New People of the Flat Earth

by Brian Short

  The diner, large as it was, was packed near to capacity. I waited as harried waitstaff rushed about, and once the three large families ahead of me were seated, a girl no more than seventeen and clearly exhausted asked how many were in my party.

  I was the last person waiting in the foyer. “Me?” I said, pointing at myself.

  She gave me a look. Next I found myself led to a booth large enough that a truck could park in it. She set a wide, laminated menu in front of me and another directly across. Throughout the dining room small children screamed, climbed the tables, and ran serpentine patterns over the carpet while their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins ignored, scolded, or pleaded with them, all tactics achieving the same utter lack of effect. “Your waitress will be with you shortly,” she said, already walking away, past a cluster of small, empty tables. I buried my face in a book. I knew what I wanted.

  When I looked up again at the shape that approached, the waitress, a middle-aged woman with an order pad held in front of her, unfazed by the surrounding chaos, took a look at my face and all but gasped in horror.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I just had an accident.”

  Now she gave me a look, though it seemed she didn’t want to ask.

  “Coffee and chicken fried steak? With eggs? Scrambled. Whole wheat?”

  “Is that everything?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She looked across the table to the empty bench and the menu laying there, then back at me, her eyebrows raised.

  “Really, that’s everything.”

  “Okay…” She took both menus and I stuck my face into the paperback. When I looked up again to thank her for the cup and thermos of coffee she’d brought, the dining room was all but empty. The families had all cleared out. Family time was over. But Proteus sat across from me, looking confused. His face was similarly bruised and, now, badly swollen. Just like mine.

  “I don’t think,” he said, “you should have told him the future.”

  I ignored him, put my face back into my book.

  When I looked up again, when the waitress brought my plate of food, he was gone. He’d wandered off.

  The wide, ceramic plate reflected dingy sunlight from outside, the same light that spread thin through the dense, gathering clouds, and the peaked light from those fixtures in the ceiling overhead, weak and sick as they seemed, weak and pale in the wash of gray daylight. The plate was bigger than the food, but it was a very big plate. I stared down at it, white and round and scuffed from use, scuffed around the edges. The food was a pile in the middle. It was covered in gravy the same color as the sky, and flecked with little dark dots. My hands reached for a fork and a knife and hovered above it. They hovered above the food. They hesitated. I watched.

  I watched as the plate changed. It changed into a paper plate. Like a movie crossfade. My chicken fried steak and my eggs and toast changed into a round little loop of dough that sat within the plate; they changed; they changed into a doughnut (la-la). The light was different too. The light was full and strong and yellow-white, and bright through a whole bank of windows. I looked around. The entire room was windows. And the plate with its doughnut (it looked like a really nice doughnut) was on top of a bright orange table, beaming bright, reflective orange, a little sticky with something spilled, I could see, but altogether, candy-colored.

  What?

  I reached; I reached my hesitant hand forward; I reached forward to touch the doughnut, and then I – just barely – I just barely touched it. Just a little. Just barely.

  It was a little greasy. It was covered in sugar. It sprang back where I touched it.

  And as I pulled my hand away slowly, it faded away slowly, a slow dissolve, back into the food I’d asked for, and I was once more in the diner, in the pale light, and everything was normal again. And everything was normal again.

  THIRTEEN

  The World

  [2005]

  At the Belltown office of Persun, Progress & Persun that Monday morning, when I’d come to present them with the photos I’d taken, I found the brothers, off to the far back corner of the large studio space, one with the other in a headlock on the floor, the other punching the first as best as he could in the kidney. Rick paced the open space looking worried and annoyed, though when he saw me step in from the street, these changed to surprise. He paused a beat… “Well, you’re in the right place, from looks of you.”

  “Huh? Oh, right,” I said, once it dawned on me what he meant, “I just got beat up by this… by this big Indian…” watching the brothers Persun scrabble across the floor as they knocked over a torchier lamp, which shattered against the cement floor. “Is everything okay…? I should maybe come back later?”

  “Forget it,” Rick said resignedly, “this is normal. Let’s go over here, out of their way, maybe we can talk.” Once he’d sat me at a table in another room, he got a look, as though he’d been rehearsing how he would tell me this.

  “Uh-oh…”

  “Look, I probably should have called you on the road, but really, by the time we knew about it, it was already too late.”

  I was glad that he hadn’t, since in person I could understand him.

  “There’s been a mix-up,” he said. “A colossal fucking… I don’t even know where to start. I guess, first, just understand, this is nothing that you’ve done wrong. You’ve done everything we asked, perfectly in fact.”

  Something heavy scraped over the floor in the studio and I could hear a voice – I couldn’t tell which – going, “Uh… uh… UH… uh…” And then, “Mother… fucker…” followed by weeping.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “The website’s been cancelled. It turns out that somehow there is no Board of Tourism. There hasn’t been for a whole year. Perhaps longer.”

  I thought about this, doing calculations in my head. “But you’ve been working on this for… for how long?” I asked.

  “A year. Almost.”

  “And they’ve been paying you?” Squinting.

  “Yes.”

  “And they’ve been telling you, all this time, what they want and how to do it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But they haven’t been there…”

  “Right… well, they have and they haven’t. There was some sort of budget allocation confusion the fiscal year before, not to mention a lack of communication all around, and the Board never actually got the message they’d been defunded and shut down. Since their paychecks were still cashing, they thought they still existed. Part of the reason they never got the message was because the head of the office hadn’t been in to work for such a long time that the rest of the Board all but forgot they even had one, though it was from this same, empty office that various mandates – including the coordinates for these locations you’ve been scouting out – were all issued.”

  “There was, what, an empty office? Issuing mandates?”

  “In this empty office was a computer that had never been shut off, that continued to send out emails on some kind of automated schedule. The head of the Tourism Board must have set it up before he disappeared. Or she. Really, no one had been in the office for so long, they couldn’t remember if it was a man or a woman who was supposed to be their boss. It explains a lot, really.”

  “I suppose,” I said, “except, well, it doesn’t… because, in that case, where –”

  “Don’t worry. We’re going to pay you, just like we agreed. If those clowns out there have stopped fighting long enough…” Rick looked over his shoulder, through a window to see the brothers, who were now exhausted, looking remorsefully over the damage they’d caused. “Right. I’ll get Arthur to print you up a check. We’ve been paid thus far, so we can pay you. I mean, we’d pay you anyhow – that’s not the issue – but at least we can cover it and we’re not operating at a loss.”

  I pulled the flash drive containing the photos from my pocket, along with travel receipts. “Do you want this?”

  “
I guess. Why not? I’m curious to see what you made of that weird doughnut thing at the end. And holy shit, what happened to your hand?”

  “The what? What doughnut thing?” My chest had tightened up.

  “That bizarre monument, the one at the end of your list?” He inserted the USB device into his laptop. “I’ve actually been there. It’s called ‘The Metal Tears –’”

  “‘– of St Stephen’, yes. I’ve wondered about that. But, it’s no doughnut. A doughnut hole maybe, but not… not a…”

  “Here it is.” He’d found the relevant files and opened them. “Yeah, see? I don’t understand it at all, but it’s hilarious. I love it.” He turned the laptop so that I could see the photographs that I myself had taken. And he was right: there was no sphere. It was not as I’d remembered it. Instead, I’d shot all these pictures of a huge doughnut, its surface pitted and rusted, the paint in places flaked off. Maybe thirty-feet high, it stood on its side in the middle of the field. I’d shot the thing from all sorts of angles. Quite clearly. Almost as if I’d known what I was looking at.

  “I thought something’d seemed wrong…” I said.

  “Really. Somebody… I don’t know, I guess they got the signage from some old doughnut shop maybe? And hauled it out there? You thought it was a what?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “Your hand looks like raw sausage. It’s like twice the size.”

  “I know. I touched something, I think. And then this happened.”

  “What, you touched a giant poison jellyfish?”

  “Like that, a little. So I guess this means –”

  “Well clearly this means we’re done with the project. We’re backing up everything we’ve put together and shelving it, and there’s nothing more we need from you. We’ll give you a call?”

  I walked out onto the street, into the late-morning bustle, with a check in hand, which I didn’t look at the figure printed on it until later. Some might not have been impressed. There was a time maybe I wouldn’t have been impressed. Still, it was more money than I’d held in my hands for near on twelve years.

  •

  When I arrived at Inn House Manor, the night of that same Monday, having run the gamut of sentinel ghosts who stood or sat or twisted their bodies in watch outside the building, and while inside everything was sort of whirling, I found Wade, haggard, at the desk. He looked up at me as I entered – something more of a nervous flinch than his characteristically thoughtful assessment – his face gray and hollow and bleak. Since he was also the morning person, usually coming in at seven, that meant he’d probably been at work for nearly sixteen hours.

  “What are you still doing here?” I asked, and, “Where’s Vivianne?”

  He didn’t answer at once, but rather stared at me for a moment, as if he were the one surprised to see me. Finally, he said, “What on Earth happened to you? You look like you got the shit kicked out of you.”

  “I got the shit kicked out of me.”

  “Should I ask about the other guy?”

  “I think he got what he deserved. But where’s Vivianne?”

  “Vivianne. Yes, well. She doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “She’s, what, been fired?”

  “After a manner of speaking, I suppose. Until a couple of days ago, she’d found people to fill in and work her shifts for her. Then she stopped doing even that much, and I’ve not heard anything more. No notice, nothing. She’s just gone, and I’ve been here ever since, trying to find someone to take over her shift. So, yes, it’s safe to say she’s out of a job.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’ll probably be interested to know what’s happening with the case against you.”

  “Um.”

  “Relax. There is none. The investigation’s already come and gone. You didn’t even have to be here for it, so how do you like that? No, it was clear to the investigative committee, who sent an inspector to look things over, what it was that actually happened, which was nothing. Rose is at the hospital still, under observation, and it’s up in the air whether she’ll be living here again when she gets out. She probably needs a greater level of care than we can give her, which is unfortunate. Or fortunate, depending on which way you look at it. Willy, on the other hand, is still missing and nobody’s seen him.”

  “Ah. Have you checked the other place?”

  “What ‘other place’?”

  “I don’t… actually know what I meant by that.”

  Wade looked at me with deep suspicion.

  “His shoes…”

  “Proteus? What actually happened to you? And what’s wrong with your hand?”

  “It’s okay. I can still kind of hold things.”

  “That isn’t the point. You look like you’re in shock. I mean, granted, I haven’t slept, everything seems a bit twisted to me right now. But you’re fucked up. What happened?”

  “I’m alright. I just got bit by a spider. It was a really big spider. But I’m okay.” But when I opened my eyes again, Wade’s face was hovering over mine, pale with concern. “Why am I on the floor?”

  “You fell over,” he told me.

  “I did? When?”

  “Don’t try and stand up.”

  “No, look, I’m okay, I just… oh…”

  “Really, don’t stand up. Just stay where you are.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Can I get a cigarette? Oh. Why is he on the floor?”

  “Not now, Davis. Come back later. Proteus, let me get your legs up on this backpack of yours.”

  “But I’m… oh…”

  “It’s a… a floor brain!”

  “Mary, Davis, everybody, just get back. Meds will be passed out a little later tonight, okay? Just give us some room. There.” He shut the office door. “Proteus, really. Can you do this? I wouldn’t leave you here. I’d tell you just go home, but I’ve been on for forty-eight hours. I really can’t take any more. I’m starting to hallucinate. Are you hurt? You look like you got hit by a car. What did you say about a spider?”

  “It was huge. The office sent me to it, and it bit my… soul.”

  “And what was that about the future?”

  “When?”

  “The future. Just before you fell over.”

  “I… don’t like to… because what happened to the Indian…”

  Yes, tell me about the Indian. But that wasn’t what Wade actually said, was it? His concern had turned professional. A mask of purposeful concentration slid over his pale features, his eyes now clear and focused as he found and laid over me a gray cotton hoodie from the coatrack near the door, one no doubt abandoned by somebody on staff, forgotten after a shift and never reclaimed. Perhaps it was Vivianne’s. I told myself it was so, and thus by proxy, some part of her now reached me, touched me, gave what comfort it could.

  “Proteus. Tell me about the Indian.”

  “The future is a thing sometimes better not known,” I said. “I think he understands that now. It was his gift. To me, you understand – what he gave to me. The knowledge. My reluctance? It was never for nothing. But if I tell you what will happen, it can only destroy you. Do you see? That’s why I don’t. Or why I say I won’t. But he wasn’t interested in any of that. And mostly, I just don’t want to get involved.”

  “I need for you to get up now, if you can.”

  And so I lifted off the floor. And floated. The jacket draped from me. The magician, a large Indian man, ran a hula hoop down the length of my body, demonstrating to the audience how there were no wires to hold me up, and therefore real magic.

  “And now, if you’re ready, to stand…”

  And I rotated up into a standing position, my feet setting gently onto the floor. I held the jacket against my body to stay warm and feel love. Upright now, I saw that he was at the desk, checking over the logs of the day before, squinting his eyes (he should really have brought his glasses) to read the scribbled notes in the inadequate light. Then Proteus carefully shut the notebook and looke
d up, and seemed to notice me. I may have been mistaken. It was hard to tell if recognition were there concealed within the impassive mask of his face. His eyes at least seemed to linger for a moment at the spot where I stood. Taking a glance throughout the room, I saw that Wade had gone, or at any rate wasn’t there.

  The door to the office was open, so I stepped through it and out into the foyer. The round, bearded man, the one I’d never seen before the other night, was there. He stood near an alcove that had a tall vase with plastic flowers in it, and he held the vase with both of his hands and smiled broadly. He didn’t lift the vase, but only held it, as if receiving much-needed energy from it, or perhaps instead giving it some of his. He turned his head as if to look at me, and though he did look in my direction, like Proteus, it was unclear whether he actually saw me. It was possible, I realized then, that I may be invisible.

  I walked into the living room, where everyone stared at the television. Its picture swayed and wavered and fuzzed in and out. Davis was stretched asleep over the length of an entire sofa. Every other mismatched chair or broken couch contained a person. All eyes on the television. No one noticed me.

  Invisible. Yes, perhaps…

  I drift into the hallway. Various small sounds reach me here, but for the most part, you could say this hallway is nearly silent. This is not an unreasonable thing to say. I like this silence, or this near-silence, the gathering cold, the stillness, the sense of age, the lightness – because, yes, finally, this is a lightness, isn’t it? – the floating body-sense of unbeing, the sinking through uncertain gravities. Like when I was underwater. Yes, this is the same. And so I touch the textured walls with my left hand, the one not swollen, and drag the pads of my fingers across them, and sometimes through the vague, oily substances that have seeped from or accumulated over them and gathered dust, and become thick with it, like mud, over the decades. And so I drift into the shadows, the darker they become, and I drift down and in it, down and through and in it, and down, and down, and down, and disappear.