Volume One, Episode Two: All the Shores Between the Seas
Numbered Transcript by Rikki Simons
*** Act Three ***
I should probably mention why I named my cat Dalí.
I made him from clay when I was about eleven years old.
Kids perceive things funny. They get stuck on certain visual assumptions. When I first came to Absinthium Kingdom and I found out that everyone was dreaming on the outside of their bodies, I tried to understand by falling back on what I knew about the theoretical Surrealists of my original world — that is to say, very little. You see, my father once showed me a picture of a cartoonish man with a twirly mustache riding a toy train. The man’s name was Dalí and my dad said he called himself a Surrealist — and from there I just assumed that all Surrealists rode toy trains and had twirly mustaches. That was the logical conclusion. It didn’t make sense to go on working that thought over and over in my head when there were other things to think about.
So I brought my cat to life from clay.
Now even though he was manufactured Dalí is every bit a typical Bengal cat, except for his face. Sure, he has the orange fur and black spots of a Bengal. He has the white chin and cream colored belly of a Bengal, but where there should be a bit of light colored hair around his muzzle and nose, there is instead there’s a pattern of two perfect white whips of fur that for all the world look like a twirly mustache.
I never could get him to ride a toy train though.
***
My cat cat and I flew space in the bowels of our boat, The Elephant’s Friend.
I think that Dalí and I were only exposed to the vacuum between the pan-dimensional doorways for a split second before The Elephant’s Friend was deposited... elsewhere. Still, the effects of exposure left us dazed and flat on our backs, me in the pilothouse and my cat in the cabin below.
When I was sure the boat had stopped moving, I peeled myself up off the floor and promptly hit my head on the wheel, grabbed it, tried to steady myself, and flung myself away.
I got to my feet. After steadying myself I concentrated through the front window of the ship and we appeared to be floating on the dark waters of yet another world. No sound besides the squeak of my shoes as I paced in place. I wiped the glass with my hand out of instinct. I didn’t need to. There wasn’t any frost despite the chill seeping in through the windowpane. The darkness was so dense. But was this Earth?
The lights in the in the pilothouse were still on, as well as the twinkle lights I had strung across the ship’s radio towers. To say the least, I was relieved to see we still had electricity. Dalí immediately began yowling, so I hobbled downstairs to find him.
The cabin was a mess. Several of my clay maquettes were squashed, my tools and easels and canvases and paints were everywhere. My vinyl record collection of Japanese children’s marching songs were all out of order. But at least Dalí was in one piece. I found him tucked inside my bed in the alcove between two pillows, pop-eyed and frantic, his twirly white mustache practically spinning. He must have been exhausted because he let me pick him up right away. He didn’t purr, but he didn’t bite me either.
Wait. There he went.
I wasn’t sure if it was safe to walk out onto the deck but anything seemed better than wading through the mess in the cabin. I grabbed my hat and and duffle coat and bundled up as I went out to explore.
It was cold outside. It should have been cold enough to see my breath, but there was something about the air that prevented any moisture from materializing before my face. It tickled the skin like how static irritates the ears, and... the moisture in the air felt less like ice crystals and more like what I remember television static sounding like on UHF channels in the 1970s. I walked through the staticky air and tried to lean into the darkness at the stern of the ship. Dalí followed along, ghosting my heels and stepping up to the rail. He stood up on his spotted hind legs and draped his paws over the side as if he were going to be seasick.
But he was staring at something in the water, concentrating on a point deep beneath the black murky surface.
Far below, a light appeared. Dalí leapt back, becoming an orange blur as he shot into the cabin. I watched the water. Several more lights blinked into view under the surface. Pop, pop, pop — on came a gaggle of submerged beacons and they weren’t even geese. I saw ten, twenty, thirty points of illumination. I had read about undersea creatures with lights affixed to their heads. Photos of bioluminescent fish in National Geographic always made them look like fairly small creatures. But these were huge, each half the size of a mounted spotlight. They were rising to the surface. I stepped back, naturally frightened. Then, blue-black, emaciated human arms rose to the surface. They clasped baroque bronze lanterns firmly in their long fingers and they towered over The Elephant’s Friend like too many street lamps in a crowded lane.
There was no sound as the arms swayed and their lanterns flickered.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I said, “Hello. My name is Fubsí.”
After a beat the arms slowly turned toward one another. The flickering of the lanterns became a patterned series of flashes, not fast enough to make a strobe effect, but more like a code which was unknown to me.
I waved at the. “Hello.”
The flashing stopped. I took a step backwards, arms apart and ready to run.
But nothing happened. They just loomed there, as if waiting for something else. Then a brief power surge made the twinkle lights strung above me flicker a moment. The lantern hands turned and regarded this with interest, flashing back-and forth between one other.
I had an idea, probably a stupid one, and in hindsight, environmentally irresponsible to an alien ecology — but when your fear is in charge your brain makes shortcuts, like a squirrel that skips on foraging for nuts and raids a bodega when no one’s looking.
What I did was this: I got some clay and wire and tissue from my cabin and made a firefly while standing at the rail. It just took a few minutes to form and when I was finished I lightly tapped it once. It came to life in my right hand and I cupped it over with my left. As I stepped forward with the pleasant yellow light of the insect leaking out between my fingers, all the monstrous hands turned towards my deck. I let the firefly go.
It didn’t zoom away immediately, but hovered a moment over my palm, and then there was the faintest noise.
It sounded like a sneeze.
Just a petite petty affectation that would have been natural from anything but a firefly. But it had been my firefly that sneezed.
How strange.
This had never happened before.
One more tiny sneeze and it took off.
The lanterns followed it as it innocently blinked and wobbled and sneezed about a foot off the water. I felt terrible that I essentially made a creature doomed to loneliness, but I couldn’t make it a mate. A colony of fireflies would be an invasive species here, and who knew what destruction that would bring to this weird habitat. I imagined it would do alright on its own though. It could be happy in its own way, for the week or so of its natural lifespan. I watched it play amongst the lantern hands and I felt wistful, sad, but somewhat proud. But then there was a sudden rush of movement, and a hand without a lantern shot up out of the black waters and snatched the firefly and pulled it under. I watched its light fizzle out beneath the surface, two blinks, then one, and the gone.
No more sneezes.
A sound came from the bow of the ship behind me. I recognized it. Another one of those doorways had opened up somewhere up ahead. Turning my head I could only make out the outline because it was the one point in all the blackness that contained stars.
There was a flash of movement and I stumbled forward a little, but then jumped back when I saw that the one lantern-less hand had risen once again but this time it clasped the stern of the ship. It paused a moment, then gave a hefty push and we were shoved off in the direction of the door.
I held my hat down on my head and sprinted back into the cabin, bolting the door behind me. I didn’t want to be out on the open deck when we went through the new doorway.
Dalí ran up to me and I held him in my arms. Together we watched through a porthole as the lanterns slowly descended back into the black waters behind us.
As our ears popped and we went through, I wondered, Why did my firefly sneeze?
*** Act Four ***
We travelled upon the waterways of many more alien worlds, beginning with one world that was basically an apple tree in a teacup and we went through reverently, marveling at the simple bonsai-like beauty and diorama appeal. We coast on through quickly though, passing on to the succeding doorway using the unspent momentum from the last push of the lantern hand. It would have been nice to stay a while, but fluid dynamics showed us to the door like a embarrassed butler shoving his ugly relatives out the back of a beautiful mansion.
The next world was a bright green river under a vibrant blue sky. The river was surrounded on both sides by massive junkyards filled with every kind of trash imaginable. Raccoons the size of buildings fought for supremacy in the heaps of rubbish. We watched in astonishment from the pilothouse of The Elephant’s Friend as one of the losers was tossed from a mountain of discarded tires, space age toilets, and 1977 tabletop editions of the game Pong. The creature rolled down into the river, making a tremendous splash that pushed us on through to the next doorway.
Then it was a series of worlds, one after another after too many. In one we were guided by dolphin-like creatures with olives for heads in an ocean made of gin. In another we glided over a clear lagoon that spread out before a white rocky beach where, upon closer inspection, the rocks turned out to be tiny bald human heads, some of them asleep, some of them gazing about in horror. On one world, what I thought was a dangerous path through whirling rapids, turned out to be a small stream of water and we were miniatures in an oversized forest where thirty foot tall tribal chipmunks laughed as they watched us from the trees. On and on we cruised uncontrollably, through cherry cola deserts and icy pink lagoons, from the mouths of rivers that were mouths of giant manatees to a lake where the salt marsh reeds turned out to be legs and hooves of buried horses that kicked us on through the final gate.
We finally slowed to a stop near a darkened shore. It wasn’t as as black as the world of lantern-bearing hands; it was more of a twilight set river with murky pine forests on either side and a purple-opaque outline of distant mountain peaks.
During our journey through the many strange worlds I read up on how to weigh anchor and I got it overboard when I saw we were headed towards shallow waters. We sat still. This was the first quiet, seemingly average world. Stillness swept through the air. Softly, benignly, almost inaudibly the din and melody of ordinary crickets and regular old evening birds — the nonplussed hoot of an owl, the sharp bark of a night heron —this reassuring dins crept through the forest as if every creature were tiptoeing in slippers on the way to an evening snack. A fish popped up to the surface once. It was a regular old salmon. This was nice.
I lost track of time. I had a wristwatch, but it was set to Absinthium kingdom time. It also blew me a kiss every time I looked at it. This is why I never learned to properly tell time when I was a child.
It had been a while since I had a bath and I felt like I was getting a bit scruffy. I went below deck and washed in quiet contemplation, shaving my arms in the water closest. Waves of fatigue crashed over me. Ever have to take a nap immediately after waking because you dreamed too much and woke up exhausted? It seemed I had been running on dreams for quite some time. I put down my razor and thought about it: now seemed as good a time as any to find the engine room and figure out how to feed it. I looked to Dalí and said, “I think we are overdue a lunch.” Dalí was chewing on my toothbrush.
The manual said The Elephant’s Friend ran on sandwiches, and anything but egg sandwiches. I stepped over the mess in the main cabin and found my little refrigerator under a mound of laundry and books. We were in luck, not an egg in sight and plenty of cheddar and crackers and butter. I could make grilled cheese sandwiches for both the ship’s engine and myself. There was a little fish for Dalí. He doesn’t usually like it cold but it was caught just a day ago when we passed through a world made of bird skeletons, so it would have to do.
Unfortunately, I’m a terrible cook and I burnt the first sandwich when I got distracted watching the shoreline. The low ambient light in the distance reminded me of the yellow glow of my sneezing firefly. I had a funny thought then: what if the firefly had instantly developed the sneeze as a form of mating call to replace its now useless bioluminescence in luring a reproductive partner? But that didn’t make sense. Not that reproductive sex makes my kind of sense in the first place. I like animals, but boy do they duplicate themselves in the most flummoxing ways possible.
Ha ha. Silly nature. Making things plop into each other just to make more things.
Getting back to lunch, I thought it safer to stay away from stove so I made a couple of cold cheese and mustard sandwiches. The sandwiches were small. I had five crackers, which I broke in half to make ten. Ten is better than five, obviously. I ate four and carried the other six on a plate down below deck.
I rarely had any reason to come down here but I found the light switch and saw the hallway ran the length of the ship. I chuckled at the old dancing elephant wallpaper that coved the walls. What a strange but pleasant decoration to dream into a utilitarian vessel. For a bourgeoisie person who is so focused on money and property, Frau Pfeiferbaum, my landlady and owner of The Elephant’ Friend, seemed surprisingly wonderstruck sometimes. Maybe that’s why we got along.
A couple of the rooms we passed were reserved for crew, which we didn’t have (thankfully) and there was also a space for the anchor windlass, which we did have (thankfully), but it looked as if most of the space had been converted into a wine cellar without my knowledge. I didn’t much like alcohol, so I guess Frau Pfeiferbaum thought it’d all be safe with me? How long had this wine been in here? There was so much of it. I realized she’d really be furious with me if it lost this ship, so I quickened my pace to the end of the hall where — I presumed — I’d find the engine room.
I opened the door and gasped.
What I found was a room that was at least ten times the size of the ship itself with a vaulted metal ceiling like an old aircraft hanger and a checkered floor in two shades of natural wood. A black, full-sized steam locomotive sat on tracks that stretched across the wooden floor from the bow to aft. The tracks went nowhere, just began at one wall and ended the other. A spectral, semi-opaque human-shaped spirit — perhaps a man — sat placidly behind the open window of the driver’s compartment with one arm dangling out as if it were cruising down a boulevard in a sports car. He wore an elephant mask, and though it too was somewhat transparent, the mask covered all of his head, which revealed nothing of the face of the entity beneath.
I shrugged at Dalí and together we walked up to the driver’s window. The ghost in the elephant mask made no notice of us until I held up the plate with the sandwich. It regarded us with what seemed like mild disinterest.
I said, “Um, hello. I’m Fubsí and I live on this... uh... boat? If I give you this sandwich will start up the engines?”
I’m not really certain if I can describe what happened next because I was mostly screaming and running. I remember it starring at the sandwich on the plate for a long moment, then I remember flames and roaring. I think I remember tentacles projecting from the eyeholes of the spirit’s mask but I‘m certain it became very hot and very hard to breathe. All I clearly remember is scooping up Dalí and bolting for the entrance, slamming it behind us and clutching my cat to my chest until the supernatural thunder quieted down on the other side.
In short, the engine disliked my sandwich.
“But what kind of ghost hates crackers?” I said to Dalí as we walked.
Just then, a familiar voice called out from the other side of the deck.
“Hello? Anyone here, over?” he said.
His voice still carried that radio fuzz and distant crackle. I thought I must have left the radio volume up because he was coming in very clear. But when Dalí and I stepped onto the deck we found him waiting for us in person.
“Hello, Fubsí! It is I! The Bicycle Thief, over!” he said enthusiastically, arms akimbo.
He was an average build, but his costume made him an anachronistic character. He wore a doorman’s long tailed coat over an aviator’s trousers and a plate armor chest piece from the Renaissance. He stood boldly, all in greens and blues and browns, straddling a rusting bicycle, face hidden under a pith helmet and behind some kind of red gas mask. Legs apart, either foot in a different boot, his look was very effective if he was going for a chronologically bemused Father Christmas with a specific interest in cross country racing because the giant duffle-bag he carried on his back was bulging with spoked wheels, handlebars, chains, saddles, and other necessary bicycle parts in various states of disrepair.
I closed within ten feet of him and we both froze, fortifying our stances, me in my shabby white hat and green duffle coat, average I think, but he more than a mere costume despite his stochastic regalia. He had attitude. I only had myself, whatever that was. He had confidence. But moreover, he seemed to be examining me.
It made me nervous.
“So here you are,” I said, falsely matter-of-fact.
“Yes... here I am.... over.” I couldn’t see his eyes beneath the goggles of his mask but I could tell he was staring.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
Dalí huffed beside me.
“Nothing...” he breathed. “I just... didn’t expect you to look so.... shiny... over.”
“You don’t have to say ‘over’ anymore,” I said, trying to change whatever subject we had wandered onto. “We’re in front of each other now. We’re not on the radio.”
He appeared to snap out of his spell and immediately took out a ballpoint pen and notebook from somewhere and jotted down this information, saying through the microphone in his mask, “Hmm... interesting...” He flipped the kickstand on his old bicycle, set down his bag with a thump on the deck and strolled around in a inquisitive manner, examining the boat, but again, stealing small glances at me every once in a while. In contrast to his galloping Southern drawl, his walk was more of a trot, by no means leisurely, but definitely someone who wasn’t accustomed to being rushed. I looked at his old bicycle. It was a cruiser with fat, white-walled tires. It had a locked metal and leather chest strapped to the front handlebars next to a little bell, and what I thought was a racing flag fixed to a pole was actually a long radio antenna attached to a motor at the back of the seat. The Bicycle Thief turned to me and asked, “So, you got this far. Did you ever get your motor goin’, eh?”
Again, the uncomfortable suggestion in his tone, but I shook my head no and I said, “We coasted most of the way here.”
“Interesting.”
Dalí left my side and ran over to inspect the sack full of bicycle parts.
He said. “Do your weird Surrealist talents make you super lucky or something?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m shit at Surrealism. The only thing I can do well is make animals out of clay and bring them to life.”
“Really?” He tilted his head, as if hearing me for the first time, instead of just examining me.
“Yeah.”
He leaned forward, the goggles of his gas mask clearing. For a moment I could see yellow eyes within. “Would ya do that for me? Nothing specific, mind you. I just want to see you make life,” he said with a tremor to his voice.
I pulled off my hat and squashed the rim in consternation. I think I’ve established that I don’t like making life capriciously and I felt I had already overindulged with the beetle at the park and, recently, that poor sneezing firefly. Whether or not the moment permits dabbling in creation, my conscious stays the course, and even if the path of life veers a sharp right down a steep road, I head on straight ahead, going nowhere in particular until I stop — not so much as standing my ground but standing uncomfortably at the fork in the road. Impassively passive, that was my process. But I had something for these indecisive occasions. I walked to the rail and took out a six sided die, cupped my hand atop the rail and prepared to rolled the die therein. “One to three I’ll do it, four to six I won’t,” I said as I released the die. I rolled a two. “Okay then,” I sighed. “I supposed a small demonstration couldn’t hurt. I hope.”
“Fascinating system you got there,” said the Bicycle Thief, possibly grinning behind his mask. (Sometimes you can hear a grin.)
I guided him into the cabin where I made a small monarch butterfly out of clay, cloth and wire. I stroked it down the spine and it sprung to life, fluttering out an open porthole before I could close it. Dalí looked both startled and disappointed because it had got away unmolested. I stuck my head out the porthole and watched it flutter away. And I swear. I heard this one sneeze too.
I pulled my head back in and muttered to myself, “Weird.”
The Bicycle Thief slapped his knee and hooted, “Woo! Now that’s a thing or I’m a pink lady apple, thank you kindly!”
I shrugged.
He looked over the chaos of my upturned art studio and examined a half- finished Fox I had been working on for a client before I went on this unexpected celestial holiday. He stood up suddenly and asked, “Hey! Can you make a monster?”
His interest made me nervous. This was saying something since I was already so neurotic I looked like I was permanently stuck mid gulp. ”Nope,” was my only reply.
“Why not?”
“I’ve tried a few of times in the past, just to fit in with the other Surrealists,” I said, staring down at Dalí, who stood impassive, looking at nothing. “They wouldn’t come to life. I think my guilt prevented it.”
“Aww, now don’t be such a tarnished button, Fubsí. I’m not gonna ask to you make a Minotaur or an accountant or some other fictional creature. Tell you what, show me this old engine of yours. I bet I can yank your britches out from under this tragedy,” he said throwing one arm over his helmeted forehead and striking a demure pose as if he were a poet in repose. Then he snapped forward and pointed to the deck. “Now let’s go! To the engine room! Get! Hyah!”
*** Act Five ***
We walked below deck together and stopped outside the door that held the locomotive and its preternatural, elephant-masked driver. Slowly, I opened the hatch and peeked inside while waving to the Bicycle Thief to wait behind me. But he got immediately impatient and shoved past, ignoring my warnings. It was all right though, the ghost had settled down again. It was just sitting there in the driver’s compartment, resting with its elbow out the cab window.
The user’s manual to The Elephant’s Friend rested on the floor where I left it, right next to the plate of upturned cheese and mustard sandwich. The driver didn’t look at us.
I said, “I have to feed the driver to make the engine go. The book says he‘ll eat any kind of sandwich except egg. But he hated the cheese and mustard sandwich I made.”
The Bicycle Thief picked up the manual and looked it over. He held up a finger and said, “Ah-ha! Here’s your problem. You translated the German wrong. It doesn’t say that he hates egg sandwiches, it says he only likes egg sandwiches.”
“Oh.”
“You got any eggs?”
“No. Eggs are the one thing I do not have.”
“The one thing?”
“The one thing in a series, volume one, part one.” Then I thought about it for a minute and added, “Wait, I might... I went shopping the night before I started traveling around the universe. I think I left a carton of eggs in my basket.”
“Great! Where’s your basket?”
“On my bicycle,” as I said this I took out the eight sided die from my coat pocket and dropper it on the floor. It rolled an eight, like it always does, and slowly it unfurled like a flower in bloom, folding out and up until it became my beautiful yellow and blue bicycle complete with wicker handlebar basket.
“Say... will you look at that...” the Bicycle Thief said, leeringly. Once again, I didn’t like his tone, and I realized then the significance of his namesake.
I should mention that my bicycle isn’t just beautiful, I would say that it is with out a doubt the most wickedly gorgeous thing on two wheel ever dreamt into existence — a quality that keenly interested the Bicycle Thief.
I mean, it really is the best bicycle ever. In the dream that produced it all those years ago, I dreamt about the bicycle my mother used to have. She lost it before I was born but she talked about it now and then, wistfully, describing every detail as if it had been her best friend in all the world. “A Triumph style bike with a yellow open frame and chain guard,” she said, “brick red and white walled tires, salmon colored seat and handle bars, and blue fenders,” and here it was now mine, a living embodiment of every dream that everyone wishes to remember.
There was a wicker basket over the front wheel where I stored packages, groceries, and pets. The eggs were still inside and in their carton, but smashed to bits. I held up the carton. Yolk oozed from the sides.
But the Bicycle Thief wasn’t interested in the basket or the pulverized eggs. He stood transfixed, slowly looking between my bicycle and me.
“Incredible...” He said after a time, taking one last, long, uncomfortable survey of me. “Fubsí, please move away from the bicycle…”
“Why?” I asked, blinking like a squirrel in first light.
“You and that yellow chariot together… it’s... It’s too erotic.”
“Okay.”
He gestured for me to step aside. I did.
I turned that word over in my head: erotic. I had almost forgotten its meaning, and when it came to me it was like seeing a ghost standing before me, which had been there the whole time. I was quite shocked. Genuinely. I never felt attraction to anyone. Ever. Man or woman. I didn’t really like intimacy, unless it was a meant to be funny, though I have had people who were attracted to me before, but these weren’t invitations I’d ever respond to. I’d usually just avoid the person until they lost interest or forgot about me. Someone once told me I was a real heart breaker, so I stocked up on antacids.
Not even my dearest pen friend Ollie was a figure of sexual attraction to me. I doubt I was to her. I think it’s why we enjoy corresponding. We were were just two people making words together. Nothing else.
I suppose I was unnatural that way.
I stayed still, hoping the Bicycle Thief would lose track of me if I didn’t move.
It seemed to work.
He shook off whatever spell he was under then and studied the spirit driver in the train. In the small circle of light the ghost seemed regal, important, his long elephant snout like a plague doctor’s mask submerged in a dim, holy afterglow.
“Well, ain’t you a pretty boy!” the Bicycle Thief began but then went quiet. He spoke again after a long moment of study, his radio voice taking on a new more excited edge as he said, “Okay, here’s the thing. I know where you can get you an egg, a big, shiny egg as beautiful as a bouquet of flowers a fella buys to soothe an angry significant otter....”
“Other.”
“What? Oh...” He took out his ballpoint pen and notebook and jotted down another memorandum. After that, he concluded, “I can help you, Fubsí, But....”
“But?” I repeat, gloomy but bristling with expectation for greater gloominess. I just wanted to go home, back to Absinthium Kingdom. I wanted to stand over myself as a spirit and say, Look at me reclining under my own sky in my own city. I look like don’t know a thing in the world.
The Bicycle Thief tapped on his notepad and said, “I need you to answer some questions for me.”
“Why?”
“I need to be sure about something.”
I waited.
“To begin: are you a gambling man, Fubsí?”
I sighed to the end of my breath and replied, “No.”
“Well, are you the curious sort, then?”
“Nope.”
“Moderately eager to learn?”
“Nun uh.”
“Partial to wanderlust?”
“I’ve never kissed anyone,” I said, then realized what I said, paused, grabbed my bicycle and ran all the way back up to the deck and hid under a table.
The Bicycle Thief followed and peered in after me, his notepad intruding into my field of vision, “Well, well, well. An asexual, then.”
I didn’t answer.
“So it’s true,” he said.
I didn’t speak.
“I’ve found that most of the men who tell me they’re asexual are just trying to get laid.”
“I… I don’t think… I don’t think so…” I stammered.
“Yep, why I remember a seven-armed Borgleflager in the Feta Casserole galaxy who tried to sell me on his ace-ness, and I would have believed him if I hadn’t already known that a Borgleflager has only six arms and they do not insist you shake hands with any of them. This is a sexually belligerent universe my friend. You don’t have to worry about me. I promise I can take a hint.” He jotted down a few sentences and then said, “But never mind all that. I only ask you if you’re a gambling man because I don’t need a risk-taker. I need a dreamer. A dreamer being you. You being this man I am dragging out from underneath this table.” He gave a great tug and I was yanked out into the open where sprawled on the floor. He was very strong for a man six inches short than me.
He said matter-of-factly as I looked up at him, “I can take you and your cat out of here using my own personal method of inter-dimensional locomotion if that’s what you want. I just can’t take the boat. It’s too big. If you want to take the boat back with you, you’ll need an egg. I can give you one, but... you have to do me a favor.”
I blanched, “But you promised…”
“No, not that,” he sighed.
I said, “Can’t you just drop another giant eyeball from the sky?”
“Hershel’s napping,” he replied.
I looked down at the floorboards and a low moan moved through the deck as if the ship were interjecting, impressing upon me of my obligation to my landlady, Frau Pfeiferbaum. It was as if it were saying “How many times have I got to tell you to remind me to remind you to tell me to remind you that I’m not your boat?”
I said to the Bicycle Thief, “I have to bring The Elephant’s Friend back to my landlady. I think she would kill me, mostly literally, if I were to return without it.”
“Just tell her you lost it.”
“Tell her I lost an entire boat?”
“It sailed away with out you.”
“I was on dry land.”
“What difference does that make?” He said, clutching his notebook with anticipation.
“What’s the favor?” I said, dryly. Of course there would be a price. There was always a price. If there as one thing I learned as a citizen of Absinthium Kingdom was that everyone wanted their rent.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel the smile in his voice when he said, “I just need you to kill a dream for me.”
That made sense, after all, some dreams were worth more than others. I paused a beat. I was still confused.
He said, “Don’t worry about the details. You just have to agree to it.”
”Why me?”
“Because I looked up your case, Fubsí. And you are perfect.”
“My case?”
“Yessir. You see everybody who gets put on hold and sent to the planet Drowning has done something to deserve it. That doesn’t mean it’s a punishment, but some people need to slow their roll so the universe can catch up with them.”
“Where did you look up my... case?”
“From a telescope in an interstellar bell jar,” he said without humor.
“What?”
“Yessiree!” He continued. “It sounds astounding but really it’s just this spacecraft one of your neighbors dreamed up after they ate a terrible Christmas pudding. Right there in Absinthium Kingdom. They only charge ten Sterling and two apple pies per ride. You can find out all kinds of things with it. It even does time travel. Sort of.”
I stared, not because his words were above my understanding but because I had stopped listening after he mentioned the bell jar. I had déjà vu. I needed to know more about it for some reason.
He moved on before I could inquire further.
“So here is what I have learned of your predicament, which it tied rather fleetingly to your immediate history. Did not someone make the following statement in your company: “We’re all just stardust, you know.”
“Um… wait, yes.” I thought a moment. “That was Tové Pipsan, the Avante-guide troupe leader. She had a lot of merit badges.”
The Bicycle Thief nodded and said, “And did you or did you not reply to her: ‘Okay, but for how long?’”
I shrugged. “Probably. I don’t pay much attention to me.”
“Yes, you did,” he said. “Exactly so. And your master, the Orphic Astronaut heard you say it, because I’m told it hears every Surrealist.”
“Who told you it hears everything?” I asked.
“An octopus.”
“Wow.”
“But your question had power because whether or not you are shit at it, you are still a Surrealist. Your question was innocent and existential at the same time — a combination that blocks up the invisible cosmic sinks of the universe like nebulous dog hair in a heavenly drain. The Orphic Astronaut decided to tuck you a way for a while until it had a reasonable answer for you.”
I threw up my arms in frustration and said, “But it was just a rhetorical question!”
“Those are the worst kind!” he said. “Like stuffing a whole dog down the drain!”
I stammered, “So... I can’t come back until it finds an answer to my rhetorical, totally not serious question?”
“No, the Orphic Astronaut already found an answer. It just forget about you afterwards.”
“Of course.”
He leaned in, taking me by my shoulders and pressing his gas mask close to my face. He said, “Anyways, it’s doesn’t matter. Now tell me. Will you kill a dream for me?”
“But I don’t understand the words you are saying. I don’t know what they mean. And I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“A dream isn’t a person. You won’t hurt a living soul.”
Defeated and infused with an urgency to get home, I said, “Okay I guess.”
“Great! He shouted. Then he did a simple magic trick and pulled a brown chicken egg from behind my ear. “Tadaaah!”
I stared at it.
Laughing, he slapped my back and sang, “Sandwich time!” Then, something ethereal happened. This egg wasn’t a regular chicken egg at all. At least, it was in the beginning, but then it changed, taking on filigree trim in gold and silver in the Fabergé style. Pearls popped up along the skin of the egg, spreading like dew drops, and the skin itself turned bright red and was covered up in green-gold leaf. A small door appeared and popped open on one side, making a pleasant click sound. Dalí was suddenly on my shoulder and we both leaned in close to see a tiny phonograph and minuscule vinyl record roll out on an intricate gimbal. Music played.
I cannot remember the music when I think back. I can only remember the static when it was finished.
Another door opened on the egg. Inside was the smallest sandwich I have ever seen.
The Bicycle Thief picked up the sandwich with long steel tweezers and placed it in my palm. It glowed and Dalí and I and the Thief relished its radiance as if it were a campfire in a tundra, but as we huddled around it in humility and awe a small shadow flittered between us. My butterfly returned and made a little dip and then fluttered up again.
“Achoo.”
The Bicycle Thief suddenly backed away, reaching for his side holster and looking all around frantically. Until now I hadn’t noticed he was armed. “What the!”
“Achoo.”
“Oh, I said, “That’s by butterfly.”
“Did it sneeze?” Asked the Bicycle Thief, clearly alarmed. “Did I just hear it sneeze?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know why it’s doing that.”
“Oh, no! Oh, no!” Fubsí, why?”
“What? What’s wrong? It’s just a sneeze!”
“The problem with you, Fubsí is that you just don’t know anything!” He shouted, taking aim with what looked like a long copper-colored revolver. He fired three shots into the air and Dalí and I backed away towards the cabin. “I mean, you know about art…” he said, firing twice more at the butterfly which darted and sneezed and exponentially grew in size with each missed shot. “But you don’t know anything else!”
We pushed ourselves further into the doorway of the cabin as the butterfly began to sprout tentacles. The Bicycle Thief clicked his pistol but he was out of bullets. He holstered the weapon and darted over to his duffle bag. Rummaging through the bag, he cursed and grumbled as the Butterfly took on otherworldly properties. It was now six feet long. It had a squid beak, many new eyes along the torso (human eyes!), and the wings which had been beautiful and more like a monarch butterfly, had converted into leathery appendages from wince the many tentacles sprouted. It saw us, gave a great monstrous sneeze, and shot two veiny proboscis at us which caught in the door just as I slammed it. Through the nearest porthole we could see the Bicycle Thief had set up a five barreled machine gun on a tripod and was now lighting up the sky around the butterfly, trying to lead his target.
He shouted over to me between bursts of fifty caliber ammunition and the sneeze-roars of the butterfly, “There’s one thing you gotta know, Fubsí if you’re gonna travel intergalactically! Never release a sneezing insect into the ecosystem of a planet in the Hot Soup Galaxy!”
“Okay!” I shouted back.
“He lifted his right boot in time to avoid a razor-barbed tentacle. “Now go feed that sandwich to your your elephant ghost and get out of here!”
We ran.
I have almost no memory of what happened next.
How could I remember it all? I was rather shocked, may have even been in shock. I do remember standing before the elephant masked ghost in the train, and I remember holding up the tiny sandwich on my finger as the sound of combat roared somewhere outside. I remember the ghost looked at me and sucked the sandwich up into their nose. I remember it speaking in an eerie shimmer, “All aboard for the light show!”
The wheels started up on the train. Steam billowed from around the great black machine, though it went nowhere. Then, suddenly, Dalí and I were back up in the pilothouse. The battle was raging somewhere on the aft of the ship but up ahead we could see a light. The light was our own. The Elephant’s Friend’s lantern was shining forth from the mast. As far as I could remember the light had never been light. It was lightship only in name, not in purpose, but here it was lighting the way to back to where we belong.
And then we were home.
It was daylight. Probably about noon.
My cat and I stood atop the deck of The Elephant’s Friend, alone together, the Bicycle Thief and the monstrous butterfly gone from sight, our ship returned to its rightful place upon the jacks in our courtyard in Absinthium Kingdom. We gaped like a pair of eternally startled Sisyphuses and I wondered if it had all been a hallucination, and if it were, how a hallucination can ask you to kill a dream.
What even is a dream but a hallucination on the inside?
Once we felt safe and everything appeared calm, I picked up Dalí and thought about my promise to him. That I promised to one day kill a dream.
I said, “Should we also have told him about the firefly?”
Copyright © Rikki Simons 2020