The First Story

by C Bradley Owens

  “What are you doing now?” Frau Iver asked, but she was incapable of producing a hint of sarcasm or disdain, which was really starting to irk her, but she just couldn’t bring herself to feel very irked, and that was truly irksome; instead, she found herself humming gently under her breath like a happy person and thinking about Paroxysm. Her story was both familiar and completely new at the same time. It was, well, not very irksome. In fact, she felt comforted by the realization that Paroxysm’s story was fresh in a way that all the stories of Creativity should be.

  “Did it!” Paroxysm shouted from the bushes. She had ripped out a sufficient mass of branches to make it through the barrier, and she stood among the trees.

  “Are we really going to leave the path?” Frau Iver whispered as she slowly stepped in Paroxysm’s direction. “I guess we don’t have a choice.” Frau Iver continued to walk forward. The edge of the path gave way to the roots of the bushes, which turned into the nettle carpet of the Woods. Soon she was standing under the trees, where she had never stood before.

  Paroxysm smiled broadly and clapped Frau Iver on the back, which produced a whooshing sound. The Eternal Gloaming shuddered as they walked further into the Gloaming Woods.

  Paroxysm walked ahead, making sure the way was clear. Frau Iver watched the woman beat back branches and bramble with a makeshift walking stick that was really just a fallen branch. There was something so trustworthy about this crazy new Aspect. Yes, she was an Aspect. That much had suddenly become clear. She had not replaced the Dottore. Maybe the Dottore had just been offering an introduction. The thoughts in her head jumbled. She used her new-found voice to organize them. “If the Dottore is still around, then that means that Droll Mary is as well, and whereas the Dottore is notoriously difficult to find, Droll Mary is always nearby.”

  A gust of wind rustled the trees and sounded suspiciously like a whisper of encouragement, but Frau Iver felt the need to ask out loud, “Should I really just keep following the crazy stranger I met in the Woods toward a mysterious tower I’ve never heard of?”

  The trees were silent on the matter.

  An exasperated sigh was the only answer Frau Iver could conjure for herself. She shrugged her shoulders and fell in line behind Paroxysm. “I really do hope the others are making more ground than I am, and I hope Baba Vedma is in a receptive mood today.” The wind howled briefly, very briefly, but the sound lingered.

  Chapter 32

  Matt walked back into the room, and Mrs. Hensley turned slowly, tiredly in his direction. She had been crying, looking out the window, and allowing the silence to shroud her. Matt began his work in earnest. He ripped down a poster of smiling faces that turned into frown faces—which was somehow the scientific method for identifying pain levels—and took the little balls of blue putty off of each of the corners. He mashed the putty into a larger ball and pressed it against the back of a loudly ticking clock he had just stolen from the nurses’ station in the surgery waiting room. He affixed the clock to the wall. It fell. He pressed harder. It fell again. He set it on the bedside table and leaned it against the wall; then he took out a sharpie, similarly ‘found’ on an unattended desk. He made a large black mark on the current hour.

  “Twenty-four hours,” he said, jabbing a finger at the mark he had just made. He bent down beside John’s ashen face and spoke with force and conviction. “Twenty-four hours, John. You hear that? You are going to wake up in twenty-four hours.” He left the room again.

  A scraping sound filled the room as Matt reappeared, dragging a chair behind him, a backpack dangling off his shoulder.

  “Sit.” He pointed to the chair Mrs. Hensley had just relinquished. She dumped back into her chair and watched him with curiosity. He pulled his chair, wedging it between the wall and the bed, as close to John’s head as he could get. Then he pulled open the backpack and removed a notebook. “All right,” he began. “So, the Toy Peddler responded to the call from the Sister of Monsters. I’m going to need your input on the names when you wake up. Not sure about some of them. I liked them at the time, but they might be a little weird. Don’t know. You can tell me later. Anyway, they have this Council meeting at the Inn at the Edge of the Woods. I see it as a kind of metaphor, or maybe an allegory, for all those places where adventures start.”

  Matt kept talking. His voice was warm and happy. Words filled the space. Stories painted the air. Colors invaded the gray, but underneath it all, so quiet as to be completely unnoticed, was a steady tick, tick, tick.

  Chapter 33

  A Gingerbread House

  She pulled the baking sheets from the oven, a massive, oversized monstrosity she had constructed to better accomplish her baking needs, and pushed against the gingerbread with her bare fingers. It was firm enough. Perfect, in fact, to finish the outside wall.

  She shuffled toward the front of her freshly baked front room and slathered royal icing along the negative space between two panels of gingerbread. She turned the baking sheets over, allowing the gingerbread to fall freely into her palm; then she lifted it into place. She repeated with the other, and the front wall was complete. She only needed to add the decorations, gumdrops, hard candy, and such.

  While the front wall cooled, she set to work preparing the oven for her next baking endeavor—the children. Her mouth watered at the thought of her upcoming meal. She glanced at the kitchen table where she had put her pulled sugar scrying plate and quickly calculated how long it would take the little ones to skip and frolic right to her door and then into her oven. She smiled a wicked, snaggletoothed smile.

  Then she paused in her preparations. She touched her teeth and jerked her hand away. “They’re sharp!” She continued to feel her teeth, hurrying to her scrying plate full of hardened sugar. “Sugar? What self-respectin’ witch uses sugar in magic? ‘Tis ridiculous!” She lifted the plate and used it as a makeshift mirror. She touched her wiry hair, her bulbous nose complete with warts, her teeth—those pointy, disgusting fangs. “This be wrong,” she said. “This all be wrong. ‘Tis…passin’ strange?” The sugar in the plate glowed, and she saw two children, holding hands, afraid and alone in the forest, walking straight toward her edible edifice. She flung the plate against the wall, allowing the clattering shards of sugar to settle before she inspected the room.

  Baking goods. Flour, milk, eggs, an inordinate amount of sugar, literally sacks full of sugar, so much sugar. No wonder me teeth be rottin’ out of me head, she thought. Then another thought: This be not me.

  A knock at the door, and Baba Vedma whirled around and screamed, “Go away! I’m closin’ up me house! Not gonna eat any children today! Take whatever candy ye want and get thee hence!”

  “Baba Vedma?” A timid, familiar voice called from behind the candy-coated door.

  “A door covered in candy? Insane!” Baba Vedma whispered. “What keeps the birds away, or the bugs for that matter? Keepin’ this place clean and vermin-free must take every minute of every day. And for what? To lure children? Children? What possible good or power be there in eatin’ children? Craziness!”

  Another timid knock.

  “Who be that?” Baba Vedma called.

  “It’s the Sister of Monsters. Can I speak with you?”

  One of the Council of Aspects. The Council might have some answers. Baba Vedma shot to the door and flung it open. The Sister of Monsters nearly ducked behind the candy-coated wall and had to steel herself from running away screaming.

  “What be goin’ on!” Baba Vedma shouted.

  “Wh-what do you mean?” the Sister of Monsters whimpered.

  “This!” Baba Vedma exclaimed and broke off a large piece of wall. She held up the gingerbread in front of the Sister of Monsters. “What be this? A gingerbread house? I be waitin’ to bake children in that ridiculous oven!” Baba Vedma’s eyes suddenly grew large and angry. She stepped forward and flung the piece of wall toward the treeline, where it fell at the feet of two frightened children. “Get thee hence!” Baba Vedma shouted and then broke o
ff another piece of wall and flung it. “Take this! Eat till ye puke!” She broke another piece and threw it. Then another. Then another.

  The children examined the offering, then scooped up armfuls of wall and headed back off into the trees. The Sister of Monsters examined the torn walls and surreptitiously popped a gumdrop into her mouth before calling out to the children, “Have a good day!” She waved and tried to smile, but she was still shaking from all the screaming.

  “Well, are ye gonna to stand there all day, or are ye gonna to tell me what be goin’ on?” Baba Vedma shoved by the little-girl Aspect, returning to the interior of the house. “Get in this ludicrous house, and start thy storytelling!”

  The Sister of Monsters entered and sat on a squishy chair. “What is this?” She asked, nearly falling off her awkwardly swaying seat.

  “It be gingerbread!” Baba Vedma shouted again. “Everything in this stupid house be made of the stuff. Gingerbread or candy! What sort of idiot thinks, ‘Oh, I’m gonna bake me a house today’?”

  “Isn’t this your house?” the Sister of Monsters asked, popping another gumdrop into her mouth, desperately trying to sound authoritative.

  “No!” Baba Vedma slammed her fist onto the table, breaking off a large chunk of it. “Look at that! Seriously, who builds a house out of cake?”

  “If it’s not your house,” the Sister of Monsters asked, her mouth full of candy, “whose house is it?”

  “That be what I be askin’ you.” Baba Vedma’s teeth would have clenched had there been sufficient remnants of teeth to allow for clenching.

  “Your story has been changed.” The Sister of Monsters was midway through eating a mouthful of gingerbread and had to pause to swallow.

  “Changed, eh? Altered, aye.” Baba Vedma grew pensive. Her brow furrowed and she wandered around the room. She picked up a jar made of sugar, containing hard candy. “I used to live with me sisters in a cave,” she said.

  “That’s right.” The Sister of Monsters tried to drop the handfuls of candy she had absentmindedly collected; instead, she shoved more into her mouth. “You and your sisters lived in a cave and you—”

  “Wove tapestries,” Baba Vedma interjected. “I remember. Me story has been changed. I knew it, could feel it.”

  “But how did you know that?” The Sister of Monsters took hold of herself and purposefully dropped the candy on the gingerbread table. She licked her fingers.

  “I be Baba Vedma. I do not lower meself to eatin’ children. Leave that to common Elements.” She straightened her back, lifted her chin. The power that was her right as one of the earliest Aspects glowed within her like a fire of creation.

  “Okay,” the Sister of Monsters said. “Then, Baba Vedma, who would have the power to change your story?”

  “No one,” Baba Vedma said emphatically, then with thought, “unless…the First Story.”

  “That’s right.” The Sister of Monsters found another gumdrop in her mouth but had no memory of how it got there. “Any idea who might have taken it?”

  Baba Vedma leaned against the wall, and her shoulder made a large indentation. She huffed and straightened herself. “Me best guess, ‘twould be someone on the level of an Aspect. Lower ranks would not be able to accomplish control of the story.”

  “Agreed,” the Sister of Monsters asserted, forcing herself to drop yet another piece of candy she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Any ideas which Aspect that could be.”

  “Aye, I have more than a plenty of ideas,” Baba Vedma said and then walked purposefully from the house. The Sister of Monsters hesitated for just a moment before realizing she was gone and then hurried to catch up to her. “Me main suspect is Droll Mary.”

  “Droll Mary?” The Sister of Monsters exclaimed. “She’s not an Aspect. She’s one of the—”

  “Duality, aye,” Baba Vedma stated. “And this be exactly the type of thing she would find funny.”

  “Changing the structures of stories?” the Sister of Monsters asked. “Playing with all of Creativity. That’s funny to her?”

  “Exactly,” Baba Vedma said and quickened her pace along the path through the deep parts of the Gloaming Woods. The Sister of Monsters shrugged before hurrying to follow, trailing crumbs of gingerbread behind her as she went.

  Chapter 34

  Droll Mary

  The widow walked into the sanctuary and inspected the flowers. They were set out at the appropriate intervals. She touched the front cover of the guestbook. It was red leather, just as she had requested. She listened to the music. It was just the right mix of familiar and gloomy. Everything was as it should be—except for the constant sound of intermittent farts filling the otherwise somber room.

  “Is there really nothing you can do?” she asked the funeral director.

  The elderly man in the simple black suit shook his head. “I am so sorry about this. The mortician has been alerted, but seeing as it is Sunday—”

  “But this is his mistake,” the widow pressed. “It should be a matter of professional pride for him to rectify the situation. I mean really, who has ever heard of a farting corpse?”

  “It is highly unusual,” the director responded. Then, as if lost in thought, “Usually, the body is punctured during embalming, which allows the built-up gases to escape. Even if that is not done, there needs to be some sort of tightening of the sphincter muscle to emit an audible release of gas from the posterior. Dead bodies lack the ability to contract muscle. But then, I suppose, there could have been an inordinate amount of tightening before death, and that could account for the exceptionally tight anus.”

  The widow looked at the director with a perfect mixture of hate and disdain marking her otherwise pretty features. “Yes, I suppose that answers it.”

  “Sorry, Madam,” the director said, his eyes turned toward the floor. “I was just thinking out loud. I didn’t mean to offend.”

  “Well, perhaps you could keep your thoughts to yourself? Maybe you could try to tighten your mind’s sphincter or, at least, your face’s sphincter.” She pointed to his mouth.

  “I will endeavor to try.”

  “And get the mortician down here.” The widow spoke in a controlled voice that was at the proper level, but the director couldn’t help but feel he had been yelled at. “The funeral starts in one hour. If he hasn’t gotten every single bit of air out of my husband’s…body by then, I will not be happy.”

  She turned and walked purposefully from the room, pausing only once to readjust a flower stand on her way. The director turned to the coffin. He gingerly placed a hand on the dead man’s stomach and pushed just a bit. The sound that escaped echoed through the confined space, drowning out the softly playing music. “Oh dear,” the director sighed and covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief.

  The door to the sanctuary flew open, and the mortician blew into the room like an erstwhile tornado. He flung his overcoat across the first pew, nearly toppling the flower stand adorned with white peonies, and carried his satchel to the lectern in front of the coffin. The director made a mental note to readjust the flower stand after the problem of the air was addressed.

  “It’s about time,” the director hissed, trying not to allow his voice to travel beyond the sanctuary in case one of the guests had arrived early. “You need to fix this.” He twirled his finger with a flourish and pointed at the coffin.

  “Fix what?” the mortician asked, clearly taken aback. He had assumed that the particular widow had objected to the dress shirt not being pressed properly or the pant seam not lining up with the pleats in the silk extend-over.

  As if in response, a loud toot issued forth from the coffin, followed by a series of fluttering hisses. The director covered his eyes with one hand and continued to point with the other. He bent the elbow of his pointing arm and flexed it violently three times in the direction of the continuing flutter-hiss.

  “Oh, I see,” the mortician said and stepped up to the coffin. “There seems to be an excess of gas built u
p, and the usual escape route is unusually tight.”

  “Yes, that was my assessment as well.”

  “We just need to, um, well, we need to stretch out the…um…”

  “I do not need to hear the particulars. Just get it done.” The director huffed and hurried from the room.

  The mortician lifted the lower coffin lid, listening to the rubber gasket release with a sucking sound that was the exact opposite of the hissing sounds, and he examined the suit situation. He unbuttoned the jacket and unlatched the belt. He pulled the crisp white shirt from the waistband and unbuttoned the pants. He pulled at the waistband, causing the zipper teeth to pull apart. He then began to wrestle the pants down the legs.

  “What do you think you are doing?” The widow’s voice filled the room. She walked quickly—nearly ran, if that would have been acceptable—to the coffin and grabbed the mortician’s wrist.

  “I’m the mortician, madam. I am trying to fix—”

  A rapid repeat of several bursts of air punctuated his words.

  The widow dropped his wrist and turned her head away. “Good, good. We can’t have him…doing that…in the middle of the ceremony. So, get to it.”

  “It would go faster if you helped with the pants.”

  “Why? What are you taking his pants off for?”

  “Just help me,” the mortician instructed, and the two got to work. The task was accomplished much quicker with four hands at play, and soon, the corpse’s pants were around his ankles, and his legs were bent at the knees, his feet firmly pushed up toward his torso. “There,” the mortician announced. “We are ready to perform the procedure.” He went to his satchel, opened it, and began rummaging.

  “What procedure?” the widow asked.

  “We need to increase the circumference of the offending orifice,” the mortician answered as he held up a silver speculum.