The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade

by Aimee Bender

  Mrs. Teeth can’t reach me here—she’s too thick and clumsy to climb this pole. If she tries, I will poke her eyes out with my stick.

  But she waits for me. Sometimes she wraps herself around the mast and humps it, and it shakes, and I must hold on with all my might.

  The other pirates pay her no heed, except for Captain Slasher-Jones. Three times a day, the Captain emerges from his cabin, marches to the base of this mast, and shouts up to me: “WHAT HO, LOOKOUT OF THE PEOPLE?”

  Three times a day, I shout down to him, as instructed: “NOTHING HO, PEOPLE’S CAPTAIN.” And he laughs, and Mrs. Teeth laughs, and he gazes longingly into her eyes. Then he struts around the deck, inspecting the work of the other pirates, shouting, laughing, acting tough and important. It’s plain to see he’s trying to impress her.

  Yesterday I saw Mrs. Teeth vanish into the Captain’s cabin for a short while, and I heard horrible screams and clatter. I was terrified; I thought she was eating him. I could have slid down and run away at that moment, if I had anywhere to run to. But she returned soon enough, giggling, dressed in rags, her hair matted on her sweaty face, and then continued her leering as if she’d never left. A few minutes later, Captain Slasher-Jones crept out of the cabin and wandered in a different direction entirely, to peals of laughter from the other pirates.

  They find everything funny, these pirates. Everybody is always laughing on this ship, except for me and Aimless ... and Martha Hilton-Trump the Twelfth, if you count fat people.

  Martha Hilton-Trump trails the boat by a long rope tied to her hair, but her loud, desperate moaning and burbling still reaches us. It comes and goes throughout the day, deafening at times. I can tell the crew is growing irritated with her. Her misery interferes with their laughter. The only coherent word she ever speaks is “Daddy!”

  Aimless sits at the stern, watching Martha Hilton-Trump as she bobs on the reeking waves, strumming his guitar for her. His song is sad and plaintive, but a few pirates from the Jig Subcommittee gamely attempt to dance to it, trying their best to ignore the sobs of the giant floating fat person, even when the weeping drowns out Aimless’s little wooden guitar.

  The pirates have given us clothing, and water, and committee assignments, and for all that I am grateful, especially for the water. But hospitality is only worth so much at the top of a cold pole.

  And their customs are strange. When I shat from up here, down onto the deck and all over Mrs. Teeth, there was much laughter. But later the Captain scolded me.

  “We be a civilized people,” he said. “And this be the People’s Ship. Keep it tight!” As if every single plank of the deck, every single particle of this ship and of the earth, did not have shit all over it already.

  I was not punished, except that now I must shit in a bucket on a rope, which I am then required to empty over the edge of the ship. I must hold the bucket under myself with one hand while I shit, while I hold onto the pole with the other hand, while Mrs. Teeth stares directly up into my asshole.

  Thankfully, I haven’t had to do this often. We’ve had no food for three days.

  At night, after Martha Hilton-Trump sobs herself unconscious, facedown in the shit-dark sea, and after Mrs. Teeth curls up around my mast and falls asleep drooling, and after the pirates have sung each other lullabies and laughed themselves to sleep ... then, Aimless tiptoes to the mast and quietly puts drugs in my shit-bucket, and I haul them up and smoke them, and we talk.

  Aimless says I mustn’t get the wrong idea. He’s still in love with Gertie the Whale. Martha Hilton-Trump he only pities. She lost everything there is to lose, he says. She is young, he says, and foolish.

  And rich, I add. And tasty.

  Aimless has made special petitions to the Raping and Devouring Subcommittees, asking them to postpone their raping and devouring. He told them they can ransom her for infinite treasure when her Daddy finally comes. The pirates are intrigued by this idea, but also very hungry.

  “If Martha’s daddy were coming,” I said, “we’d all be dead by now.”

  It’s a perfect mystery: why did the fat people explode? Why did they fall to earth? One day they were up there, the next day they were gone. Are they dead? Or will they rise again? Aimless has asked Martha Hilton-Trump what happened, but the question only makes her cry.

  Even if Mrs. Teeth eats me in my sleep, even if the pirates toss me in the sea for shitting on their deck, there is one thing on this ship that was worth coming for, and that is this excellent view of the overhanging stars. Since the fat people exploded, the sky has been clear of orange smoke at night. The winking, glittering stars overhead are my blanket. Aimless agrees: the stars are cleaner and more beautiful than anything on earth. I wish I could keep the fat people away from them.

  A DREAM WITH MY MOTHER’S VOICE IN IT

  It seems I am going mad, just like Aimless.

  At night I tie ropes around my arms and legs so I can sleep without falling into the jaws of Mrs. Teeth. For three nights I’ve fallen asleep this way, a sack of bones hung to dry under the precious stars, and each night I’ve had the same dream. I dreamed I heard the voice of my mother, a woman I’ve never met.

  In this dream, I am watching the sky with my telescope, when each of the stars in the sky explodes, one by one, with a huge flash and a loud bang. Then the sky itself bursts into flame. Fire and smoke and feces and burning guitars rain down on the shit-dark sea. The pirates hide under deck, but I am still dangling from the mast. The wind whips me as the ocean churns. Huge waves of shit juggle the Bloody Hatchet. Shit crashes over me, shit pounds the deck. I am whipped back and forth as the creaking ship spins and dips and shudders, tumbling under breaking waves of shit. My pole becomes slick with crap; I lose my grip and I’m tossed into the ocean. I thrash around, grasping at the smoldering guitars that float on the surface. I grab several of them and try to lash their strings together to build a raft. But then a huge wave pounces on me, shoving me down, down, down into the sickening turd. I can’t see, I’m choking. The hideous reeking muck squeezes into my eyes, my ears, my nose. I open my mouth and it pours down my throat, as I sink deeper and deeper ... but then I fall through the bottom of it, and open my eyes.

  Under the ocean of shit there is another, larger ocean—an ocean of transparent clean water! Water that washes the shit out of my eyes, my skin, my fingernails, my hair, my red pirate shirt and my black pirate pants. I inhale, drinking in this water, and it rushes through my body, destroying all the filth in me, filling me with life. And, drinking it, I can fly!

  I zoom in crazy circles, surrounded on all sides by life—a world of animals floating all around me: horses, snakes, giraffes, leopards, dinosaurs, jackalopes. All the animals we killed are still alive here, swimming in circles. And flowers, and trees, and cars, and toadstools too, all twirling through space, drifting gently in the pure, delicious water that surrounds us. A black and white cat rubs against my feet and swims away. Two goldfish chase past me, swimming upside-down. They’re so beautiful I can’t even eat them.

  The water itself glows, bathing everything in a pure shimmering moonlight. And down below me, a brighter light beckons, shining up like an upside-down moon on the ocean floor.

  I swim deeper, faster, toward the glowing thing that hangs there in the bottom of the sea. It is like a huge glowing fat person, but in the shape of a fish. Its skin seems to be made out of the full moon itself, all blue-gray and glowing, and covered with tiny craters. It wears no clothing, no jewelry, not even any arms or legs. It only has fins, a tail and a huge, smiling face with beautiful blue-green eyes.

  The glowing fat fish sings to me in my mother’s voice.

  It tells me its name is Gertie.

  NUNS HO!

  On the morning of the fourth day, we sighted the Ship of Nuns.

  As on the first three mornings I awoke upside-down, tangled in a dangling strangulation of ropes that cut into my limbs and left my fingers and toes numb. As on the first three mornings, the first thing I saw when I open
ed my eyes was Mrs. Teeth, patient as gravity, batting her eyes and licking her lips.

  After righting myself and rubbing the pain out of my arms, I took up my telescope to check the condition of the emptiness. But I was startled to see something quite near on the horizon: a ship, with tattered sails!

  Through the telescope I saw women on the deck of the ship, kneeling around the mast, clothed in long black dresses and long black hats, all gazing up wistfully at the place where their sails had been. And up there, lashed to the mast of that ship, was a desperate-looking naked man. With his limp arms outstretched on the rigging, he appeared at least half-dead.

  When I heard the women shouting “Hallelujah!” at him, I could not help but sympathize.

  Captain Slasher-Jones stormed onto the deck. “LOOKOUT OF THE PEOPLE!” he cried. “WHAT HO?”

  “NUNS, CAPTAIN!” I cried. “NUNS HO!”

  I pointed out the ship. Every pirate rushed to the railing to see, and to cheer, and to laugh. They hoisted the sails and caught a wind, and we made for our rendezvous with the Ship of Nuns.

  MY POSITION ON THE EATING OF NUNS

  I would have preferred not to eat them. In a world of choice, a world of options, I would have opted out of the nun-eating. Although they were delicious, and I was hungry.

  But I would have preferred not to. When the strong, friendly pirates pulled alongside the nun-ship, waving and smiling and greeting them so politely, I expected ... I don’t know. Something other than what I saw, from above.

  I have never seen so many women raped in one day.

  I’m so tired of this life.

  My father’s mother used to tell him incredible stories of the past when he was small, and when I was small my father would tell these same stories to me. Stories about the Easy Times, the Age of Stuff, when every person got to decide what to do with their own life. In the times before shit, before poverty, even the littlest people were incredibly rich and wealthy and happy and stupid. When Grandma was young, Father told me, life was an endless banquet of options, a feast of fascinating choices with exotic names: Right, Wrong, Democrat, Republican, War, Peace, Regular, Unleaded.

  All day long, every single day of her life, the waiters of the world brought steaming trays of fine, delicious, enticing lifestyle options to my grandmother’s table, each fresh and ripe with unfolding possibility. All my grandmother had to do was pick the ones she wanted. That was her life! Can you even imagine it?

  As the People’s Committee for Raping and Pillaging seethed over the helpless nuns, making meat of them, stripping them of clothing and then of flesh, drowning their screams with mad laughter and darkening the decks with their blood, I found, finally, that I could no longer watch.

  And when I looked away, I caught the eye of the other man, the man on the mast of the other ship. He was still just barely alive, though the whole height of his mast was painted red with his blood. Blood seeped in rivulets from wounds in his hands and feet. Looking closer, I saw the nails in his flesh.

  I asked the man how he ended up in such a fix, but he never told me. He only begged for mercy.

  “Please, sir,” he croaked in a weak, bloody whisper, “please spare my sisters. Eat me instead! I’m delicious and tasty, I promise! I’ll give you my body gladly, but please have mercy on the women. They are innocent and good! I’m crispy and tender and full of magic! I’ll feed you all, with just my body. Please, let them go! You’ll live forever if you eat me instead!”

  I told him he was asking the wrong guy.

  A moment later, the People’s Captain cut him down and fed him to Mrs. Teeth.

  Here’s the thing: I am completely different from everybody else in the world, in a way that completely does not matter. In Grandma’s time, in a world of choice, a world of either-or, I could be the People’s Captain. I know it. I could live, grow and flourish in a world like that. I could hew to a righteous path. Or I could even hew to a terrible, hideous path, in a world where I get my choice of paths for hewing. If I could have chosen nun-eating, then I would have gone forth and boldly eaten nuns until I died. I have a strong mind. My ancestors’ decision-making power still flows in my blood. I could do everything I chose to do, if I could choose.

  But all the choices worth choosing drowned in the shit-dark sea a long, long time ago.

  Live or Die?

  Kill or Be Killed?

  Starve or Eat Nuns?

  These are the only items on my menu.

  Aimless ate no nuns. He refused their meat, though I know he’s more hungry than I am. Even at sunset, when the members of the Jig Subcommittee slow-roasted a nun-foot on a spit, just for Aimless, and offered it to him on a jeweled plate, he refused and turned away. I watched him clamber over the stern, lowering himself carefully onto the head of Martha Hilton-Trump. The jilted pirates ate the foot without him, and did not try to follow.

  Martha Hilton-Trump saw nothing of what happened to the Nun Ship—her eyes are still pressed against the shit-dark sea —but did she overhear? I wonder what Aimless will tell her.

  He’s stopped strumming his guitar. In the moonlight I can see him crouched cross-legged on Martha Hilton-Trump’s floating head, whispering something to her, I don’t know what.

  Tonight I hate the stars. Tonight the stars are ugly stupid specks, flaws in the darkness. They can’t help me and they never could. Tonight I’m hanging upside-down in my bed of ropes, watching Mrs. Teeth suck the marrow from another man’s bones while the giant floating fat woman wails and the mad pirates laugh and the never-ending world of filthy shit reeks in all directions. Tonight I stare out over the shit-dark sea watching the nun-ship burn. I eat my piece of nun, and wait for Gertie the Whale to take me down.

  MORNING OF THE SHITTIEST DAY

  This morning it rained shit, laptop computers, Leatherman Super-Tools, and blood. A laptop struck me in the hand, I think it broke a bone in my wrist. One Leatherman Super-Tool smashed a porthole in the People’s Captain’s Cabin. Captain Slasher-Jones came storming out, demanding a report.

  “SHIT HO, PEOPLE’S CAPTAIN!” I cried. “SHIT AND LAPTOPS!” All the men took cover, while I hung in the mast, weathering the storm. For better or worse, I’m still alive.

  The fat people are back. I can see them through my telescope high, high up in the orange sky, zooming angrily to and fro, swarming the way startled wasps once swarmed, before we ate all the wasps. The fat people are back, and they’re angry.

  I shouted the news to the whole crew this morning, including Aimless, but Aimless is busy. From my vantage point I can see that he has opened some kind of hatch in the back of Martha Hilton-Trump’s giant skull, and climbed inside her head. What he’s doing in there I don’t know, but he’d better not let Daddy catch him.

  Nobody missed the fat people, but they have returned anyway.

  After the squall, Mrs. Teeth found a Leatherman Super-Tool on deck, licked it clean of shit and blood, and now, whenever the Captain isn’t watching, she uses its tiny saw-blade to saw away at my mast. The tiny, persistent scratching sound reverberates up through the pole and scrapes at my ears. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Saw, saw, saw. It will take her a long while to saw through all that wood, but Mrs. Teeth is persistent.

  While she saws daintily away at my mast, she bats her pinched-together eyes at me, and asks when I’m going to come down and marry her. And then fuck her.

  Honesty is my handicap. I tell her: never in a hundred years will I do either of those things.

  Saw, saw, saw. Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  My broken wrist has swelled up like a tiny fat person. I can’t use my right hand. With my left hand I am tightening the ropes around myself, lashing myself to the mast as tightly as I can.

  The pirates aren’t laughing anymore. They’re sharpening their pole-hooks and their harpoons, preparing for battle. The People’s Captain barks orders from the bow, while the men hoist heavy iron cannons up onto the main deck. The shit-stained sails are spread tight under heavy wind. The mast groans and f
lexes as we rush across the slick water.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  THE MOTION OF THE PEOPLE’S CAPTAIN

  The wind is howling now. The snapping of the sails hurts my ears. Boiling black clouds are filling up the orange sky, and the shit-dark sea is lumpy and churning.

  The People’s Captain stalks the deck with a sword and a bottle of vodka, delivering an inspirational message to the People’s Committee for Raping and Pillaging.

  “Comrades,” he says, “look at the sky! See how it quivers and sags! See how Heaven itself quakes at our approach!

  “Comrades, the sea! How it trembles! How it roars! See how the Bloody Hatchet strikes fear into the waves themselves!

  “Comrades, look around you, at our terror ship, at the cruel blades and the heavy cannon and the long, nasty harpoons. Look at the nun-meat piled high on the stern, at the blood boiling in pots by the cannon, at the stacks of nun-heads ready to be dipped in the boiling blood, loaded in the cannons and fired! Do we not strike a fearsome figure? Are we not pirates to the bone?

  “Comrades! Today is the day I’ve promised you! Today we take the fight to the fat skies! Today we will storm the pearly gates! Today we will shit in the eyes of God, and feast upon the flesh of the infinite! We will plunder the vaults of Heaven! We will pillage the Garden of Eden! We will fart in the face of power, and piss in the mouth of destiny!

  “Some may die. Nay, many may die. Nay, nay, all shall die, I promise it. Nay, even that is false. Know this, Scalawags of the People: we are all dead already! Every one of us is dead, for ours is a ghost ship, a ship that fishes drowned souls up out of the shit-dark sea, and grants them one last chance for glory!

  “Today, the Bloody Hatchet sails home to oblivion! Oblivion and glory!”

  “Comrades! I make a motion that we strike, that we fight, that we die! In the name of the People! For the glory of the People! For justice! For freedom! And for the love of bloody vengeance! Who among ye might second this motion?”