onto his false throat. He continued to talk as the liquid disappeared down the wooden tube. “There can be no action taken by the Council without every member present.”

  “That’s true,” the Sister of Monsters said as she nodded thanks to the Innkeeper for the newly arrived drinks. “So, just sit back and have a drink and enjoy the evening.”

  The Toy Peddler placed an elbow on the table and cupped his face in his hand as he watched the Puppeteer drain the glass. His brows furrowed and raised as the last drops fell out of the glass and onto the wooden mouth. “Where does that even go?”

  “Where does the beer go when you drink it?” The Puppeteer chortled and held up his empty glass. “Straight to my bladder.” He laughed again, this time louder and with even less exuberance. The Sister of Monsters smiled weakly and sipped her drink while the Toy Peddler frowned and sighed.

  Chapter 7

  The Puppeteer

  He worked through the night. The excitement was as thick as the beef stew he had
made for dinner. Soon, he thought. Soon I will have a companion. I won’t be alone any longer. And so the work continued. The people of the village heard the tools strike again and again, like tiny hammers finding nail heads. They saw the shadows of indistinct movements behind the shades. They tried desperately to peer through any crack that the small house offered. They saw nothing.

  The morning dawned much too slowly. The old man sat with his arms to his side, his head slightly bent toward the plate of eggs in front of him. The little wooden boy sat across from him with his own plate of eggs. The thin wooden arms hung stiffly by his slight wooden frame. His head was slightly tilted to one side. They sat like that until well into the afternoon, far past the time when the eggs grew rubbery and cold.

  Still, they sat, waiting for the magic it would take to dispel the loneliness, but the magic never came. The night, however, did.

  He worked through the night, warming the leftover beef stew, adding to it to stretch its life and wishing for magic. Maybe I hadn’t wished hard enough the night before, he thought. That must be it. I need to wish harder. And so the work continued. The people of the village heard the work, they saw the shadows, they attempted to solve the mystery, but still, they saw nothing of true interest; however, a curious smell wafted from the dark house.

  The morning came with a chill on the breeze. The old man slumped in the chair across from the little wooden boy. Large painted eyes stared, wide and unblinking, for fear of missing the magic when it happened. Two new plates of eggs adorned the table but they, too, would go uneaten. The night fell sadly on the little house at the end of the village street.

  He worked through the night, but his sadness was too much. There was still so much beef stew; still fresh and inviting, it smelled of disappointment. “What did I do wrong?” He asked no one, for no one was there. “What else can I do?” The question hung in his mind like an unopened letter from a long lost friend. The people of the village walked past the little house, but when they heard no sounds, they shrugged and continued on, ignoring the coppery smells and the encroaching scent of decay.

  The morning came without much fanfare. It was just another sunrise, another day dawning in the village. The little wooden boy sat alone at the table, a plate of eggs in front of him. He lifted the fork slowly and shoveled some eggs into his wooden mouth. The clack of his wooden jaws reverberated around the otherwise empty room, and he wondered why he had even bothered to make eggs. There was plenty of stew left, and he wasn’t really sure that his wooden body required food. His father had always insisted that it did, but his father was no longer present, despite his best efforts at recreation.

  “Maybe there is no magic left in the world?” he asked, glancing at the coffin where he placed the attempt at recreating his human father, the fleshy, failed jigsaw puzzle, and his wooden voice echoed around the empty cabin.

  Chapter 8

  His own parents arrived just as Matt was deciding whether or not to snatch the clock from behind the desk and place it somewhere useful. His mother hugged him tightly, and his father patted his back. It felt weird, awkward, and comforting all at once.

  “Have you heard anything?” his mother asked as she led him to sit, and she slid into the chair next to him. His father went to speak with a nurse.

  “No.” Matt kept watching his father. The way he stood, the way he held his hands, the tilt of his head when he was listening to someone. Every movement, so very different from his own. How had that happened? How had he become so much the opposite of his own father? “Mrs. Hensley went back just a little while ago.” Matt realized he didn’t know precisely when because of that stupid clock.

  “Okay.” His mother patted him on the knee. “You stay here. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  She joined his father, and Matt watched his parents, the epitome of married unity. His father instinctively put his arm around his mother as she sidled up next to him. In a well-practiced move, she put her head on his shoulder, her hands folded up under her chin. Matt looked at them and thought it was some unknown scene out of a Norman Rockwell collection. Maybe it was called, “Checking on Our Son’s Wussy Friend.” The thought was black, as black as night but streaked with red.

  The colors quickly melted to a deep shade of shame, which seemed to be the color of a dingy brick house. That was good to know. He hadn’t felt shame so clearly before. He made a note to write down the color association when he got the chance. In the meantime, he wondered what the Hallmark family was learning about his friend. Yep, dingy red bricks.

  His mother walked back to him, her eyes red and puffy. His father turned and looked his way but stayed a good distance from him. Matt took hold of the chair’s pressed wood armrest. He dug his nails into the polish, feeling it snake underneath his nails until the tips of his fingers hurt. He dug deeper.

  “Matt, sweetie,” his mother began. She knelt in front of him, holding his face in both of her trembling hands. “It’s not good, but it’s gonna be all right. Okay? Just know that it’s all going to be all right.”

  The clock was still ticking, so loudly now that he could barely hear anything over the drumbeat of time, mocking him, teasing him, hidden from any retaliation. It filled his senses. He heard time, smelled it, tasted it, felt it all around him. An invasive, destructive force that would not stop.

  Chapter 9

  The Innkeeper

  The place needs a good scrubbing, the Innkeeper thought as he looked around the bar area. The Inn at the Edge of the Woods was old, impossibly old, and grimy, which is only natural for something so old; therefore, a scrubbing, even a good one, would not clean the place up. I should still wipe it down. The Innkeeper’s new idea prompted him to begin pushing a clean rag around the bar top before moving to gather leftovers and empty glasses.

  The patrons paid no mind to the Innkeeper’s cleaning; in fact, they paid no mind to the Innkeeper at all until they needed another drink. He was the background, the setting, the mood, and there was no need to talk to the mood if the mood was right. If the mood was wrong, he could always add another deer head to the wall.

  The Council of Aspects used to hold their meetings here often. The meetings were few and far between these days. Used to be, the Council often met weekly or, at times, daily. Now, he might see a Council member here and there, but the entire Council at once was functionally unheard of. It was very exciting that they seemed to be converging on the Inn, so much so that he nearly smiled.

  Yes, the Inn at the Edge of the Woods had not seen such an august gathering in many millennia, and the Innkeeper was enthusiastic in his work, though had anyone been asked, they would have been hard-pressed to identify any difference from any other day. Instead of outward displays, he kept the drinks flowing to the table that was host to a meeting between three of the Great Aspects. He saw to his duties, wiping the counters and cooking the food, but his eyes continually found the table in the center of the room. Something monumental was about to happen.

  “How long are we going to wait for her?” The Toy Peddler asked, lifting his half-full glass to his mouth, but then he sighed and put it back on the table without drinking.

  “We can’t begin without the whole Council,” the Sister of Monsters answered.

  “Who are you talking about?” The Puppeteer asked while pouring yet another drink down his wooden throat. He slammed the newly empty glass down next to the six others sitting in front of him.

  “You know who we’re talking about,” the Toy Peddler responded, pushing his own glass away while sucking his teeth loudly.

  “You gonna finish that?” The Puppeteer asked as he reached for the Toy Peddler’s abandoned drink.

  “It’s all yours,” the Toy Peddler offered, briefly holding his hand away from his chin to suggest the offering. He slipped his hand back under his head as he sighed heavily.

  The Puppeteer lifted the drink to his mouth and talked as he poured the liquid onto his wooden jaw, “Do you mean Frau Iver? She’s right over there.” His f
ree arm lifted jerkily above the table and pointed to a deep shadow in the corner of the room.

  The others turned, even the Innkeeper who had been pretending not to listen, and watched as a lady in a long flowing gown stepped from the shadow.

  “Has she been here the whole time?” The Toy Peddler asked as Frau Iver glided to take her seat across from the Puppeteer.

  “The Council is convened,” the Sister of Monsters announced, lifting her glass to mimic a toast. The Toy Peddler pantomimed lifting a non-existent glass while the Puppeteer briefly stopped pouring the beer onto his mouth to lift his own glass. Frau Iver appeared to smile a timid, sweet smile. Her seemingly pretty features grew softer but remained as indistinct as an early morning mist.

  Chapter 10

  “He has bleeding on his brain,” his mother said in a voice which Matt understood was meant to be gentle but came off as fake. “They’re going to have to operate. They’re getting him ready for surgery now.”

  Matt heard the words; he recognized the sympathy in his mother’s tone; he even saw the concern on his father’s face. None of it pierced the blackness of his mind. He tried to nod, to give some indication that he understood, but all he managed was a slight shifting of his eyes. He looked at the floor, the colorless tile which had been polished so much that he wasn’t sure dirt could even stick to it anymore. Was that why hospitals had custodians using those polishing machines all the time, to build up an impenetrable floor polish force field? It was effective.

  “Matt, do you understand?” His mother bent her head closer to his, their noses nearly touching. It was an odd choice, he thought. Her face so close to his made his eyes cross. She was just a blurry, indistinct version of his mother. Similar but not an exact copy. There was something off. Something wrong with the whole thing. He turned his face away from the vagueness of his mother.