by Strand, Jeff
But Humptin looked up at the knight. "It's all right," he said, voice barely a whisper. "The pain has already faded. Everything is numb. I'm ready to let go."
"No!"
"Even if you put me back together, I'll never be the same. I'll be horribly disfigured. I'll be a burden on the kingdom. I don't want to live like that."
"You're speaking madness! I vow to all of the gods that we will not let you die!"
"Please," said Humptin. "I'm ready to go. I'm ready."
The crowd gasped and parted as King Tiberius himself walked through the front gate and over to the carnage. The King placed his hand on the knight's shoulder. "It's time to let him go," he said, softly.
The knight nodded. He tried to wipe a tear from his eye, but couldn't get at it through the helmet, so instead he stood up. "You are a brave egg-man, Humpty Dumpty. You die with honor and will be forever remembered."
"Thank you."
And then the darkness overtook Humptin Dumptin, and he was no more.
Though he was dead, all the king's men tried to put him back together again, so his shell could be placed in the kingdom's library as a glorious, if macabre, reminder of the very odd citizen they'd lost.
But they couldn't do it, so they settled for a nursery rhyme in his honor instead.
He will be forever remembered.
R.I.P.
THE STORY OF MY FIRST KISS
"Who did this?" asked Ms. Tyrone, picking up the severed head by the hair. Some drops of blood spattered on her desk as she looked around the classroom.
None of us responded. I noticed Joey trying to stifle a giggle.
"I know you all think these pranks are oh-sooooo-funny, but they're not, and I expect them to stop immediately," Ms. Tyrone informed us in a very stern voice. She held the head up in front of her to examine it more closely. "Who is this? Can anybody identify her?"
Melissa, who sat in the front row, raised her hand.
"Yes, Melissa?"
"It's Daphne Ridge."
"From Mr. Pendleton's class?"
Melissa nodded.
"So one of you decapitated an honors student. Well, class, we're going to sit here until the guilty party confesses. No recess, no lunch, just sitting here with your heads down until I find out who's responsible."
The entire class groaned.
"And if anybody says a word except to fess up, they'll find themselves staying after class. I'm not kidding around." She set Daphne's head back down on her desk. "This is completely unacceptable."
Ms. Tyrone did indeed force us to sit there through lunch and afternoon recess, but at two-thirty she made us take our spelling test. She couldn't keep the entire class after school, I guess, so when the dismissal bell rang we all got to leave.
I caught up with Joey in the hallway, as he quickly walked toward the exit. "Jerk," I said, punching him on the arm.
"What?"
"Why'd you leave the head on Ms. Tyrone's desk?"
"It was funny."
"You're gonna get me in trouble."
"Then you shouldn't be killing people."
"The next time I do, I'm not gonna show you. You know I'll never get that head back, right? You're always doing stuff like this to me."
"You've still got her torso."
"The torso's no fun. First Michael steals her legs, then Adrienne steals her best arm, then Michael's dog steals her other arm, and then you get her head taken away. It's not fair."
"Wahhh wahhh."
I wanted to hit Joey again, but Principal Smith was standing right by the main doors, so I didn't. We walked out of the building and Joey ran over to his bus.
Stupid Joey. He was always doing these pranks. This one time, I was going to try out cannibalism, and I cooked an arm on my dad's grill. I would've gotten in so much trouble if he caught me, but I did it anyway, and I grilled it absolutely perfect on my first try. I invited Joey over, and do you know what he did? He put sugar in the salt shaker, just to be funny. The arm tasted terrible.
Another time, I was going to wear human skin as a mask, and when I had the flesh tanned exactly the way I wanted, he drew a great big mustache on it. With permanent ink. I had to just throw the face away.
I don't know why I was even friends with him. I guess part of the reason is that when you have an uncontrollable desire to kill, a lot of the other kids are mean to you. Joey drove me crazy sometimes, but he never judged me, and he never tattled.
I was pretty mad about Daphne's head, but I had too much homework that evening to go out and claim another victim. I thought about setting the alarm for an hour early so I could get one before school, but that never worked. I always kept hitting the snooze button until it was time to get up for real.
When Joey and I walked into the classroom the next morning, there was another severed head on Ms. Tyrone's desk. "Aw, man," I said.
I knew who did it. Oscar was sitting at his desk, trying not to giggle. I couldn't stand him, because he was a copycat killer. He could never come up with any cool ideas of his own. If I killed somebody with a corkscrew, Oscar would do the same thing the next day. He wouldn't even change the profile of the victim. I didn't recognize the head, but knowing Oscar, she was an honors student.
"I'm going to tell Ms. Tyrone that it was you," I told him.
"You'd better not."
"I am."
"Yeah, right."
"I mean it."
Oscar looked at me carefully, and then his lip began to tremble. "Please don't," he said. Yeah, Oscar wasn't just a copycat, he was a crybaby. I hated him.
Of course, I didn't tell on him, even when Ms. Tyrone made us sit with our heads down most of the morning. She was really mad this time, but there's a code of honor: even if somebody is a whiny little copycat baby like Oscar, you don't tell on him.
After school, I went down to the bus station and killed a vagrant with a pitchfork. (I don't even know why the pitchfork was in the garage. It wasn't like we ever scooped hay with it.) He was light from malnutrition, so I got him into my wheelbarrow and pushed him home along the railroad tracks where not many people could see me.
"What are you gonna do with him?" Joey asked as I lay the vagrant's body out in my backyard.
"Dunno."
"What about something to raise Satan?"
I shook my head. "Satan sucks."
"You could cover him with snakes."
"Why would I do that?"
"It'd be cool."
"No, it wouldn't."
"Then what are you gonna do?"
I shrugged. "Maybe I'll beat him with a hammer and see how much I can flatten him. If I took a piece of gold, I could flatten it out until it filled this whole yard."
"For real?"
"Yeah."
"Let's do that!"
So we did. A corpse doesn't flatten out like gold, though. Some of the organs flattened out okay, I guess, but by the time we gave up the vagrant was "scattered" but not really "flattened."
"That was lame," said Joey.
"Yeah."
Joey picked up a red chunk and threw it at me, just barely missing.
"Stop it," I said.
He grabbed a whole handful of muck and let it fly. Most of it missed, but not all of it.
"I said stop it!"
"Food fight!" he shouted, scooping up as much of the vagrant as he could. Laughing like a complete loser, he ran toward me. I think he was going to dump it all on my head, and I raised the hammer to defend myself, but then Joey slipped on a coil of intestine and hit the ground.
He let out a whimper. "I can't feel my legs."
"That's what you get," I told him.
"No, I mean it. I think I broke my back."
"Too bad for you."
"Call an ambulance."
I figured I had two options. I could call an ambulance, or I could beat him to death with the hammer. I weighed the pros and cons, and then I beat him to death with the hammer.
I got in so much trouble. My mom came home an
d yelled, and then Dad yelled, and then Joey's mom and dad yelled, and...well, let's just say that the rest of the day was pretty bad for me.
Then I discovered girls, which were way better than killing people. Seriously. When Monica's brother held me down on the ground next to the swing set so that she could kiss me, I barely tried to break free.
And that's the story of my first kiss.
DAD (A TRUE STORY)
Dear Past Self,
You have lots of scars on your wrist.
No, no, don't panic! It's cool! It's because you were trying to rub the tummy of your new cat. He gets mad when you rub his tummy. You will decide the wounds are worth it. That's what you get for naming him Chaos.
Also, Dad died.
When you call him on his sixtieth birthday, he'll complain that he's crossed the line from where people will say "Oh, what a shame; he died so young!" upon his passing to "Well, at least he had a good long life." He'll get another nine years of that good long life. Almost ten. One more month and he would've made it to seventy.
Your stepmom will leave a message saying "call me as soon as you get this." You'll know this isn't good. It's nice to think that maybe there's a billionaire Hollywood producer standing there with her, saying that he wants to purchase the movie rights to your entire backlist if she can get you on the phone ASAP, but that's most likely not the case.
Dad's already had one heart attack. It won't surprise you if she's calling because he's had a second. And so you're not surprised.
The next update will be that Dad's in the hospital, conscious and making inappropriate jokes. None of the doctors or nurses are running around flailing their hands in the air and screaming that all is lost. It's a big deal, of course (there's a reason for the expression "serious as a heart attack") but apparently the vibe is that things are going to be okay.
And then you'll get a call around two in the morning saying that Dad is being rushed into emergency surgery, because he has a bleeding hole in his heart. They're going to sew a tiny patch to it. It will not shock you to hear that having a patch sewn over a bleeding hole in your heart carries a bit of risk. Most likely, he won't survive.
He'll survive.
The next morning, when you board the plane, you'll be feeling okay. The surgery went spectacularly well. You're ready to show up at the hospital and have Dad get mad at you for flying all the way from Florida to Alaska just to hang out in ICU. "Why not fly over here when we could actually do something?" you know he'll say.
So, Past Self, in the future there's this thing called "e-mail." It's really frickin' awesome. It's basically letters that you send through computers, and the recipient gets it instantly. No more stamps! It'll blow your mind. And later you'll be able to send e-mail with a tiny phone that you carry around with you at all times, and if you forget it at home you'll basically have a nervous breakdown. Later still, you'll be able to send e-mail on an airplane. An airplane! You'll be soaring above the clouds and you can still keep in touch with your family and friends!
This means that, in the middle of your flight to Alaska, you'll find out that things have gone bad. Dad's internal organs are failing. When you arrive at the hospital, a nurse will be talking to your stepmom about when it's time to let somebody go. But then...hey, maybe the news isn't so bad!
For the next two-and-a-half weeks, there will be a maddening cycle in Dad's health. A day where, don't get too excited, but things seem to be getting better. Followed by a great day, filled with optimism. And then a terrible day that cancels out all of the progress. Repeat.
The worst day, except the last one, will be the one with two bonus cardiac arrests. There'll be a priest in the room, bible in hand. He's quiet and respectful, but trust me, when Dad has coded twice, you do not want to see a priest hanging around. That's a pretty clear sign that this is the end.
But it's not. The patch on Dad's heart will stay intact through almost twenty minutes of CPR, even though it wasn't really meant to withstand that kind of trauma. Amazing! There's still a road to recovery!
One doctor will keep pushing for a tracheotomy. He's practically doing an infomercial for the wonders of the trach tube. They're easy! They're convenient! They're not like the horror shows you see in the anti-smoking commercials. You'll joke about how this doctor must need one more stamp on his tracheotomy card to get to ten, or else he just really, really, really loves to do them. Eventually, one will be scheduled, but cancelled when he has another bad day. Too much risk of infection.
There's a clumsy nurse. Yes, an actual clumsy nurse. She keeps bumping into the machines that are keeping Dad alive and knocking things off tables. You won't be able to believe this is actually happening. It's funny at the time, but also doesn't do much to lower the overall anxiety level.
Dad will be unconscious and on a ventilator most of the time. But there'll be one morning, late in your Alaska trip, where you'll walk into his ICU room and he'll be sitting upright, fully conscious. Holy crap! The nurse will explain that the ventilator might come out. If it does, and he can breathe on his own, that will be a Godzilla-sized step.
And it does. Dad still won't be able to talk (he has, after all, had a tube jammed down his throat for over two weeks) but a machine is no longer breathing for him. Later that day, somebody will come in and wheel that accursed ventilator right out of the room. This will be the moment you've been waiting for. It's been a rollercoaster ride, but getting rid of that ventilator was the official demarcation between "will get better" and "won't get better."
You'll get your return ticket to Florida, with plans to return to Alaska when Dad's finally out of the hospital. (Things are amazingly awesome, but he's still got a while to hang out in the hospital before he's ready to go home.)
And, in the middle of the night, they'll put the ventilator back in. He'll be sedated and unconscious again. Nobody working at the hospital expects another good day.
Past Self: To you, Dad still seems semi-immortal, but even back then he's made it very clear that he wants quality life, not just life. When Grandma and Grandpa die, he'll reiterate this desire. You'll know exactly where he stands on the issue. So will the rest of the family.
By the time you walk into the formal meeting, you'll already know how it's going to work out. The doctors have said that he is almost certainly going to die. If by some miracle he doesn't, the odds of him, through months of agonizing rehabilitation, getting to a place where he's almost at his minimum benchmark for a quality life are...well, you know how much Dad loves casinos, right? He would never, ever take this bet.
They'll remove the machines, and there's nothing left but to gather and watch the end. It takes about fifteen minutes.
The next evening, you'll fly home. Your connecting flight will be in Chicago, but you'll get there in the middle of the night and all of the places in the airport that sell delicious Chicago hot dogs will be closed. One last little bummer moment.
Anyway, Past Self, I suppose this wasn't what you wanted to hear, but at least I didn't write to you about the state of politics. Trust me, you don't want to know.
I'm aware that I'm ending on a trite, cliché message, but screw it: while he's still around, give Dad another hug for me.
BAD BRATWURST
Klaus tossed the day's receipts onto the counter in disgust. "Disgraceful! Simply disgraceful! We make the greatest bratwurst in Germany, and almost nobody buys it!"
Stefan, Klaus' only employee, stopped sweeping the floor and nodded. "Business is indeed slow. Perhaps, though, the fault lies with our product?"
Klaus slammed the cash drawer shut. "How dare you? I have owned Prechtel Bratwurst for thirty years! Before that, it was owned by my father! Before that, it was owned by my father's cousin, who inherited it from his uncle, who inherited it from his son who died young, who won it in a bet! It has been in the family for thirty-two years! How dare you?"
"I mean no disrespect, sir. But we have sold the same bratwurst for decades. It might be time for a change."
> "Blasphemy! You speak blasphemy! I spit upon the idea of changing my recipe!" Klaus spat upon the counter. "People who know good bratwurst know that there is none better than Prechtel Bratwurst! Is it my fault that nobody knows good bratwurst these days? Is it my fault that people's tongues have eroded to the point where they'll happily purchase mediocre bratwurst simply because it's less expensive? I will make no changes! Now clean up my saliva!"
Stefan wiped up the spit with a rag. "Then what will you do? My father was a stubborn man, as was my grandfather, as was my great-grandfather, as was my great-great-grandfather, so it's a personality trait that I share and admire, but are you really so stubborn that you would go out of business rather than adapt?"
Klaus sighed. "Let us pretend, for the sake of argument, that I were to change my recipe. What would you suggest?"
"There are plenty of options. Making them with human flesh, for example."
"What?"
"I'm not saying that it's the best option. It's just one option of many."
"Why would it be your first suggestion? Why start there? Shouldn't it be low on the list? Shouldn't you have proposed a wide variety of ideas before slowly working your way down to human flesh?"
"Or perhaps you could add more nutmeg."
"Human flesh! What a horrific concept! Do you wish us to become murderers, Stefan? Is that what you want? Do you envision a business model in which we lure unsuspecting young women into the store after dark, club them upon the head, and then feed them into the meat grinder?"
"I was just brainstorming."
"But it was your first brainstorm! Your very first! I asked about your hypothetical suggestions for improving business, and you went straight for cannibalism! You've been giving this a lot of thought, haven't you? Admit it!"
Stefan shook his head. "No, no, no, I swear to you, it was a random comment, not meant to be ranked in the order in which it was shared. I don't think it's a very good idea at all. It's morally wrong, carries the risk of imprisonment if our crimes are discovered, and it might make our bratwurst flavorless and gamey."