shifted away from the continent, towards England and its former colonies. I married a Saint-Simonian scholar named Desprez. We enjoy one another well enough, but I consider our marriage a largely failed experiment; as neither of us have yet discovered another, truer love, we have found no reason to relinquish one another’s companionship.
But still, I believe I shall see our gentle revolution won, if “settled by violence” as Elisabeth Cady Stanton warns.
Table of Contents
Dorothy
TPD CAPRS Supplements – CCN:TK–00–050619, Supplement Number: 1
Case Supplement: Topeka Police Department
Supplement of Off F. Lyman #051556 on 06/12
Author: 051556 - Off Frank B. Lyman
At approximately 02:02 on 06/12, responded to report of domestic disturbance, farmhouse in Shawnee County. Henry Gale stood on the front porch. His wife, Emily Gale nee Gage, was screaming from inside the home. I (Off Lyman) requested she open the door, and E. Gale did, but proceeded to throw plates at H. Gale when he attempted to enter the home.
Restrained E. Gale. E. Gale claimed she reported her niece, one Dorothy Gale, missing on 04/17, following Cyclone Maud, later verified (report TK–00–032426). E. Gale stated she discovered D. Gale in cellar beneath the house shortly after midnight with H. Gale.
D. Gale claimed to have been in mystical land of odds, befriended by lion, scarecrow, and tinman. D. Gale did not immediately present signs of intoxication or other impairment. D. Gale had recently suffered injuries consistent with an animal attack.
Upon questioning H. Gale about D. Gale’s initial disappearance and subsequent reappearance, H. Gale became agitated. H. Gale pushed TPD Off R. Thompson to the wall and attempted to flee through the cellar. Thompson stopped H. Gale as he attempted to force cellar doors from inside.
H. Gale taken into custody at approximately 04:39. D. Gale taken in separate unit for medical examination, accompanied by E. Gale. Inclusion of 2 further supplements when available: SANE report, toxicology screen.
Table of Contents
Cinderella Shoes
I’d dressed as a woman before, once on Halloween, and two other times when girls tried to flirt by putting me in drag- not that I could pass (or think that was even the point). An ex-girlfriend of mine once asked me to put on a dress, but it was more because she was having her own identity crisis, and I wanted no part of that.
And it isn’t sexual, which is the first thing most people think. I don’t really feel sexy at all, and that isn’t the point. For that matter, I don’t hate my body, or want to be a woman; I’m not pre-op (although I guess it’s made me more… understanding isn’t right, because I don’t think I do understand, or could, really, but I'm more sympathetic). I don’t even go out like this.
If I were a woman doing this, no one would think twice- a college girlfriend went an entire semester wearing only my clothes, and everyone said it was sexy (all right, I’ll admit it, she looked better in my clothes than I ever have in anything).
And I really want to reiterate that I don’t want to be a woman. I don’t like shaving my legs; I’ve got sensitive skin, and a lot more hair than most women ever have to contend with- but it just doesn’t work without. I stopped with the arm and chest hair; it seems less extreme to just wear long sleeves and buttoned collars, and gloves when I’m feeling really self-conscious about my gorilla-knuckles (which is not a relative of the camel toe).
I haven’t found panties I like (and I know, no women actually call them panties, but for my purpose it’s the right term)- so I usually just wear my faded old boxer-briefs. I wear skirts around the house, and at first I told myself I liked the freedom, that it was all about comfort; my self-delusions faded as my wardrobe expanded to include bright colors, and some dresses far more fashion than function (one I’m still dieting to slip into- Rome wasn’t worn in a day).
And one day I was walking through the mall, sliding through racks of men’s clothes as I glanced over the women’s section, too timid to stand in their aisle, and I spotted them. I’ve often told people that love at first sight is just lust (which is totally fine, just not as Hallmarketable), but I fell in love with the shoes. They cost more than any shoes I’ve ever bought; they cost more than any piece of clothing except my leather jacket, but I had to have them, so much that I tried them on in the store. I didn’t care who saw; and there’s no way to describe the way it felt sliding them on, except that I felt like I was in a Disney movie, and that I’d found my Cinderella shoes.
The shoes aren’t glass- because that would be entirely uncomfortable- besides, glass would feel too dainty, too delicate; I’d fear that a strong step would shatter them. But now that I have my shoes, I realize it is about comfort, in a way. I wear them around the house, when I bake, when I clean, playing video games, or just watching TV. It’s like when I switched from tighty-wighties to boxers, but it gives a calm more than physical. I wear them to feel good about myself; I wear them to be pretty.
Table of Contents
Green Thumb
Dagney Morgan nursed her third coffee of the morning, though her first still hadn't kicked in. She didn’t like being up this early, let alone at work, but her upstairs neighbor’s cat had been hunting a rat in the wall all night. She figured if she was going to be miserable, she had more practice at that in the office.
That didn't mean she disliked her job. She actually had a knack for doing paperwork, and her inner anal retentive got a thrill from filing reports away in the office cabinet. And she loved her boss, even though sometimes his voice set her on edge, particularly on mornings like this one. “Dagney?” he asked from behind her, and her shoulder tightened.
Her parents named her for Dagny Lind, a Swedish actress her father said looked exactly like her mother in Ingmar Bergman’s Crisis. She hated it, because people always assumed she was named after Dabney Coleman- or worse, started to imagine a physical resemblance.
“Dag?” Her boss, Martin Sharpe, asked again. He was older, and had a dour nature, as though he'd just stepped out of an Edgar Allen Poe story. He reminded her of Vincent Price- though maybe that was just the pencil mustache.
“Sir,” she said, her mind still on the reports she’d been trying to read.
“I keep getting pissy messages from McLoughlin’s superintendent. Have you and Nelson checked into that?”
“Uh,” she stalled, but even with the necessary caffeinated fuel, her brain engine was having trouble turning over, “refresh my memory.”
“Merek’s farm. Sits on land adjacent to the aquifer that services the district where the middle school is. If he’s abiding by the regulations, nothing should be getting past the aquitard.”
“I think he prefers to be called Aquaman, or maybe King of Atlantis- I mean, either would be more politically correct than 'aquitard'- even if we suspect he’s falling down on the job.” He had a dry, almost British sense of humor, but he didn’t even give her a smile; maybe his coffee hadn’t kicked in, either.
“Nelson swung by there last Thursday, but Merek wasn’t in,” She said, and pretended to look at the calendar on her desk, to confirm what she’d just made up. Nelson had been face down in her sofa cushions last Thursday- sleeping off a night of binge drinking that made him reek of goat cheese- which at least meant she knew she wasn’t likely to be called out on the lie.
“I need the both of you to head out there today. We can’t have that idiot spilling captan into the drinking water again- or heaven forbid something worse.”
Dagney stood up and wrapped her coat around her shoulders, while she watched him walk back to his office. She grabbed her keys and the bagel she still hadn’t started eating, then lingered a moment to look at Nelson’s empty desk, and sighed.
She called him from her car, but didn’t have the energy to feign surprise when she got no response. She put in a call to Merek, too; her father always told her showing up unannounced out past the suburbs was just asking to get shot at. It was almo
st another hour before her partner finally called back, and by then she was nearly to Merek’s. “What the fuck, man?” she asked.
I fell asleep on the couch- passed out. Muriel wouldn’t let me into bed.”
“Can’t say I blame her- I can smell the booze-sweat through the phone. You never made it out to Merek’s, did you?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. I’ve been on this dirt-ass road to his farm for forty-five minutes now- and Sharpe thinks you’re in the seat next to me.”
He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did it was a little wounded puppy whimper: “… sorry.”
Her grip tightened around the steering wheel, since he wasn’t in throttling distance. “Is there anything I should know here?” she asked, straining not to raise her voice.
“Merek’s been dodging inspections, but he’s not a bad guy. Going back ten years, nothing worse than a couple fines for improper chem disposal.”
“And the captan incident last year.”
“Shit, yeah, that, too.”
“How did you forget it? They traced fungicide from the toilets in the VA hospital to his farm.”
“So? The EPA downgraded captan to ‘not likely’ a carcinogen. The sweetener in my coffee’s worse. Our veterans might be a little worse for wear, but I don’t think any of them drink from the toilets. Though I guess maybe one of their dogs… okay now I feel sad.”
“Even so, the most recent complaint comes from some kids at the middle school who were hospitalized.”
“God.”
“Yeah. And while he might have cleaned up his captan storage, his permits say he’s also got a metric shit-tonne of fertilizers,” she paused. “Heh.” Then she ramped back up, “But if any kids come down with organophosphate poisoning, no amount of me covering your ass will help.”
“Dag- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. And you should dwell on that while I’m cleaning up your mess.” She was being cruel, but it wasn’t anywhere near the first time he’d left her in the lurch; in fact, she had a hard time remembering the last time he hadn’t. His continuous fuck-ups were easily the most consistent thing in her life.
Rob Merek’s land was one of the few family owned farms left in the county. It wasn’t well kept; Merek’s father was a decent businessman but a lousy farmer, and managed to pass only the latter skill set to his son. The younger Merek had learned how to avoid scrutiny, and he made sure his pesticide license was up to date, since that was an obvious way to call attention to himself, but Dagney saw a half-dozen potential violations just driving by his grain warehouse.
She pulled up to his modest house, at least half of which looked like it was patched with old fence boards. There was no ringer, so she knocked with the flat of her palm. No response. She knocked again, louder this time. “Department of Agriculture. You’ve got an inspection.”
She heard the heavy thudding of bare feet on hardwood floors, then the door swung wide. Merek wasn’t wearing anything, unless Dagney counted children's tube socks with blown out elastic or a pair of too-small boxer shorts clinging for life to one ankle- which, on a moment's reflection, she did not. More disturbing, he seemed to be covered in a sticky, green semi-transparent fluid from the middle of his chest to his knees.
“I’m with the Department of Agriculture, here for an inspection.”
“Got all my permits,” he said, and started scratching himself. Vigorously.
“That’s correct, but this is a surprise inspection.”
He eyed her suspiciously, then looked down at his own nudity. “I like to be naked,” he said, matter of factly.
“I need to see where you store your FIFRA applicable chemicals,” she said firmly.
He squinted hard at her, and his entire face scrunched up. He took a big, deep breath, and his eyes closed; Dagney began to wonder if she was going to have to resuscitate him. His eyes burst open with the speed of a frightened rabbit, and they had that kind of panic in them, too. His mouth hung open and his tongue moved spastically around, until he asked, too loud: “Why can’t you people let me be naked?”
“Sir, I’m not the police. But I do need to inspect your fertilizers and pesticides. You certainly have the option to put on pants- I’d consider it a personal kindness if you did - but the decency of your exposure is kind of beyond my purview.”
“You’re purty,” he said, and put his hands in a grabby motion and started pushing them towards her chest; she seized his wrist, and twisted it up and back, forcing him down to one knee.
“Now that I won't tolerate,” she said. She'd carried cuffs ever since that potfarmer nearly broke her wrist the year before, and she retrieved them from her belt. “For my safety, I’m going to cuff you.” She clipped the cuff around the wrist she had hostage. “You’re not under arrest, but given the state of things I think we’ll both be safer this way. Would you like to at least pull up your underpants before I put on the other cuff?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, chastened. He stood up into a squat, and with his free hand wriggled the boxer shorts around his tube-socked foot, then around his bowed legs.
She tried to focus away from the sausage stuffing that was him pulling on those boxer shorts- they must have belonged to the same child as his socks- and asked, “You still storing your pesticides in the little red barn on the south side of the property?”
“Yes,” he said, but realized too late maybe he shouldn’t have, and followed it with “ma’am,” as calmly as he could.
“Are you on anything right now?”
“No ma’am,” he said. But his eyes flicked quickly from the extreme left to the right, and his pupils were so wide they reminded her of a mosquito overfeeding until it burst.
“I’m not DEA- I don’t give a crap,” she said. “But unless you’re on something, then that miosis- the dilation of your pupils- might mean organophosphate exposure. And you’ve been salivating. Maybe you’re hungry, maybe you’re just a drooler- I don’t know you well enough to judge- but that also hints at organophosphates. When we’re done here, you should get yourself to a doctor, just to be sure. Now if you'd be so kind as to lead the way.”
He hobbled past her. “How much do you know about the history of organophosphates?” she asked, and he shrugged and gave a noncommittal grunt. “They come from World War 2 Germany. They were being researched as pesticides, but the Nazis diverted them into nerve agents instead. VX has a similar pedigree, actually.”
Dagney stopped as they got closer to the barn. “See, I already have a problem here. There’s 350 feet from this barn to the aquitard- see that marker there? And it’s supposed to be down slope, which clearly it is not. That's how captan flowed into it last time.” Merek fell in behind her as she berated him. “But what really irritates me, is that these are all things noted in the assessment after your spill last year. It really is like you’re looking for reasons for me to kick your ass- with paperwork, obviously, and not my dainty little girl feet.”
She stopped when they got to the barn. The door was already open a sliver, and Dagney reached for the handle to pull it open enough for them to enter. Suddenly Merek kicked at her, only managing to throw himself off balance; he fell hard into the mud, soiling his off white underpants. “Don’t touch her! You can’t touch her! She’s mine!”
Dagney noticed several leafy vines trailing out of the open door; they had kept it from closing all the way. They ended at the corner of the barn in a dome of leaves, propped up with chicken wire and sticks. She could make out several different varieties of plants by the leaves: pumpkin, cucumber, squash.
Dagney opened the barn door, and felt for a switch in the dark. The lights were on a dimmer, which had apparently last been set to mood lighting, and as she turned around she understood why, and gave up on wanting to see better.
Strewn about the floor were a woman’s clothes: red stiletto pumps, a red miniskirt and an even mini-er top.
/> There was a “woman” lying on a pink flannel blanket, mostly stained the same deep green as Merek's groin. A pair of red silk stockings were stuffed with vines, torn under vinyl, crotchless panties; a matching bra was filled with hefty green winter squashes. Between them a still-growing pumpkin torso made her almost look pregnant. Her arms were cucumbers tied together by their vines. Her head was a turban squash turned on its side. Its lumpy top almost resembled a face, and there was a heavy lathering of eye shadow and smeared lipstick painted over it. Green tendrils mixed with an auburn wig, giving it the appearance of dreadlocked hair.
The vegetable doll lay peacefully back with its legs splayed; there were dents from a pair of big knees in the flannel between them.
Dagney put the doll out of her mind, but focused on the green sludge it was soaked in. The oily gel was pooling in various places on the ground inside the shed. It seemed to be leaking from a variety of different canisters: poisons, pesticides and chemicals.
At that moment, Merek burst into the room. In stumbling to his feet, he’d managed to drag his boxers back around his right ankle. “I love her!” he bellowed, and the words seemed to jiggle with his bare belly and engorged member as he ran towards Dagney. She moved to the side and Merek smacked straight into a post and collapsed to the ground.
“Those pesticides are leaking into the groundwater. We think they’ve made some kids at McLoughlin Middle School sick,” she said. She was angry, as much about him possibly poisoning kids, as him charging at her like a pissed off green unicorn.
His tears formed a river with the blood flowing from his lip. “You don’t have to tell me about my land. I worked this land my whole life. I know my land. Biblically.”
Dagney sighed. “No person shall transport, store, dispose of, display, or distribute any pesticide or pesticide container in such a manner as to have unreasonable adverse effects on the environment. I’m pretty sure that was an attempted assault, too. Now you are going to be arrested- or fined, at least.” Dagney put a hand under his sweaty arm and pulled him up. He stumbled groggily, and she led him outside. “Sit,” she said, and set him flat against the side of the barn. With his hands cuffed behind him, unless the big man was a contortionist, he wasn’t getting up without help.
She called hazmat and the sheriff’s office, and was about to dial Nelson when she heard a cracking sound from inside the barn. She thought it might be one of the aging pesticide containers rupturing. “Crap,” she said, “exactly what I need.”
She hurried inside and scanned the chemical drums that lined the barn. While several were in disrepair, and a couple were even leaking from pinholes, none had broken open. Her eyes scanned the room for movement, and she listened for the sound of
Selected Short Stories Featuring Cinderella Shoes Page 13