Lance Ash: May 2024

Here it is: the fourth and final part of the novel.

Lampclouding #30, ©2024, Lance Ash, Space Limited Accomplishments

Tales of Clark Seville When He Was a Bear, by Lance Ash

Notebook Four: Addenda

A Quiet King of the Imbuffalo

“What do these stories have to do with Clark Seville?” Jack demanded.

Solomon inhaled deeply.

“The truth is,” he prefaced, “That, at this point, Clark Seville has become the foundational mythic character within the Suggestible Trapezoid. Therefore, it is through Seville and his myth that we can present more of our history, our culture, our own mythos. Do you see?” Solomon turned back to Jack, his eyebrows raised in invitation.

“So, is all of this canon?” Jack asked.

Solomon sat down at the head of the table. “Of course it is,” he replied. “We wouldn’t bother learning it, just as whoever wrote it wouldn’t have bothered writing it if it was all just a waste of time.”

Jack glanced up at the hangar on the other side of the glass. “Time is something we can no longer afford to waste,” he spoke to Solomon as an equal. Fair enough, as they had known each other in their teens.

The Coalescence Tripod was being moved into position.

Solomon stared at the machine for a moment before snapping his head towards Jack.

“Once you have accepted that you are a ‘robot,’ if that’s the simile you want to employ–”

“I think it makes the most sense, across the culture at this point. People understand that there is no ‘soul’ and that we are, almost entirely probably, slaves to forces, desires, programming, societization, and genetics, and have little or no so-called ‘free will’ at all.”

“Thank you for that, Jack,” Solomon cast his gaze down on the Little Debbie snack cake before him. He sighed, taking in this interval between the packaging unopened and the consumption of those briefly sweet bites.

Reasoning Backwards Purchase Nipples

Jack worked for Suggestible Trapezoid Legacy, Inc. After the collapse of the Suggestible Trapezoid, its myth grew throughout the world. The uncovery of its secrets by the bored people of the world lit the last great cultural fuse in human history. Managing the Trapezoid’s considerable holdings and utilizing its earnings potential was an industry in itself. Jack was only momentarily shocked when he found out that the Trapezoid’s properties included the life stories (and the lessons to be drawn from them) of real people like Clark Seville.

“What does Seville have to say about this?” he naively asked soon afterward.

“Jack,” Solomon paternally admonished, “Clark Seville’s been dead for twenty years.”

“Really.” Jack was taken aback. He hadn’t heard of Seville’s death. Why hadn’t someone told him? He took a seat by Solomon’s desk.

“How did he die?” he asked.

Solomon smiled. This was going to be a tough one.

“He went up in a balloon and he never came back down,” he explained, just that simply.

“Then he might not be dead,” Jack argued, as so many of his predecessors had before him.

Solomon beckoned Jack to follow him, getting to his feet and jerking his jaw toward the door.

“It can always be done,” he reminded himself. Reassured himself.

Author’s Note of Extreme Irrelevance:

Reminding myself of its potencies and potentialities, I yet no longer believed in the sacrament of pot. To be honest, it had become about as powerful to me as black tea. Many years ago, I went through a phase where every time I got high I would become paranoid. But then one day I realized, “Paranoia is just another emotion.”

Scamper to the Scent of Loam

“How come all of our research is on Clark Seville’s early career?” Jack asked Solomon.

“When he was a bear?” Solomon smiled.

“Yeah.”

Solomon pointed once again at the diagram. It was a hierarchy of command over all the various departments of the Suggestible Trapezoid.

“Some focus on Seville’s early career; some focus on his latter days; some, a few, even devote their time to understanding his months as a woman,” he made a strange motion with his right hand. Was Jack supposed to understand this?
“So we…” he fumbled.

“Our department’s main task is overseeing the documenting and dissemination of the correct interpretation of Clark Seville’s days as a bear,” Solomon explained.

Jack took this information to a strange part of his brain. He was only now beginning to understand the analogous size of the mnemonic dimensions of the inside of his head. Although it could conceptually be approximately infinite, it all boiled down to about the size of his old elementary school and what passed for a “supermarket” back at that same time. His own robotic-nature (analogously, to be sure) he had accepted with remarkable grace given his age.

“Of course, the same could be said for someone discovering that sad fact late in life,” Solomon joked with his fellow instructors at the side of the room.

“How is Jack?” came a voice from the silhouetted entryway.

“Terminal,” Solomon responded without hesitation, without turning towards that voice.

Preamble to the Prelude

Solomon’s friend in the doorway was yet another from his teen years. Only this one had been with him every step of the way.

“Poor Jack,” Solomon lamented, unconcerned about the other instructors hearing such talk. “He’s so backwards, so undeveloped, so–”

“Retarded?” Lance Ash, for it was he, prompted, a playful look on his face. Hard to believe, I know…

Solomon stepped closer. There was a line between him and his colleagues. They did not perceive Lance in the same way as Solomon.

“All those years wasted,” he complained.

Lance looked at the wonderfully omnipresent carpet. It covered all of the built-in features of the room. He followed its spill over into the conversation pit. He only could have dreamed of such a thing just a year earlier. Now…

“Look, why don’t you talk to him?” Solomon suggested.

“I have no problem with that,” Lance replied. “I’m sure that he’s learned things, developed in ways we would never have imagined, while, you know, living a separate life.”

“You and I, we are intermingled,” Solomon saw it honestly. “If one of us has his life story studied, the other is going to be there, attached.”

“It can be… galling at times,” Lance admitted.

“Galling, really?” Solomon repeated, “I didn’t think you’d go so far as that.”

Lance shifted the direction of the conversation immediately.

“I think, in a way, Jack died. For a while there he was dead.”
Solomon now stared at the floor.

“Yeah,” he told his old friend.

Monologue Flotation Frog

Well, as you can see, I am the “Frog.” We thought we’d fancy it up to “Toad,” but that wasn’t any better. Word police.

But that was a long time ago. It was so long ago that I was still living in that cavern.

When you live in the middle of nowhere, with the only people you know your immediate family, the visions provided by PBS, especially in those days, sparked the possibilities that one’s imagination could aspire to, or, legitimized the visions one had already conjured.

You have to understand, our identification as “bears” or even “bear-like creatures” wasn’t too solid a concept. Everyone was all; all was everywhere. We can be frogs today, toads later on. Tomorrow, who knows? Playtime can be canceled without notice, without the ritual to remove any special monickers or judgments.

So, you may call me a bear or a bear-like creature, I ultimately see myself as the Toad. I’m going to go ahead and forestall any smug assumptions: No, I am not Toadsgoboad (from the little-known phrase, “Toads go boat.”) I am Clark Seville.

I am, as already attested in the story thus far, dead.

Yet still I have many things to say. And maybe to do, who knows? I surely don’t. I don’t even know if my words will be printed as I have put them down. That they will be printed, I have no doubt.

I am, after all, the Suggestible Trapezoid’s most famous agent and official “hero.” But that suggests a measure of either complicity on my part, especially if I was alive at the time of that coronation, or complete fabrication on the part of the “Trapezoid” people if I happen to have died.

Stencils from Canada

It’s strange, isn’t it? Why haven’t I narrated any of my tale thus far? It is my tale, after all. Saving the best for last, perhaps? Thus do I betray my knowledge of the book’s four-part program. Yes, I was told during my orientation with the Suggestible Trapezoid that the contribution of an auto-biographical text would be eventually required. I now know that it will be bundled along three other documents to form what the Trapezoid will, should it prove necessary, publicize as my official life story, with a focus on my work with the Trap.

That is what we call it.

I can only assure you that, at the time of writing, these words bear my memories and judgments validly.

And yet I cannot attest to things I know nothing about. Perhaps one day I will be given insight into the Trap’s purpose and a larger view as to our relation to the rest of the world.

These words were written while I am still a bear.

(In the above passages we see the self-awareness of Clark Seville manifestly. We will soon see his self-awareness in the realm of his legend within the Suggestible Trapezoid.)

Having come thus far on foot, we must now rely on the writing in the sky. It was fun free-wheeling it with you.

I then, said Clark Seville, noticed that the stencils my team were using were from Canada.

“I thought the organization’s interdict negated our use of products from countries–” I started to protest wordily.

Stan Misander, the only one on the team that I would have wanted as a friend, tried to explain the exemptions, but old Brouselard insisted on a show of secrecy.

“You’ve no right to tell this bear anything,” he said.

Faraway Farawry

Solomon was there the day I was cast as the Trap’s “Toadsgoboad.” The comparisons between our two hero-types were made explicit in many of the documents I later found. Some of them family documents kept by my mother. Yes, I found the old cave, but that was later…

“They have their Toadsgoboad; well, we’ll have ours,” Dr. Subst-Wurst expostulated. “Yes, I think Clark Seville will do just fine!” He was a round little man. He was directing the “unauthorized visual recording.”

But he did have the final say.

Too bad no recording of that exists.

It was never made. Strange, as I say.

Well, not to my knowledge. Their control over me was pretty strong. But that was before I once again became Toadsgoboad, the rebound avatar for Lance Ash.

You can take it from me, it’s not easy. Being a hero-type stand-in for the author? But I do it (did it) because I need the freedom it affords me to indulge in my art. Even though some of it might be signed, “Lance Ash.”

Now, again, as Clark Seville, I say to you that such things shouldn’t be so astounding. First, you can conceptualize everything that has been said and done so far. That is to say, you can keep up. Second, it is already established within the larger canon that Toadsgoboad acts through his agents. In many ways, they are incarnations of Toadsgoboad.

But, as I say, none of that really matters, because as far as I was concerned, I was only myself, Clark Seville. The feeling hadn’t changed. I liked being Clark Seville. You should have seen the list of my literary precursors. Mornadoe; Dallas Pimiento; Don Kiplough; and Colonel Calculer, of course. I didn’t get a chance to examine the whole thing. Yet I willingly did it; that is to say, I knew what I was doing; agreed to be the official hero of the Trap.

Considering the Sunshine

The reason I tell you this and tell you this now is that from hereon out we will still tell exciting tales of Clark Seville from when he was a bear, but these tales will take place after Seville has become aware of his position in the Suggestible Trapezoid: his place in the Trapezoid’s mythic universe.

Now, considering the sunshine, as we say, I was sent on an overnight mission to Crab Nova, the outermost of the islands off the western arm of Washington’s coast. I had started driving my black van, the one beside me in that photograph in Illumination magazine, vol. 3, no. 2. It was a trimline fat boy with enough room in the back for a hostage and a seat beside me for a passenger. If this latter role was filled, as it occasionally was, it was by a partner assigned to me.

I didn’t have a regular partner. The Trap has early recognized that my abilities and tendencies were best used solo. But occasionally, as I say, I had another agent assigned to me. No, none of them was a woman, and, no, there was never any “romance.” It was all I could do to keep my head from exploding most days.

On this overnighter to Crab Nova my partner was Cooler McCrudd.

I tried, within the bounds of propriety, to object and to explain the basis for my objection. McCrudd was just not the person to put in my proximity. I couldn’t rely on him. He couldn’t rely on me, so far as that went. Of course, I would carry out the assignment to my usual standards, but McCrudd’s presence might hamper my flexibility.

None of my hints were taken, however.

And my flexibility was hampered.

Battery-Powered Dreadnaughts’ Adequacy Exodus

“That’s a dreadnaught,” McCrudd’s voice interrupted.

The mayor and I turned from our conversation to view the new arrival. It was, as I had feared, Cooler McCrudd.

“Indeed,” I said. McCrudd was dressed, as had by now become his habit, in a long black coat. What he wore beneath, besides a glimpse of white shirt and black tie in the shadow of his out-thrust, chiseled jaw, was obscured. Topping his jutting, good-looking face was a tousled wave of oiled black hair. Sometimes this tonsure seemed to move in counterpoise to McCrudd’s latest posture. I took in all in a second. I smiled, remembering his habit of focusing his eyes on anything within sight instead of on whomever he was speaking to at the moment. He would scowl as he did this, lending a sense of primacy to his behavior.

“They told me on the way here it was a battleship, but that–” he indicated the vessel docked a quarter mile from our vantage point with a nod of his forehead, “--is a class B12 dreadnought from the pre-WWIdays.”

“Indeed,” repeated the mayor. He then looked up at me for explanation.

“Mayor Steen,” I introduced, “This is Cooler McCrudd. He’s the agent that’s (I almost said “assigned to me”) working with me here.”

The exemption to the above rule about McCrudd’s habits, that of his attempts to charm people, was now on display. McCrudd smiled like a floodlight as he approached the mayor, hand outstretched at just the right moment. McCrudd was not one to march across the breadth of a room with his muscular mitt ready for clasping.

“Well, include me in your briefing,” McCrudd demanded politely through the smile that shrank even as it turned from his honor to me.

Bastardization Imports and Grease

“To recap,” I addressed the half-dozen men around me, “The municipal government of Crab Nova,” here I nodded at the group before me, within which the majority of said government stood, “Need the ship behind me, the 110-year-old Imelda McClain, turned into a floating hotel and casino. But,” here I brought my gaze inward as I loomed over the men huddled around me for security’s sake, “There is opposition from the townsfolk on the other side of the bay, the unincorporated area called Flat Motorjection.”

Here the men, excluding Cooler McCrudd, who stared behind them at the storm looming over the town’s three-pointed skyline, nodded solemnly in agreement with my summation. The mayor, Steen, added the punchline; “We were hoping you could go over there and talk some sense into them.”

Before I could reply, McCrudd had turned on a heel and addressed the mayor’s statement of desire.

“We’re not paid thugs,” he asserted. “We’re agents of the Suggestible Trapezoid, the world’s most talked-about secret organization. What we do exactly is our business and how we do it is our proprietary information. Trade secrets,” he ended, smiling and examining the tie of one of the men who had had to turn completely around to face the new speaker.

“Do you have anything else,” I knifed into the air, “You’d like to add, Agent McCrudd?”

McCrudd closed his eyes and bowed his head. How I hated him.

“No, Agent Seville,” he replied, smiling.

“Then,” I sighed, “I think that wraps things up.”

“So will you speak to those people?” Steen demanded.

I waited until McCrudd had joined me on my side of the group.

“As you heard,” I told him, “We’re not paid thugs.”

Append Every Statement with, “Said Todd”

McCrudd amazed me by deferring to my judgment as to how to proceed.

“You’re the lead on this one,” he admitted, his eyes appearing to follow an energetic mouse on the floor, one that was not there. He threw up his hands to impress upon me his impunity to blame for whatever went wrong.

And things would go wrong.

“We’re going across the bay,” I informed him.

“OK.”

“How did you get here?”
“202 Cyclon Ace.”

I sighed.

“I see.”

“Why? What are you driving?”

“You’ll soon see.”

It was hard to tell McCrudd’s real feelings on being led into the presence of my van. He snorted and recoiled, as expected. But there quickly followed a series of (seemingly) unfeigned faces betraying both admiration for the vehicle itself as well as a new respect for me because of what it represented.

“The Trap kit this out?” he asked, taking his seat and glancing back at the utilitarian features in the cargo area.

“Of course,” I growled, finding it a foolish question.

“Well, there are agents who independently kit themselves out with custom-made accoutrement,” McCrudd explained himself.

“Those men must be independently wealthy,” I shot back, feeling I’d dealt McCrudd a nice retort. A real zinger. My thoughts drifted away in this manner as we crossed the bridge to Flat Motorjection.

Has Elton John Ever Done a Stones Song?

I’m listening to one now; “You Make Me Feel Like Danzig,” from John’s 1990 album, Last of the Flaccid Pastimes. It’s much better than I would have thought. I presumed he’d tart it up with horns or something.

Anyway, McCrudd and I drove into the wealthiest residential areas in the unincorporated township.

“Why aren’t you incorporated?” I asked one lady we met out walking her dog.

“We prefer the freedom of regulation afforded us by this arrangement,” she explained.

“Yes, but to get to be your own city,” Cooler McCrudd tried his charmer-of-snakes mien.

“Taxes, my boy,” the lady, who must have been at the beginning of her sixties or slightly earlier, made it plain for McCrudd, gripping him about his right forearm for a moment.

We parted company with her and moved on, walking down the sidewalk that passed before many large and wonderfully designed homes. It was a much larger community than I had been led to expect.

“Hey, why didn’t that lady’s dog bark at you or react?” McCrudd wondered, waving the ends of his fingers up and down at my ursinomorph presence.

I decided to smile.

“The boots I am wearing are oiled with a chemical that neutralizes any… pheronomic signals that an animal,” here I paused slightly in my stride, “such as a dog,” I said before continuing, “might sense.”

McCrudd inhaled deeply, also smiling, his gaze seemingly transfixed by one of the buttons on my coat.

“Is that coat from the Trap’s wardrobe?” he asked.

“Ask that woman what she thinks of the dreadnought casino idea,” I ordered.

Career Advancement Module 26

As I approached McCrudd’s table, I saw him working over some worksheet with an accompanying booklet. He pushed it aside and placed his elbow atop the papers.

“Which module is that?” I asked, eyes on the unique border on a piece of paper still visible.

McCrudd frowned at me.

“How did you make it through?” he asked, his gaze somewhere between the charm and the indifference.

“It’s 26, isn’t it?” I suddenly thought. “Yes, the big one is next– if you pass this one.”

“You know, Seville, I don’t like you– no one likes you. Why do you want to make things worse?” McCrudd stared unblinking into my eyes.

“I’ll answer your first question now, if you’d like,” I began, eyes on the floor. I leaned on McCrudd’s table with my human knuckles and brought my own gaze up to that handsome visage.

“I never did any of those career advancement modules. Not one.” I smiled. “I did have to pass some special assignments early on,” I admitted.

“The mechanical alligator,” McCrudd joined me in a smile. “Or was it a crocodile?”

“I can’t remember,” I shook my head.

“So you wouldn’t be of any help with this,” McCrudd enticed, spinning his paperwork around with a magician’s flair and pushing the thing under my nose.

I glanced once up at McCrudd and then skimmed through the top two pages. It was a preparatory narrative designed to set the mood for the theoretical questioning to come.

Each Fainting Spell Precluded the Orbit

OK, so now you get the drift. I’m actually a good bit stupider than appears, to me, anyway. And my memoirs (Tales) may not entirely reflect the actual goings-on at that time. OK.

“Now, look, Seville,” McCrudd interrupted this momentous moment, “Where are we going to sleep? And when?”

I considered. We had spent the day talking to the locals, getting their opinions on the situation. Some very much wanted the casino project to go through; some very much did not; and some were indifferent to the matter or, indeed, anything.

“I tell you what: We’ll go to that hotel there and check in. You take the first round of sleep. I’m still up–I’ll keep going with the preliminary investigation.” I was not friendly during this speech. Don’t mistake my volubility with friendliness.

“Thank you. I’ll pay with the Trap’s account,” McCrudd tapped his left breast pocket as he said this. My mind was so occupied by this gesture that I could only focus on finding a place to park the van. When I had successfully done so, I, almost in relief, blurted out,
“How long have you been in transit?”

McCrudd rolled his eyes once briefly towards my corner of his field of vision. He was toying with the vestigial belt on his coat.

“About twenty hours,” he replied.

I nodded.

I hung around the lobby until McCrudd handed me the second key to the room. I juggled it in my hand while I studied the place.

“Tell me something,” I approached the young man on duty behind the desk. “How does a place like this merit such a decent hotel as this?”

Each Face Bite You Bisonhead

Mayor Steen, a man in appearance somewhere between Dana Elcar and Gordon Jump, stood with his hands in his trouser pockets and looked down at the coffee shop across the street. He liked to watch the college girls go in and out of the shop and dream. He was pondering how fashions had changed over the years and how what this current crop of college-aged women wore really appealed to him when Hank Newcombe asked him a second time if they could trust these agents from the Suggestible Trapezoid.

“Why, that tall one I’d swear is a bear. An actual bear,” Newcombe exclaimed, looking to the other men in the room for confirmation.

Mayor Steen took one last look as he began to answer. A girl was wearing a hat. And a charming one at that. He didn’t think girls wore hats anymore. At least, not real ones. Baseball caps didn’t count…

“Oh, I think we can trust them as far as that goes,” he replied to Newcombe, turning around, keeping his head tilted downwards. “I mean, what are they going to do? Betray us? Not do the job they’ve been paid to do?”
“And that’s another thing,” Perry Tarbush added, “How is it that the Suggestible Trapezoid is going all of this for us for such a low price?”

Mayor Steen looked up, smiling.

“Didn’t you know?” He took his hands out of his pockets. “The Suggestible Trapezoid doesn’t just get compensated in money. No,” he shook his head. “They do it for the fun.”

“Fun?” someone in the room repeated incredulously.

Steen nodded. “They… see these assignments as… art projects, scavenger hunts, quests for… answers…”

“How do you know so much about them?” Newcombe wondered. “I thought they were a secret organization.”
“They tried to recruit a friend of my son,” the mayor answered. “I don’t think it went very well.”

Pathetic Vegan Strips at the End of the Movie

McCrudd and I took a break from our endeavors to step into the local movie palace. This was an ancient cinema from the days of the “Silver Screen.” The film was called Big Baby Doesn’t Like It When the Old Man Gets High. I didn’t care for it and, much to my surprise, neither did McCrudd. How blind one’s enmity can make one. I foolishly had assumed that we would be on opposite sides of every issue, of every matter of taste. However, the two of us did dislike it for different reasons.

“Typical that a run-down old place like this would only show re-releases,” McCrudd commented as we passed the popcorn back and forth. I wasn’t worried about his failure to whisper. There were only three other people in the place.

“‘Re-release?’” I asked. “How old is this film?”
McCrudd grinned.

“You thought it was a current hit, didn’t you, Seville?” He opened a bag of coffee-flavored yogurt bacon. “This thing,” he enunciated indistinctly around his treat, “Came out before I was born.”

“Really.” I turned my attention back to the film. Mick Jagger did seem out of place in the tightly-shot, tiny avocado-colored kitchen. His interactions with the biped lion Bismarck seemed stiff and unrealistic, now that I thought about it.

“Want one?” McCrudd offered,holding out the bag.

“Sure. Thanks.” I took one of the pink and brown sticks. Its festive aroma corresponded perfectly with the prehistoric decor of the auditorium and the meaningless doings on the screen. I took a bite.

“This isn’t real meat,” I decided immediately.

“It’s not?” McCrudd tried to read the ingredients on the side of the package, but couldn’t in the darkness.

As the credits began to roll, McCrudd sang tunelessly along with accompanying song. Something about summer love.

Band Name: Brenda’s Closet

The big band in Crab Nova at that time was Brenda’s Closet. They were four college-aged guys whose stage outfits were whatever they happened to be wearing that day. They had played all the clubs and frat parties in the area and now had their sights on the Imelda McClain. After a night of jamming across the bay in Flat Motorjection at Keith’s cousin’s house, they got into a small rowboat and rowed out to the anchored dreadnaught.

“There’s bound to be somebody on board,” whispered Steve. He thought they should wait until the ship was a casino, but the others realized they might be broken up by then.

“It’s a matter of powering the equipment,” Keith mused.

They paddled around the side of the old warship, looking for a gangway for whatever it was called

“There’s bound to be something,’ Tommy assured him. He thought it would make a great story one day– We invited all our friends to an illegal performance on the Imelda McClain before they made it into a casino!

“Who’s that down there?” came a voice of exaggerated authority from above.

Brenda’s Closet remained shut. The four young men bobbed against the hull in silence. A light shone down on them.

“My god, it’s Keith Fishfarmer!” cried the voice.

“That’s Fitzarmer!” growled Keith back. He knew who was up there, on the ship before they were, stealing their idea. Butterfly Sepia Strangler, Brenda’s Closet’s hated rivals.

“FIshfarmer, what are you doing here?” Todd Amikus demanded, tossing a lit cigarette forty feet down at the other band.

“Let’s go,” Keith muttered to his bandmates.

Eliot, the fourth member of Brenda’s Closet, yelled, “You guys suck! You can’t play and you’re a bunch of posers!”

Todd yelled back as a rain of beer cans descended, “Tell your cousin his girlfriend shouldn’t run her mouth!”

Favorite Saturday of Mine

“Identifying the chief opponents to the casino project would seem to be our primary task,” I counseled McCrudd.

“And then what?” he asked, “Eliminate them?”

I considered the possibility.

“I think ransacking their homes would be a better idea, at least initially.” I threw my ice cream cone into a bin. “Have you ever been on a pillaging foray?” I asked my companion.

“Nope,” the young man, who, now that I think about it, looked a little like Colin Farrell, but without the overbearing eyebrows, replied. “I find the idea common.”

“But you do realize its centrality to the Trapezoid’s mission?”

McCrudd sighed.

“Of course.”

We passed by a storefront whose display window contained only a hand-lettered posterboard sign. The words were “Dead Man’s Freedom.” I stopped and looked inside, cupping my hands around my face. The place was empty except for a lone man behind a desk far in the back. He looked at my with a mild, friendly face.

“Come on, Seville,” McCrudd urged. Maybe he didn’t look like Colin Farrell. I don’t even know who that is. Maybe he looked like the illustration on the theatrical poster for the film “Streets of Fire.” I don’t know. I didn’t then, certainly.

I allowed myself to be torn away from the strange magnetic pull of the other man’s pleasant countenance. I was reminded of one day in my cub-hood; my grandmother took me blackberry picking. I could have stood by the side of road forever, entranced by the delicate operation of selecting a berry and removing it from its thorny stem. And then eating it. Put one in the basket and another in my mouth. The height of summer. The heat like a tangible thing about one, something not unpleasant, as long as one stood still.

Subaru Dawn

Hank Newcombe, proud of his new Subaru Crosstrek, delighting in its shape and the associated collection of images and concepts that boosted his own ego and his identification with the car, decided one morning to go out alone. He told his wife of his intention. She, indulgent and understanding, made no effort to tag along. Newcombe dressed himself in a vague approximation of an “adventurer” and set out, ready for whatever the morning might bring.

Beyond heading down to the shore to take a look at the Imelda McClain, he had no fixed notions of what he would do or where he would go. He told himself that taking a look at the ship was a dutiful errand: get some ideas percolating in the brain. What he really wanted to do was head into the hills behind Crab Nova, but that could wait. He told himself that only his mighty Subaru Crosstrek could handle the trail he intended to blaze.

Down at the shore he saw two police vehicles.

“What’s going on?” he asked Mance Murkey, the sergeant.

“Looks like some kids got drunk in a boat and drownded,” the policeman replied. “Might have been trying to get aboard the battleship, but we don’t know yet.”

At that moment the police launch drew alongside the pier. The bodies of Tommy, Steve, Twist, and one of the other members of Butterfly Sepia Strangler, Hugh Huffin, were hefted up and into the waiting arms of white-suited medical personnel.

“I know that kid!” Newcombe exclaimed. Murkey turned to look at him. “That’s Norman Poole! His father owns the liquor store!”
Murkey looked back. He watched the sheets being drawn over each body.

“Look, Mr. Newcombe, keep that information to yourself, OK? At least until we’ve notified the kids’ parents and had a formal identification, OK?”

Newcombe rubbed the dash of his Subaru comfortingly, consolingly. He drove away as he did so.

Booth Lucid Underarm

“This is Frank Folium’s house,” I indicated to McCrudd as we parked the big van against the curb in front.

“How do you know he’s not home?” McCrudd tested.

I pitied him.

“The man in the green hat at the feed and seed,” I explained. “I heard him tell that other man, the one in the red hat, that Folium’s daughter is getting married today– in New Guam.”

McCrudd did not react. He pushed out his bottom lip slightly and looked about at the neighboring houses.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“I’m always ready,” he responded, throwing open the door.

I met him at the back of the van.

“Follow my lead,” I ordered, “And use your intuition.”

“Like the Force,” McCrudd mocked. I didn’t have time for his mockery or his contempt. My own aesthetic senses had had to be awakened and developed through a grueling series of arcane practices. We stepped onto the lawn and disappeared into the ivy that served as a ground cover around the trees up the hill to the house. I used a tool from my coat sleeve to remove a window from its frame.

“Dogs?” McCrudd wondered as we clambered over the sill into the kitchen and heard the telltale scratch of claws on tile.

“Bury your scruples,” I hissed, unholstering the paralyzer cone and knocking two enormous beasts rounding the corner cold with the blacker-than-black paralysis wave.

“I thought you were going to kill them,” McCrudd panted. He looked down at the dogs and nudged one’s head with his foot.

“I did,” I explained. “The paralysis cone’s metademic response is keyed to human physiognomy.”

McCrudd looked me up and down, but said nothing.

“You start with the living room,” I ordered. “I’ll check the bedrooms. Grab anything that catches your fancy, with an eye towards that which engenders inexplicable emotion.”

Polynomials Tense and Sleepless

“This isn’t good,” Mayor Steen moaned. He sat in his den full of unopened books, holding a heavy tumbler of bourbon and ice against his chin.

“I’ve met Mrs. Fitzarmer,” Dolly, Steen’s wife of nearly forty years, commented. She stared at the carpet. It was outdated and drab, but she knew that only their own deaths would impel any change in the room’s appearance.

“Who’s that again?” Steen asked, looking around and taking a sip.

“Her son is the singer in one of the two bands that fought on the battleship.”

“Dreadnaught,” Steen corrected.

“What?”

“I found out it’s a dreadnought, not a battleship,” the mayor told his wife.

“What’s the difference?” demanded Dolly, leaning forward and picking up her glass of red wine.

“Apparently, it’s to do with– oh, it doesn’t matter,” snapped Steen. He rose and dropped his head. “This is bad publicity. This is just what we don’t need at this time.”

“Well, they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” Dolly tried to show her husband another view.

“Dolly,” Steen began angrily. He wanted, so badly, to continue with, “You are an idiot,” but knew from long years of experience what that would engender. “Trust me; this will only firm up the opposition from those idiots–” there, he said it– “On the other side of the bay.

Dolly, too, had experience.

“Those hicks,” she added, knowing that a common enemy clears away any friction between two people. “But, besides, those people from the Hidden Trapezoid will take care of them, right?”

Steen stared at his wife for a moment. His stifled laughter nearly erupted out his nose in a rude mess.

Pronoun Peanut from the Store

McCrudd found me in one of the daughters’ rooms, going through boxes of bizarre memorabilia. Leif Garrett, in this day and age?

“Seville, how much longer are we going to be here?” he asked.

“As long as it takes,” I informed him as I got to my feet. “What did you find?”

“A book about casino gambling and this jump-the-peg game,” McCrudd held out a wooden, triangular-shaped object with green plastic pegs fitted into holes drilled into its surface.

“Let me see that,” I directed.

As McCrudd handed me the old-fashioned game, I slapped it away, sending little green men flying. “Not that,” I said, “The book, the book!”

“Seville, you are an asshole!” McCrudd bellowed. He shoved the book at me and started to bellow something else, but each of us stopped short, staring. A noise, from downstairs, doors opening, voices–

Tucking the book into an interior pocket of my coat, I dashed out of the room, McCrudd close behind, while I reached the bottom of the stairs with paralyzer cone in hand, McCrudd revealed a long silver cylinder withdrawn from some hidden recess in his attire. We came upon a young woman just opening her mouth to scream at the sight of the two dead dogs. I turned the paralysis wave on her while McCrudd immediately began looking for the source of the other, masculine voice we had heard.

I bent over the prostrate young woman and examined the many bracelets on her left wrist. I heard a sound like a length of garden hose being swung about and then the crash of a human body through wooden furniture. Pocketing the bracelets after a brief tussle with the sun-burned flesh, I met McCrudd returning from the living room. He was smiling.

“This any better?” he mocked, holding a wallet.

“Did you kill him?” I asked.

“No choice,” he replied. “The sonic bat has no ‘paralysis’ setting.”

Carnivorous Torpedo Skin

Dolly Steen paid a call on Maria Fitzarmer the next day.

“Do the police have any more information?” the mayor’s wife asked, more out of a lack of anything better to say than any serious need of information. After all, she read the paper.

“No,” Maria told her. “I’m just so glad it wasn’t my son who was killed.”

“Were they heavy metal, these bands?” Dolly probed.

“Oh, no,” Maria shot back. She had been well-schooled by Keith in the music he and his friends made. “No, Brenda’s Closet plays jangle pop and dream pop– a combination of the two.”

Dolly didn’t know what she was talking about. She’d never heard of either of these two genres.

“And the other band played the same thing. According to Keith–” She stopped herself, for here was Keith himself, coming home.

“Keith, come say hello to Mrs. Steen, the mayor’s wife,” Maria called out. Keith, a tall, good-looking young man, entered the kitchen and shook the mayor’s wife’s hand.

“Thank you for everything, Mrs. Steen,” he told her sincerely.

“It’s my husband you should thank,” Dolly responded. She didn’t trust these college bands. It was a good thing Travis had no ear for music.

“We’re meeting with him later today,” Keith reminded her.

“You and the members of this other band,” Dolly questioned.

“Butterfly Sepia Strangler, yes,” Keith could not conceal his contempt. They copied them in–

“Mrs. Steen wanted to know what jangle pop and dream pop are,” Keith’s mother urged the young man to explain.

Keith took a deep breath.

“Jangle pop is like the Byrds or sort of early Beatles–”
“Oh, I like the Beatles,” Dolly interjected.

“--and dream pop is like the Church. Have you heard of the Church?”

Dolly stammered. “We go whenever we can.”

Breakfast Owls Come Miserly

In a tiny restaurant called The Little City Diner McCrudd and I split a sandwich and debated why one of the most outspoken opponents of the plans to turn the old warship into a casino would have a book on how to win at casino gambling.

“Hypocrisy,” McCrudd suggested.

I mused on the word, pushing the last of my pastrami and rye into my mouth.

“Perhaps,” I conceded. I glanced around the place. How could they keep such a pathetic little place in business, I wondered. There, beside the cash register: what was that?

“Your instincts might be better than you know, McCrudd,” I told my associate as I pushed myself to my feet.

“They’re better than you know,” he retorted, remaining seated and puzzled as to what I was doing.

“Do you sell many of these?” I asked the lady behind the counter. I pointed to the display of “Old-Fashioned Campfire Puzzles,” featuring among them just the jump-the-pegs game that McCrudd had found.

“Not really,” came the answer. “Did you enjoy your lunch?”

“The best pastrami and rye I’ve ever had,” I enthused.

“I didn’t think much of it,” McCrudd chimed in at my side. “I think I would have far preferred the egg salad.”

“Then why didn’t you order it?” I asked, civility stretched like a stocking over my face.

“You’re in charge, remember?” McCrudd smiled back, throwing out his hands as if presenting me to the world. He turned his attention to the lady behind the counter. He caught her eye for only a second before moving on the supposedly “hand-made” games and puzzles.

“Did you sell one of these to Frank Folium? He asked the lady, a little brusquely, I thought, and perhaps intemperately, given that news of our invasion of Folium’s house would soon be common knowledge, but why not, I thought as well, go ahead and get things moving?

“No, not to my knowledge, “came the answer,

“That’s too bad,” McCrudd indulged in a a smile and direct eye contact.

Whale Forms’ Problematic Dark Sea

“Boys,” Mayor Steen addressed the four young men standing in his office, “I've had to use a considerable amount of influence to keep you from facing murder charges–”

“We didn’t do nothing!” Todd Amikus burst out.

Keith Fitzarmer, standing at the other end of the lineup, put one foot forward and leaned to his right.

“Todd,” he named the other young man, “Shhh…”

Todd would have continued his protestations, both to the Mayor’s words and to Keith’s impertinence, but his own bandmate, Rob, nudged him in the ribs to silence him.

Mayor Steen stared at Todd a moment, then walked down the line looking at each boy (for so he termed them) in turn, “It seems,” he began, “That you boys owe me something— owe the town something,” he added.

“What can we do for you, sir?” Keith asked the mayor.

Steen nodded, looking into Keith’s eyes. He waited a moment.

“Now, you four are the surviving members of two different bands. And, from what I hear, you both played the same kind of music.”

“WELL,” Todd demurred forcefully, but after a second’s thought, modified his tone. “They’re more dream pop; we’re more shoegaze.”

“Whatever,” Steen cut him short. “It doesn’t matter to me what kind of crap you play. This is what I have in mind: the four of you form one band and you call yourselves… get this, Imelda’s Closet.” Steen’s face lit up. “Get it? Now the point of this is, you start playing shows on board the Imelda McClain now, before we begin construction; start ginning up publicity and acceptance for the ship as a night spot. What do you think?”

“That’s basically what we had in mind when—” Rob Portland began but stopped, not wanting to say anything in reference to that night.

“Play with them?” Todd sounded repulsed.

“I think it’s a great idea, sir,” Keith agreed. “We’ll work everything out.”

Corruptuous or Corruptious?

“Seville,” Cooler McCrudd spoke my name as if weighing it against a theoretical not-Seville. “Does it really matter if we complete this assignment in a straightforward, open-and-shut manner or not?”

I smiled. I was at the wheel of the van, pulling into the periphery of a steamy, fog-shrouded cornfield. In the distance, above the tufted stalks and their blanket of mist, a treehouse so old it had become part of its tree could be seen. “What do you mean,” I asked in a leading tone.

MCCrudd stared at the side of my head for a good twenty seconds.

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, it doesn’t matter what we do at all.”

I put the van in park and looked at my fellow agent. I as much as said, “Go on,” without having to.

“What matters is what the Trap wants,” McCrudd continued, feeling his way along. “Our… presence…” he faltered, wanting me to finish for him. I decided to do so, seeing as how he was a spoiled brat who didn’t deserve to learn on his own, the hard way, to experience finding out for himself. No, that I would deny him.

“...alone,” I completed the thought, “Has already begun the process. What our so-called ‘clients’ want is already in the works. We will get the credit, at least in their minds, for having achieved the objective, but we will, in reality, have done very little of a practical nature towards that achievement.:

McCrudd looked out the windshield.

“A treehouse,” he said.

I shut off the engine.

“Did you have a treehouse grow–” No, don’t ask that. Don’t care.

“If you want, it might be a good idea to check that out,” I told McCrudd.

His hand was already on the door handle.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“PIck a few ears.” I replied.

Threesome Calendar Surgical Employ

“Are we really going to go through with this?” Todd demanded later.

“We’ve got to,” Rob reminded him in an undertone.

“To hell with this— I’m fleeing the state!”

“Can’t do that until after the police investigation is concluded,” Keith said calmly.

“Imelda’s Closet!” Todd barked. “What a joke!”

“Pick up your guitar,” Keith ordered.

“I don’t feel like it.”

Keith wanted to bash Todd’s teeth out.

“Look, we can call ourselves something else later,” he tried to console both himself and Todd. And everybody.

“There’s not going to be any ‘ourselves’ later,” Todd snapped. “I’m just doing this until the heat’s off.”

“Come on,” urged Eliot, the bass player, “Let’s just jam on something.”

So they did. Todd proved to be a far better guitarist than Keith had expected. Keith proved to be a far better singer than Todd had been willing to admit. Reluctantly, the four began to gel. Their rehearsals would have to be kept secret for now. Mayor Steen didn't want any trouble with the dead kids; parents. The official story was that, yes, there had been a fight and drinking had been involved, but the drowning deaths of the four young men had been completely accidental. Allusions to the truth and to the devil’s bargain the new band had been forced to make were to be found in the first few songs they wrote together. “They Tried to Kill Him with the Eggplant” and “Fluctuant Discourse Collapsing” give a flavor of the new direction.

“Maybe we could get a second guitarist,” Todd suggested at their fifth rehearsal.

Keith considered. “My cousin plays,” he said.

“So does his girlfriend,” thought Todd.

Campy Tadpoles

While I tried to make contact with the lab boys, McCrudd tromped through the rows of corn to the treehouse. As he reached the edge of the field and stood staring up into the void of the treehouse’s window, he was suddenly aware of how silent the world was. He could hear a grasshopper taking flight and a bird call out. He could hear the rumble of a truck in the distance, but overall everything was dead silent. Moving closer to the foot of the tree, McCrudd tried to spot the house to which this field, this tree, and this treehouse were adjunct, but saw nothing in the immediate vicinity.

He touched the tree. “Is this a pecan tree?” he thought. The ladder, made of boards nailed up the trunk one above the next, was half-way lost to time. He assured himself that it was not a pecan tree before attempting to climb. His hands were soft, so he drew on a pair of leather gloves. He used the remaining rungs of the makeshift ladder where he could, but mostly muscled his way to the top. I’ll give credit to him: he didn’t worry about damaging or dirtying his clothes. Of course, aside from a scuff or two to his shoes, nothing of the sort happened to mar his appearance. He swung inside the open doorway to the treehouse without a trace to show for the effort it had cost him to make the ascent.

Inside he found an old kitchen table with a formica top and metal legs and two chairs, one that matched the table and one belonging to a different origin altogether. The single room of the treehouse was only large enough for two or three children at most. Tacked to the wall was a chart delineating the life cycle of a frog. McCrudd studied it for a moment with a smirk. He moved on to look at the multi-colored chalk marks on the old boards. He thought he might find an old toy or something, but no such luck. It was luck, wasn’t it? This whole enterprise– blind luck. But there in the corner, wedged in a crack, was that a little plastic soldier? He retrieved his prize and studied it in the window.

Globule Very Very Soon

“How goes the consciousness raising in Flat Motorjection?” Phil Ramsgate asked Mayor Steen. He had just returned from his annual trip to Ultravermont where he oversaw a poetry workshop at Ouiba Sera College.

“I receive almost daily reports from the Suggestible Trapezoid agents,” Steen replied. He hated to engage in conversation with Ramsgate. The man was so overtly intellectual.

“The Suggestible Trapezoid?” Ramsgate questioned. “I thought you were going with Creative Mysteries.”

Steen smiled. He thought he’d play a little intellectual game of his own.

“What’s the difference?” he asked with an academic world-weariness he hoped sounded genuine. “Besides,” he added quickly, thinking to forestall some lecture full of details and subtlety. “The Trapezoid was far cheaper.”

Ramsgate gawped. “The Suggestible Trapezoid is one of the most evil organizations in the world.”

“In this world,” Steen reminded the other man, whom he hoped would find the distinction profound enough to evaporate into a dither of abstruse quibbles.

“Steen,” the poet insisted, “Once the Suggestible Trapezoid gets involved in a situation, they leave permanent traces of their handiwork– sometimes death.”

“We’ve already had the death part,” the mayor retorted. “Four college boys— drowned after getting drunk and diving off the side of the Imelda McClain.”

“And you don’t think there’s a connection to the Trapezoid?”
“You do?”
Ramsgate looked out the window at the old warship down in the water.

“Do you know who Imelda McClain was?” he asked.

“She was the governor of Infranew Hampshire,” Steen answered. Of course he knew who she was.

“She was a poet,” Ramsgate reminded him.

I Don’t Want the Things to Have a Purpose, But I Do Want Them to be Connected to a Larger System of Purposelessness

“Good work,” I told McCrudd reluctantly after he had even more reluctantly shown me the toy soldier he had found.

“What did they say at the lab?” McCrudd asked in lieu of a word of thanks.

I put the van in reverse.

“They want me to save a few of these ears for analysis,” I answered as I backed into the empty street.

“What do you want me to do with this?” McCrudd asked, holding up his find.

“Keep it. You’ll know what to do with it later.” I headed towards the waterfront.

“It’s the bazooka man,” McCrudd noted.

I glanced his way, but said nothing.

“Nobody wants the bazooka man,” McCrudd muttered, stuffing the soldier into his pocket. He looked back at the pile of corn I had picked.

“Jesus, did you get enough?”

“They may prove useful. For barter, for example.”

“For better, for worse.”

“For now, forever.”

McCrudd started to grin, but realized where we were headed and caught himself.

For me, it was like a dream. The town seemed largely deserted. The few people we did see were indifferent to our presence.

“Getting back to what we were discussing before,” I began.

“Yes?”

“Do you play chess?” I asked.

“I know how to.”

“Every move changes all of the relationships among all the pieces on the board. It’s just like life.”

“And the Suggestible Trapezoid?”

“We create our own pieces,” I said. “And our own board.”

“Just like life.”

Following the Plastic Breed

Phil Ramsgate had been following the plastic breed for some time now. Had life been more difficult for him, he might have become a philosopher instead of a poet, but, with his glorious raven locks; full, salt-and-pepper beard, and commanding declamation, he had slipped easily into the roles of poet, professor, and sexual mentor to so many would-be writers and artists. “The Plastic Breed” was Ramsgate’s term for his side of the age-old tug-of-war between poetry and philosophy.

“The philosophy side of the dichotomy,” he told Anne Hagar later that day, “I term ‘the Barcode Complete.’”

Anne laughingly begged to know what that meant.

Ramsgate took up his enormous glass of vin ordinaire and crookedly smiled.

“The philosopher’s approach is set in stone,” he said. “Mine is amorphous.”

“And yet you both seek to describe something that might be called ‘existence,’” Keith’s cousin Vince jumped in.

Ramsgate the poet took in the young man sitting with this delightful creature. He knew too much; certainly too much for one so low-born. How to separate the two? Oh well, Ramsgate thought, downing the cheap red and turning his mind to more serious matters, there was time enough to let his innate magnetism do its work.

“What do you do, Vince?” he asked.

“I’m a guitarist,” replied the young man.

“Vince has just got an offer to join a new band that’s forming.” Anne Hager told the sexy older man.

“Heavy Metal?” Ramsgate pronounced the words as if he was twirling a frisbee around on the tip of his finger.

Vince smiled.

“No; dream pop,” he corrected.

“The pop of dreams,” mused Ramsgate as he drove back to his house in Crab Nova later that day.

Telepathic Liar Fabrication by Mail

Flat Motorjection still had a small, old-fashioned post office that occupied one half of a building whose other half was an ancient general store. There had been talk of a new post office, but most of the unincorporated township’s population was against it. I wanted to find out more about this topic, as I felt it might provide some insight into the opposition to the floating casino project. Cooler McCrudd thought it was a bad idea to show our faces in such a well-trafficked place, so I directed him to talk to the people who lived along the water, those who had the Imelda McClain in their field of vision all day long.

I entered the tiny post office, holding the door open for two old ladies who were exiting.

“Thank you,” they said in unison.

“You’re welcome,” I replied, noting the small bundles of envelopes and rolled-up periodicals they carried.

“May I help you?” offered the woman behind the counter.

“Ah, I’m interested in renting a box,” I told her.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“You mean my physical address?”
“Yes.”

“Well, right now I live in Solitary Sonata–”

“No, no,” she shook her head, “You can rent a box at the post office there.”

“Yes, but I’ll be moving here soon,” I objected.

“You’ll need to have proof of residency before you can rent a box here.”

I considered. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Are you the postmaster?”
“No, I’m not,” she shook her head again.

I looked around. “I like the idea of getting my mail here,” I insisted. “There’s an old-fashioned charm here I find appealing.”

Incorrigibly Recidivist

“So, Phil, you’re back!” came the cry from the other side of the street as the poet Ramsgate began to unload his luggage from the rear of his car.

Ramsgate smiled before he turned around. Of course, he would be confronted by Liete now of all times— after he’d met a delicious young creature whose flesh he longed to consume like a… well, he’d think of a suitable obscure metaphor later.

“Yes, Liete,” Ramsgate replied, turning around with a suit bag slung over his shoulder and a pile of promising manuscripts in the crook of his arm. “Delighted to see you.” This was not exactly true. While Ramsgate enjoyed their occasional debates; he taking the side of poetry, obviously, and Liete taking that of philosophy– he did not find the man worthy of friendship or even casual social interaction. He was ugly and common.

“Delighted to see you two,” Liete agreed, hopping to the edge of his property and crossing the street with his head tucked between his shoulders and rapid, redundant glances to the left and right even though it was clear that no cars were anywhere nearby. He stepped closed as he dared to his neighbor and asked how his trip had been.

“I had a most productive time,” Ramsgate answered. “I think this was one of the most promising groups we’ve had since the workshops were inaugurated. The future of poetry is in good hands.” He said this, as I am sure you are aware by now, only to irritate Liete the philosopher.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure today’s youth are as muddle-headed as they were thirty years ago,” Liete parried. “Look, I know you want to relax after your trip, so I won’t keep you. I just wanted to let you know: Steen had hired agents from the Suggestible Trapezoid to stifle any opposition from the other side of the bay to the casino plans.”

“Yes, I know. I heard about that.”

“Well,” Liete looked aghast, “Don’t you find this unethical, if not monstrously immoral?”

Scout Cleanser Juice Producer

Stepping out of the post office without the key to any mailbox, but with a slightly greater understanding of the prevailing views regarding tradition and the love of simplicity, I turned to my left and entered the conjoined store. A high-ceilinged, wooden-floored relic from the days of cracker barrels and overalls sold like planks of plywood, the place was staffed by one old man in a baseball cap bearing the logo for “Freefall Implements,” and patronized by four old men inside the store standing about and outside the store by four old men sitting on what might have once been a church pew. I had said nothing to the old men outside, but nodded and murmured “good day” to the owner once inside. The latter asked if there was anything he could do for me. I replied in as straightforward a manner as I could, giving weight to my humble confusion, being but a stranger in these parts.

“I just wanted to know; is that the ship they’re thinking about turning into a casino?” I asked, pointing towards the door.

“That it is,” declared one of the old men standing about. Well, leaning, in his case.

“Those people over in Crab Nova just want money,” another averred. “They don’t care what kind of riff-raff they bring here.”

I announced my humble thirst and cast about for something to drink, choosing a rustic glass bottle from an ancient machine. The beverage was called “Scout Cleaner Juice.” I examined the bottle and said I’d never heard of it.

“They used to make it right here in Flat Motorjection,” the owner informed me, ringing up my purchase on a cash register that looked like it had seen the death of Queen Victoria.

“That’s another thing gone with the breeze,” sighed another old man.

“Wind,” corrected the wonder, handing me my change.

“What’s that?” the other man asked.

“Wind,” the owner repeated, smiling and winking at me.

Offpad

“Hey, everybody,” Keith introduced his cousin to the band, “This is Vince.”

“Hey,” greeted the other three as one, sounding like bored Muppets. They sized Vince up, each in his own way, Todd in particular confirming his prejudices with the evidence of Vince’s choice of footwear, his Super Hans t-shirt, his hairdo, and, finally, with the unveiling of his guitar.

“Nice,” Todd admitted. Vince’s axe was a sparklingly clean white SG with custom pick-ups.

“Thank you. I didn’t bring an amp; Keith said I could plug in to one of yours.”

“Yeah, I want to hear it,” Todd agreed. He, too, plugged in, ready for the game of Who’s Better.

“What do you want me to play?” asked Vince.

“Just sort of noddle around for a minute and then we’ll all play something,” Todd told him.

Vince’s noodling was a blistering display of jazz and blues licks melded together. It wasn’t heavy metal by itself, but it could easily fit into the right metal groove.

“Hell, yeah,” Rob blurted out as Vince made himself stop playing.

“OK, let’s play ‘Maybe I’ve Only Been Poisoned,’” Keith suggested. “Vince, for now let’s just assume you’re trying out for lead. That’s not what we’re aiming for though. We want a more fluid balance between the two guitars, but for now just play fills and take the solo when I cue you in.”

Todd decided he’d take a solo too, but only to show that he wasn’t a fumble-fingered novice. He didn’t mind Vince being the Marty Willson-Piper of the band as long as he could be the Keith Richards. Well, that wasn’t exactly what he meant, but you get the idea, he told some fantasy music journalist in his head.

In the end, Vince got the position in the band, but everyone knew that from now they weren’t exactly a dream pop band anymore and they weren’t Imelda’s Closet either.

Fat Girl Dyes Her Hair Blue as a Matter of Course

Cooler McCrudd put his head in the door of many a folksy tourist shop. He asked some people when the casino would be opening and some whether or not they thought the casino would ruin the quiet, slow-paced nature of Flat Motorjectio. He asked if there was any way to stop Crab Nova from opening the casino. He even asked if anyone had thought of sinking the Imelda McClain in an act of civic pride. He got many answers, but the overwhelming majority were on the status quo side of the spectrum.

Finally, hot and tired, he found himself standing before a tiny barber shop. Remembering the story of Cary Grant getting his hair cut by a local while filming To Catch a Thief, he boldly entered and took the first available chair.

“How’re we doin’ today?” asked the big woman tossing the cloth around his neck.

“Oh, very well,” McCrudd answered, suddenly experiencing a spasm of regret at his recklessness. The woman had blue hair, shaved on the sides and long on top.

“Are you here for the day?” the woman asked, pinning the paper guard about his throat.

“Well, for as long as it takes,” McCrudd asserted, clenching his jaw and putting his faith in his own movie star looks and fortune.

“As long as it takes, OK. Now, what are we doing today?”

McCrudd hesitated.

“With your hair,” the blue haired fat girl explained.

“Oh, ah, just a basic trim,” McCrudd instructed.

“But you want most of the length on top left alone?”

“Ah, that’s right.”

“OK. So, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a spy,” McCrudd decided, ditching all caution.

“A spy, OK.”

“In fact, I’m here to find out what people think of the casino.”

“Oh, I think it’s a great idea. I can’t wait for it to open.”

Skeleton Eyelash

Mayor Steen met his wife for lunch.

“Phil Ramsgate’s back,” he told her.

“Is he?” Dolly opened her menu and selected a glass of white wine.

“I think he’s going to cause trouble. He doesn’t like our hiring the Suggestible Trapezoid.”

“What the hell does he care?”

“He thinks it’s monstrously immoral or something.”

Dolly snorted.

“You have to break some eggs…” she quoted.

“We may have to break some heads,” Steen said in an undertone once the waiter had left.

“Well, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Phil drove over to Flat Motorjection.”

“Did he?”
“He hadn’t even gone home yet. Now, why would he do that?”

Dolly considered.

“Meeting somebody,” she conjectured. “Had to be.”

“Exactly.” Steen sat back as the waiter set their drinks before them.

“OK, are we ready to order?” the man asked.

“An omelet,” Dolly ordered, looking at her husband and smiling. “A ham and cheese omelet with a green salad.”

“Very good, ma’am. And for you, Mr. Mayor?”

Steen stared at Dolly.

“The same,” he said, “Only not an omelet and not a green salad. I’ll have the shrimp pasta thing and a side of fries.” He closed his menu and handed it to the waiter.

Back in the kitchen the wait gave over the order.

“The mayor and his wife are here,” he told everyone. “More talk about the goddam casino.”

“That boat’ll be the death of this town,” swore one of the cooks.

Icon Distribution Throughout the Wet Point

I liked the Scout Cleanser Juice. I liked the old-fashioned bottle with the name of the product printed on the glass itself. Sipping on the drink, and determined to keep the bottle, no matter what “deposit” was supposedly offered, I ambled about the store, taking in all the strange and out-dated things for sale. How long could a place like this stay in business, I wondered.

“When was this store built?” I asked the owner.

“1915,” he replied, “My father bought it from the original owner in 1947.”

“Not to be funny,” I began, using the word “funny” instead of “rude,” “but how many items in here have been here for decades?” I took another sip of my juice.

The owner came out from behind the counter.

“I’ll show you,” he said. He led the way down an aisle to the back of the store. “These tins have been here at least fifty years.” He indicated an array of solvents, cereal grains, and coffee that looked like props from a cowboy movie. “Of course, they’re not for sale, at least not for human consumption, anyway. But you’d be surprised how many people buy these things, just for a hint of the Old Days.”

“You get a lot of tourist trade?” I asked.

“That’s pretty much all we get these days. When the railroad used to run through here, we even had a hotel, believe it or not.”

“Oh, I believe it.” I finished my drink and put the bottle in my pocket. “I think I’ll keep this as a souvenir,” I told the man. I started to wander away, but stopped suddenly, having caught sight of a faded, age-battered box of Mrs. Seville’s Hooplatch Dust. The box bore the picture of a she-bear in a skirt, sweeping out the front of her cave.

“See something you like?” the store owner asked.

Fireprint Grammophone Edifice Skywards.

McCrudd exited the barber shop twenty-five dollars poorer, the recipient of a flirtatious invitation to a gathering that evening, and more knowledgeable about the range of casino-related opinions in the area. True to his prediction, he looked largely unchanged by his time in the chair. If anything, his hair seemed to respond all the more readily to his various poses and the interplay between his eyebrows.

“Maybe I will show up at the fat girl’s place,” he thought. “Who knows? Maybe she’s blue-haired down below as well.”

He had never had sex with a fat girl before. It might prove valuable experience in the furtherance of his career.

Heading back up the hill towards the center of town, McCrudd heard a band rehearsing. They were on the upper story of an old warehouse. Tired as he was, he yet bounded into action. The band sounded like a combination of Regulator-Watts and Steely Dan. He had to find out more.

“We’re Dinner Companions,” one of the band members informed him.

“Are you playing at this party at Quanta’s tonight?” McCrudd asked.

“Yes, how did you know?” the young man seemed astonished.

“Lucky guess,” McCrudd lied. He wished them luck, bade them farewell, descended the stairs to the street, feeling as if eyes inside his skull had opened for the first time. He ran his fingers through his hair without regard–or interest– in the resulting look.

“So that’s how he does it,” he realized.

McCrudd took out the small piece of paper the barber shop woman had given him. He debated only a moment before turning it over and writing on the other side,

“Am attending an event at the flipside address. May not make it back to the hotel. C.M.”

“C.M.” He stared at the initials for a moment before putting the paper back in his pocket. For the first time in many years he thought he actually might feel happy.

Cripples’ Burlesque

On returning to the van I found McCrudd’s note. I put it inside my souvenir bottle and climbed behind the wheel. As relieved as I was not to have to deal with him the rest of the day. I yet worried that his impetuosity might endanger the assignment. Oh well, I thought, best to return to the hotel and prepare for the next day. I wouldn’t trouble myself with visions of Cooler McCrudd any more tonight.

Back in the room I was stunned to find a pamphlet touting the efficacy of Dead Man’s Freedom on the carpet just inside the door. It was the same organization whose office I had seen earlier. Readers familiar with my subsequent life will know the value the teachings of this group had for me. It wasn’t exactly at that moment that I became a follower, but it was then that I took my first steps in that direction. For me, it was a path to inner peace on the one hand, and on the other a chance to develop myself outside the confines of the Suggestible Trapezoid. Many have wondered how I was able to reconcile the two systems of thought, believing them to be philosophically opposed, but I have found no such conflict. In many ways, the two are eminently coordinated.

I sat on the bed and glanced through the pamphlet, returning to it several times when bored with television’s offerings (which I quickly was.) I wondered if McCrudd would stay gone all night. What was he up to and was it related to our mission here? I have often been concerned about giving in to the mediocrity presented almost ubiquitously through the television and chided myself whenever something caught my interest. But, on reading the following passage in the Dead Man’s Freedom pamphlet, I allowed myself to become absorbed (for a while) in a dramatic series called, Our Natural Competitors, “What if ‘Art’ is a piece of defect gene inherent in a universe where evolution is partially controlled by a mechanism tending to choose the ‘aesthetically pleasing’ or balanced option when such is available?”

I fell asleep to the soothing voice of the narrator describing the predations of the rich and powerful.

New Hampshire Rotund

That evening Phil Ramsgate settled into his parlor with a heavy tumbler of bourbon and The Selected Poems of Imelda McClain, a volume long overlooked (if not outright ignored) because of its author’s political career. To take McClain’s poetry seriously, it was thought, would be like taking Jimmy Stewart’s poetry seriously, or giving academic weight to Ogden Nash’s many runs for the Senate.

Ramsgate lingered over one poem in particular: “Pretty Girl with Stupid Shoes.” In it he saw the comparison of Infranew Hampshire to its inverted twin Ultravermont as a parallel to the contrast of philosophy with poetry. Curiously enough, Ultravermont had once been ruled by a philosopher.

“But all dichotomies are ultimately false,” he explained to Anne Hagar in his mind.

“But so many dichotomies strung together…” she might respond in awe.

He chuckled.

“It only goes to show that there is a unified critical system,” he would teach her. This would excite her to the point that a simple suggestion that she take off her shirt would be most agreeably met.

“But doesn’t criticism lie in the philosophical domain?”

“One hand must wash the other.”

“Unless you can grasp things with your feet like a monkey.”

Ah, she was witty and clever, most witty and clever.

As Ramsgate grew more and more drunk, his senses became dulled to the point that he didn’t notice the sound of the back door opening. He had passed into intoxicated slumber by the time that Cooler McCrudd and Quanta had entered the parlor and found his snoring form.

“I had no idea he was back already,” the chubby girl with the blue hair apologized. “Do you want to go?”

“No, no,” McCrudd returned. “This is just my milieu. Remember, I am a spy.” He glanced at the girl as he said this, but his gaze was quickly diverted by the words, “Imelda McClain.”

Taxing Torpor in the Sidewalk Silo

The next morning I was just completing my isotonic routine when McCrudd returned to the room.

“Seville,” he acknowledged, removing his coat and tossing it onto the undisturbed bed.

“McCrudd” I grunted in reply. My routine was nearly complete.

My fellow agent crossed to the window and looked out on the awakening city. I could read the tension in his body language, see it expressed in his subtly altered coiffure. When I was done pitting one muscle against another, McCrudd turned from the window with a snap of the blinds and dropped a book onto the table between us.

“Take a look at that,” he sighed.

“The Selected Poems of Imelda McClain,” I read. On the back of the jacket was a photograph of the author. Imelda McClain looked a little like Bea Arthur, a little like Rue McLanahan, and a little like Betty White. “Strange admixture,” I said aloud.

“She was a poet,” McCrudd announced, somewhat angrily I noted.

“Yes, I see that.”

“We weren’t told that.
“No,” admitted. “Curious. Mayor Steen only said she had been a governor of a northern state many many years ago.”

“More to the point,” McCrudd went on, “We weren’t told that by the Trap.”

“I don’t believe our preliminary briefing included any information about the dreadnaught’s eponym.”

“Precisely,” McCrudd took a breath, looked at himself in the mirror. Vain as he was, I don’t believe I had ever seen him do this.

“What’s the problem, McCrudd?”

His eyes fell to the dresser beneath the mirror.

“A poet,” he pronounced.

The Esoteric and the Occult on my Trip to Key West

The Suggestible Trapezoid has its origins in Holger Kalweit’s Dreamtime and Inner Space; The Wonder City of Oz; the Crowley tarot; LaVey’s notions of rhombic disturbance; and a small carved bone amulet featuring a crescent moon and a star that I stole from a head shop on US route 1. The people who ran the place said that when they started the business they had two choices for naming it. One name would bring them money, according to whatever means of divination they had employed, and the other name would bring wisdom to the world. Since they didn’t care about the money, so they claimed, they went with the latter name. “Good,” I thought, “Because I was robbing you blind.”

I don’t remember if I had heard of Gurdjieff before my trip to Key West, but so intrigued was I by the three-volume box set of his Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson that I found in a book store there, that I shoplifted it too. I shoplifted many things while I was in Key West, many of them of an esoteric or occult nature. I was into the sort of thing back then, even as I had dropped my theism about a year or so before.

Whatever its origins, The Suggestible Trapezoid maintained something of a randomly acquisitive flavor; gestural abstraction wedded to a devil-may-care approach to daily life. Mentally shoplifting one’s way through the library of the world, so to speak. They say Toadsgoboad had magic powers; perhaps it was just the vast apparatus of the Suggestible Trapezoid at his disposal that made it seem to.

Now, whereas Phil Ramsgate had gone north, George Liete had gone south— all the way south, to Key West. Here he confronted the final barrier to developing an all-encompassing philosophy and breaking through the wall thrown up by poetry in its attempt to survive the philosophical onslaught. Liete was ordering breakfast one hot morning. The waiter parried each attempt by Liete to order the lobster omelet.

“What I’m trying to say is that we don’t have any lobster,” the waiter finally admitted, though the word remained on the menu.

Gyroscope Mirror, Art as Ritual, My Authorization is Complete

The van, which I had now named Sunflower 13, contained powerful communications equipment, allowing me to contact the Levitation Lab on Blueberry 14. My first two attempts had been brief and tenuous, but, with the rising of the sun, I was able to make a thorough report and receive instructions.

“Good work, Seville,” came the voice of Dr. Schlangie through the hyperdidactic remote. “Have you made any progress deciphering the book on casino gambling?”
“Not yet,” I replied. “I think, however, that, as McCrudd found the book, he should be the one to work on it.”

“Have to get back to you on that,” Schlangie advised after a pause. “We may not be able to rely on any interpretation he may come up with.”

The lab boys could not see my raised eyebrows.

“Anything else, Seville?” asked Schlangie.

“Yes, there is one other… thing. Have you any information on an organization or philosophical movement called Dead Man’s Freedom?”

Long pause.

“Funny you should mention that,” the scientist sounded curious. “I just received a memo from Multiple Mobile this morning. Let me dig it out.”

I heard the sound of papers rippling, cans rattling.

“Here. Listen to this: ‘Dead Man’s Freedom is to be considered a neutral in our on-going war against the Dream Substitution Patch. It is both a philosophical movement and a poetic school.’ That’s it.”

It was, indeed, curious.

After termination communications, I pulled the van out from the shadow of the Winkin’ Window billboard and drove across the bridge to Flat Mototjection. With the pamphlet from my hotel room in my pocket I walked back to the lonely office of the Dead Man’s Freedom franchise. My motives were vague, even to myself. I wanted to know more, but why? I didn’t even ask that question.

Peering through the window yet again, I saw the same man sitting in the back with the same mildly friendly face.

More Common During the Interregnum

The Dinner Companions, ostensibly an instrumental band, were intrigued by the idea of getting a singer.

“Somebody against-type,” the organist suggested forcefully.

Although momentarily opposed, the other three members quickly saw the point of this.

“He won’t be singing but two or three songs,” the bassist observed.

“Then what’s the point?”

What’s the point, indeed.

“How did we even fall prey to such a suggestion?” one of them wondered.

“I know,” the drummer, a lugubrious lug in the Charlie Watts vein, intoned slowly. All eyes turned his way. From behind his kit he gave them the answer.

“We were subconsciously influenced,” he said.

“Sub– how do you know that?”

“That guy that stopped by here yesterday,” the drummer continued, “The one in the long coat with the hair–”

“The pretty boy.”

“The same. He used some sort of mesmeric influence on us.”

“To what end?”

The drummer hesitated.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he told them. “I think it’s to set us up in direct competition with Imelda’s Closet.”

The others looked at each other.

“Now that they’ve combined forces–”

“There must necessarily be a counter to them.”

“Exactly.”

The guitarist, who would one day look both washed up and washed out and wear sunglasses while working the register at a local Greek place, spoke through clenched teeth.

“I’d like to get my hands on that guy.”

“Yeah.”

Pancakes Dump Truck

“So, you see, Mr. Seville, you now stand at a crossroads,” the man behind the desk at the Dead Man’s Freedom office told our bear-like friend.

Clark Seville stood before the desk, his knuckles resting on its surface. He sighed.

“I’m always at a crossroads,” he confessed with a tug at one corner of his mouth.

“This is one of the great truths of our belief system,” the man told Seville with a smile. He was a small man, quiet and non-threatening in demeanor. He wore a short-sleeved shirt with an ugly brown tie. He had on glasses and was balding considerably. His desk was devoid of anything except a pen, a stack of the same pamphlets that Seville had found in his room, and a strange, homemade-looking book. This was an example of the Dead Man’s Freedom Book, that all devotees of the movement must make for themselves. It consisted of a thick stack of 4”x6” notecards stapled together, each side of each card filled with pictures cut from a variety of sources and taped in place.

“Did you put the pamphlet in my room?” Seville asked.

“Oh, good lord, no,” the man laughed lightly. “I don’t have time for that, nor do I have the inclination to proselytize. No, somebody else did it.”

“Another follower of the movement?”

“Or organization; the two are linked, but not exactly the same thing.”

“Kind of like–” Seville began, but stopped himself. “Let’s say that I did want to… join, or whatever you call it; what would I have to do?”

The man held up his Dead Man’s Freedom Book.

“Make one of these,” he instructed.

Seville glanced at it.

“And then?” he asked.

Return My Pills to Arizona

By now the news of the attack on the Folium household had been conflated in the public’s minds with the drowning deaths of the four young men.

“This is just the beginning of the lawlessness that that casino will bring,” warned one of the old men sitting on the pew outside the 1915 store. Much muttered agreement met these words. Two of the most influential men in Flat Motorjection, Hank Burns and Edgar Lee Jones, paid a call on Mayor Steen at his office and demanded to know if the rumors were true: had he hired outside agitators to stir up trouble?

Steen denied everything and sent the two men on their way, but he was left shaken by the encounter. He called the number given to him by Clark Seville in case of emergency.

“Yes, Mr. Mayor,” Seville assured Steen. “Agent McCrudd and I will be with you within the hour.” He slapped the communications device shut and returned to his current task. He was cutting pictures out of a magazine he had swiped from the lobby downstairs. He hadn’t begun taping them into the crude “book” yet; something about the pictures didn’t feel right to him. He glanced at Cooler McCrudd, sitting on the bed opposite him.

“How are you coming along?” he asked.

“Well, I— I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!” McCrudd barked, flinging the book across the room.

Seville sighed, looking at his pile of clippings.

“You want to take a break— have a nasty little confrontation with the mayor?” he asked.

“Hell yeah,” replied McCrudd.

Seville glanced at his watch. This wasn’t exactly a watch, although it did measure the passage of time in a way.

“We’re just about there anyway,” he noted, grabbing his coat.

McCrudd ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t bathed in days. He retrieved an orange vial from his coat pocket. Quanta had given him these pills. She claimed it was they that had turned her hair blue and not some dye.

Frank Sinatra Understands the Muppets?

As I drove to the mayor’s office I reflected on my dissatisfaction with most of the pictures I had cut out of the magazine. The man at the Dead Man’s Freedom office (whose name I never knew) had advised me to be led by my innermost, natural aesthetic impulses. One would think that, given my training with the Suggestible Trapezoid, such a thing would be easy, but I found little of use in the source material. In the Trap we used whatever was at hand. Here, however, I was constructing something that was to be used personally, as a means of attaining what they called “Dead Man’s Freedom,” not a vicarious art project in service of a globe-spanning organization.

Mayor Steen was surrounded by the same group of men he had been with when McCrudd and I first met with him.

“Agent Seville,” the mayor addressed me by way of greeting, “Things are getting a little out of hand, don’t you think?” He was stern and his sternness was reflected in the faces of his fellows.

“On the contrary, Mr. Steen,” I countered, “Things are going exactly according to plan.”

“How so?” Steen demanded. “All you’ve done that I can see is firm up opposition to the casino!”

I smiled as best I could. I turned to my companion.

“Agent McCrudd, would you like to explain it to the mayor?”

If McCrudd was at all nonplussed by my offering him this role, he did not betray any discomfiture. He stepped forward and cast his gaze into a corner of the room.

“Our timetable, laboratory tested over the course of many years, is precisely on the mark,” he declared. “In the next, what would you say, Agent Seville? Thirty-six hours? I think you’ll find that a group of Flat Motorjectioners will approach you…”

But I did not acknowledge McCrudd’s words. My eyes had been trapped by stacks of ancient magazines on a table nearby. One bore a picture of Frank Sinatra on the cover, another the Muppets.

Follow Me to Clandestine Boogie Appetites

The Dinner Companions disguised themselves as best they could to resemble Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem and went in search of Cooler McCrudd. They had determined that the man in the black coat with the prehensile pompadour must come from the other side of the bay. Piling into a psychedelically painted station wagon, they headed out just after sundown.

“I’ve got a feeling he’ll be easy to find,” predicted the organist at the wheel. “We’ll just follow the mesmeric vibrations.”

The saxophone player, who couldn’t see anything behind his shades, nodded mutely. As the drummer chafed at his collar and the expectations of wild animal behavior, the band scoured the streets of Crab Nova in vain. Their presence, however, did not go unnoticed.

“Keith,” Todd called to the former from the back seat of Imelda’s Closet’s own station wagon, “Isn’t that the Electric Mayhem?”

“Can’t be,” Keith objected. He was driving the band to the pier to set out for a subtly advertised informal gig onboard the Imelda McClain. “What would they be doing in town? And portrayed by actors in life-sized costumes?”
“Do you think Steen is hedging his bets?” Eliot wondered.

“We’ve got time,” Todd pointed out. “Let’s see where they’re going.”

So Imelda’s Closet began following the disguised Dinner Companions as the latter cruised slower and slower in tighter circles centering eventually on the Infidel and Cockle-Doo Hotel. Simultaneously, the guitarist in drag noticed their pursuers as the bass player announced, “This is it!” The pseudo-Muppet band had pulled into the hotel parking lot opposite Clark Seville’s big black van.

“Who the hell is that?” the guitarist demanded.

“Who are you guys?” Todd and Keith also demanded to know.

In his room, Clark Seville was finding many evocative pictures.

Help the Man in the Utility Chamber Out

“Seville,” Cooler McCrudd called from the window, “Take a look at this.”

The big bear-man carefully finished taping a stylized drawing of a steaming tea kettle adjacent to a photograph of Lorne Greene in cosmic gear before joining McCrudd. Below they saw two groups pushing and punching each other, one group dressed as colorful hippies in face paint and wigs, the other in jeans and oxford shirts, their sleeves rolled up.

“I have a feeling this has something to do with us,” McCrudd observed.

Seville glanced at his watch.

“It does.”
McCrudd looked up at Seville questioningly. The bear-man tapped the face of his watch by way of answer.

“What do we do?” McCrudd asked. “Or do we do anything?”
“Nothing at all,” Seville replied. “In the morning we’ll make one last visit to Flat Motojection and–”

“Wait,” McCrudd interrupted, “We still haven’t been on board the Imelda McClain.”
Seville considered.

“I don’t think we need to,” he decided.

McCrudd turned back to the brawl below, now winding down. The Dinner Companions, hampered by their costumes and unused to fighting, had sustained heavy losses. They were retreating to their crazy ride, dragging their wounded and begging off further violence. Todd from Imelda’s Closet, who had stripped off his button-down shirt to reveal a black tank top bearing an image of Death in Machine Form, was still eager for combat. Keith was holding him back.

“What would you say to my going to the dreadnaught tonight, alone?” McCrudd asked.

Seville looked at his unfinished book. He had been advised to allow the book to be completed naturally. Don’t force it.

“You do that,” he told McCrudd.

Dr. Teeth lost his hat.

Unpleasant Reaction in the Volcano Elvis Gift Shop Movie

As Cooler McCrudd walked down to the pier, he had a moment of introspection. Such moments were rare in his life. For most of his waking hours he simply was. He never felt any confusion about who he was, either to himself or to others, because it never occurred to him that any confusion could ever arise. Now, however, as the beaten and bloody Dinner Companions drove by, gaping at him in disbelief, he had a flash of bewilderment: what was he doing, working for the Suggestible Trapezoid? His father had convinced him that becoming an agent for the Trap was a sure inroad to power, security, and self-fulfillment, but now he had doubts. Of course, he had known about the Trap’s idiosyncratic side, but he had more or less assumed that the organization was fundamentally some sort of private intelligence-gathering service. Even as the would-be Muppets clambered out of their vehicle and began descending on him, McCrudd puzzled over his reactions.

“Why am I doing this?” he asked himself, killing one band member after another with practiced ease. “Who am I, really?”

Soon all five (there was no trumpeter) characters lay dead about his feet. McCrudd suddenly realized he was automatically scouring their bodies for souvenirs, keepsakes, mementoes of this event. He laughed as he had not since childhood. On what occasion had that been? He yanked the sunglasses off the big-lipped guitar player and continued down the hill.

“So this is the Imelda McClain,” he thought, gazing up at the ironclad behemoth. Out-dated, surely, but possessed of a presence that stirred McCrudd’s aesthetic being– the same aesthetic being that knew when his hair was perfect.

“They’ve still got the refreshment booth set up,” he noted, tearing open the door and stealing a Sprite or a 7-Up, it didn’t matter which. It didn’t much matter how he gained entry to the warship either; he simply did. What was that nonsense about being a verb instead of a noun? He wasn’t philosophical.

This was the Silken Bravo’s Whistle to Blow

I had used all the worthy pictures from the five or six magazines I had taken from Steen’s office. There were still plenty of pages left to go in the book. Good. I didn’t want the project completed all in one go. But I did need more material. I glanced at my gravitational tedium timepiece. Yes, I could now afford to ramble through one of the houses of Crab Nova. I tidied up the room before I left. I was going to gather McCrudd’s belongings as well, but realized he had none. A strange, self-contained fellow. Much like his counterweight.

Out in the parking lot I saw and heard, like everyone else in the area, I would imagine, the commotion underway on the deck of the Imelda McClain. Blaring rock music and two spotlights drew the sleepers to their windows. As I stared I saw lights go on in houses across the bay. What would the Flat Motorjectioners think when a million lights covering every surface of the old boat winked on and off all night? I threw my gear in the back of the van and headed down to the shoreline. As I drove I looked for houses that weren’t awakened by the racket. Ah, there was one. Whether unoccupied or oblivious to what was going on, it would have to do. I drove the van down the driveway, smashed into the closed garage door, and jumped out. The force of my entry had pushed an old El Camino inside the garage through the facing wall and into the living room beyond. This was good, for it provided a ready-made entrance for me.

I clambered over the debris and started clawing through the shelves to either side of the sofa. I couldn’t even see what I was grabbing. I had to go by the feel of the paper in the books to judge whether the contents were primarily text or graphic. Just as I was filling the crook of one arm, the residents, an elderly couple, I think, barged in. I sent them both reeling with the spreading penumbrous hand of the paralysis wave. No more time to waste on my personal business— I had to leave.

Civilizatorium in a Land of Walking Furniture & Semi-Submerged Theaters

“The above title is taken from one of the books Clark Seville stole that night,” Solomon told Jack, handing him a piece of paper with a picture of a raging, bear-like figure in a long coat striding away from a ruined cityscape. Jack stared at it in horror. He started to hand it back after only a few seconds, but Solomon urged him to keep it.

“It’s yours, our free gift to you, for being so patient,” Solomon told him.

“Is this supposed to be Clark Seville?” Jack asked, indicating the figure in the drawing.

“Perhaps,” Solomon replied. “An artist’s rendering,” he suggested.

Jack threw himself back on the uncomfortable modernist couch. He let the drawing drift to the side and down to the floor.

“Clark Seville is supposed to be a hero?” he queried.

“What’s wrong?” Solomon laughed. “Not ‘heroic’ enough for you?”

Jack’s mouth hung open as he stared up at the acoustical ceiling tiles.

“Jack, this is just one of the tales of Clark Seville. There are hundreds more. Some portray him in a noble light, some in a diabolical one. I—”

Jack threw his hands up to forestall any further explanations. He got to his feet with a grunt and announced his intention to visit the restroom. Solomon waited until the younger man was out of sight. He then picked up the telephone receiver on the desk to his right.

“He’s reached rejection stage,” Solomon spoke into the phone. He listened a seconds, then added, “I think he’ll be fine. It’s always this way. The ones who are the most horrified are the ones that prove ablest at putting the best spin on the tales.” After listening again, Solomon burst into laughter, laughter that he quickly stifled, seeing Jack coming back down the hall.

Solar Kettle

I picked up Cooler McCrudd a block away from the Imelda McClain. As he climbed into the passenger seat he informed me that I’d missed “a hell of a show.”

“Not my thing,” I retorted.

“What now?” he asked as all hell broke loose around us, citizens marching down to the water on either side of the bay, police trying to maintain order, Mayor Steen bellowing something at us from a balcony as he caught sight of McCrudd’s hand waving out the window.

“I’m taking you back to your car. Where are you parked?”

“Under the water tower on the hill,” McCrudd pointed.

I drove for a moment in silence, then suddenly, uncharacteristically, cursed.

“What is it?” McCrudd asked.

“I forgot the book on casino gambling. Do you have it?”

“No, I left it in the room.”

“I didn’t see it. Did you make any progress on your subjective interpretation?”

“Well, thank you for at last admitting it was to be subjective,” McCrudd sourly replied. He reached into an inner pocket of his coat for a piece of paper.

“Yes,” he began. “Here goes: ‘Did you not think that by giving up hope entirely, you would only hasten the day of your… triumph? Release? Oh, I know: Banish doubt forever?’” He folded the paper and put it back.

“Is that editorializing?” I asked.

“What difference does it make?”

“McCrudd–” I started to say.

“Save it, Seville. Just drive the damn van.”

I drove up the hill to the water tower, wondering what had happened to the book on casino gambling. Oh well, I thought, everything’s a gamble.

Pantyhose Crayon in English

Solomon speaks: Many of these tales that you see on the shelves behind me are written in code, or picture form, or in languages long dead. Some are written in ink, some in pencil, some in crayon or marker. Even I, who have researched these archives for nearly thirty years, have not read them all, much less plumbed their depths. New tales are being added regularly. Clearly, they cannot all be true. And yet they are all part of the myth of Clark Seville and, by extension, that of the Suggestible Trapezoid.

Some, I must now tell you, are not even tales at all, but only images; posters or placards that once adorned the hallways or conference rooms of Suggestible Trapezoid field offices around the world. Some are formal portraits or comic book imagery, garlanded with words; captions, titles, thought bubbles or word balloons. Charts and graphs showing the interplay among the various people in Seville’s life and career. Occasionally we find the rare photograph, such as the famous one documenting Seville’s one and only meeting with Toadsgoboad.

You have asked me more than once why Toadsgoboad himself is not the focal point of our efforts, why the one who founded our organization, set in motion its activities and laid down the basis for our aesthetic purpose is not as thoroughly celebrated as Seville, who, though our greatest agent, was still but an agent. I don’t think Toadsgoboad himself could have answered that. We believe that some of these tales and attendant images were actually written and created by Toadsgoboad or one of his proxies, but in truth we cannot say for sure.

The day will come when Clark Seville, by the sheer mass of lore and discussion will become common knowledge among the populace outside the Suggestible Trapezoid. We must be prepared for that day. We must not allow triviality beyond mediocrity to seep into Seville’s legend. Go now, and sleep and dream of these things.

Agenda in Red with Some Off-Limits Pie

Jack dreams: Clark Seville has a voice like Stacy Keach. Unlike any dream Jack has ever had before, this one is animated. Clark Seville is an animated cartoon character. His bear’s nose is red and bulbous like that of a clown. Jack is in the dream too, but he is not animated. This gives the dream an extremely creepy feeling like something Jack saw on TV as a child. Clark Seville passes through the living room where Jack is sitting on an enormous sofa watching TV. Seville asks, “Which way to the kitchen?” Jack tells him. Seville exits, calling out, “Any of that pie left?” Jack knows what pie he’s talking about. His friend’s mother made it. This is his friend’s house. But Jack is there alone, except for Seville. Jack does not move from the sofa, but he can see Seville eating the pie. He eats it as if it is a sandwich, holding the entire thing between his fingers. Jack knows Seville is not supposed to eat the pie because he, Jack, has been told the pie is “off-limits.” Does anyone know what “off-limits” means, asked his friend’s mother earlier.

Now Jack knows which friend lives here. It is Guy. But that can’t be right, because this is Jonathan’s house.

Clark Seville re-enters the living room.

“What’re you watching?” he asks. His voice is like Foghorn Leghorn.

“The Beatles,” Jack replies, although there are no Beatles in sight, just the girls from One Day at a Time dressed up as Elton John.

“Who are the Beatles?” asks Clark Seville.

Jack doesn’t answer. He looks at his shoes. He has little shoes like a child.

“You know I’m going to kill somebody, don’t you, Jack?” Seville asks.

“My name isn’t Jack,” Jack insists, halfway awakening. He wants to return to sleep and re-enter the same dream, but drifts off into some story about a boat.

Still Stark Sandwich Eaten by their Command

Cooler McCrudd writes: It burns my ass that my only claim to “legendary status” is through my connection to Clark Seville. I was, in my career, many times ranked the Trap’s top agent. Not many people know that, I’m sure. Not many people want to accept that, I’m doubly sure. Clark Seville wasn’t the only goddamned agent with the Trap and he certainly wasn’t consistently ranked the best. He had the helping hand of several people high up in the organization. Yet his ‘M’ scores were never higher than the lowest seventieth percentile. I never had an ‘M’ score lower than 97.6%. But nobody remembers me except as either a convenient foil to Clark Seville or as some kind of punching bag for him.

Everybody wants to remember Seville when he was a “bear,” but the truth is he was a man far, far longer. I think people find the bear image sexier or something. He was not an attractive man, not a handsome man. He was a big, surly slab of meat, that’s all.

But, I don’t want to give off the impression that I’ve still got some kind of grudge against Seville. I settled my score with him long ago. And, I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m bitter against the Trap. I’m not. I found my own way within the organization. True, I never met Toadsgoboad, but who did? Who really did, answer me that. I don’t even know that he really existed, unlike Clark Seville, who even now is getting some of that mysterious mythic quality.

The hell with all of it. I’ve still got my health, my looks, my memories. I pride myself that I eventually carved out a career for myself within the parameters of the Trap that didn’t rely so much on some stream-of- consciousness scavenger hunt. I’m a man of action and my subsequent career bears that out. Bears that out, Jesus.

Look at Cooler McCrudd #36; Still Stark Sandwich, or Cooler McCrudd #45; Eaten by their Command. Classics in the men’s adventure genre.

Compassionate Disc Jockey

Clark Seville remembers: I once worked undercover as an overnight disc jockey for four months while tracking the whereabouts of the Flex Eagler Transmitter. Out of all the jobs I worked during my time with the Suggestible Trapezoid, I think this was my favorite. I knew nothing about the music when I started, really. Within a week, however, I had begun to develop a taste for pre-seventies jazz. That was the radio station’s format, especially at night. Of course, I had made a study of jazz beforehand, learning the names and the lingo, but it wasn’t until I had sat in the booth with the headphones on night after night, playing those records and talking to the people who were listening that I began to understand. It was a beautiful experience, having people call in to tell me that I sounded like Stacy Keach or Foghorn Leghorn, whoever they may be.

I remember one night when I had just put on side A of Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus that a young man called in to tell me that he thought I sounded like David Lee Roth.

“And who might that be?” I asked.

“He’s a rock singer,” the caller replied.

“Oh, my friend, this is a jazz station.”

“I know, I know, it’s just that there is a marked similarity.”

“Well, thank you, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, listen, I just wanted to call and tell you I really like your show.”

“Thank you.”

“The music helps me. I’m going through a rough time right now.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, my girlfriend moved away and I’m working a shitty job. I’m trying to put my life back together.”

“Well, I’m happy to be of service.”

“The Flex Eagle Transmitter–”

“What do you know about that?”

“Well, it’s where I work.”

Teeth Planet Overdose

The Flex Eagle Transmitter, for those of you unfamiliar with the matter, was the latest ploy by the evil Dr. Triangle to wreak havoc (and isn’t havoc always being wreaked?) on the Suggestible Trapezoid.

“Dr. Triangle hates the Suggestible Trapezoid,” Dr. Schlangie explained to Clark Seville before the latter set out on his undercover assignment.

“From a certain perspective I can understand that,” Seville observed wryly.

Dr. Schlangie hummed, watching the bear-man closely.

“Yes, well, that perspective is best left unapproached,” he replied. “Now, the Earth, as it appears through the lens of our aesthetic, is the ‘teeth planet.’” The scientist pulled a diagram down from the retractable map doo-dad. The diagram showed the Earth as a face whose toothy grin occupied most of its surface area. “Our research indicates that the Flex Eagle Transmitter, should it be put into operation, will inject the planet with an overdose of funk.” He looked at Seville to see if the agent was with him so far.

“Dr. Schlangie,” Seville cleared his throat on the name, “I’ve been with the Suggestible Trapezoid long enough to know when a mission is being tailored around a predetermined sequence of words. Is this yet another such situation?”

The scientist glared at Seville from behind his glasses.

“Does this look ‘predetermined’ to you?” he demanded, tossing a glossy 8’ x 10’ photograph of the evil Dr. Triangle onto the beaker-laden tabletop between the two.

Seville took up the photo in his nimble human hands.

“He looks like an avian Dave Brubeck,” Seville offered.

“How do you know that?” Dr. Schlangie begged to know in as hostile a voice as you’ve ever heard from such a distinguished-looking person.

“I read ahead,” Seville explained. “I’ve become quite the reader lately.”

Bursitis Wings the Unreachable Part

Dr. Triangle, who did indeed look a little like an avian Dave Brubeck (or a ratite Estes Kefauver, depending on one’s affiliations,) went to the transmitter that morning feeling stiff.

“Bursitis again, sir?” Cityman, Dr. Triangle’s assistant, asked as he watched the ruthless, evil scientist take his seat at the controls.

“Yes, Cityman,” groaned Dr. Triangle. “You’d think that these wing adapters would negate such vulnerabilities, but they’re proving to be not that much help.”
“Would you like me to prepare you a nerve tonic of some sort?” Cityman offered. “I’ve got peach flavor.”

Dr. Triangle seemed to consider the idea for a second, but decided against it.

“No, no, that’s OK. I’ll be alright,” he said. “Today will be a short day. We’ll make one last test of the transmitter’s olfactory range and save the heavy stuff for next week.”

“Very good,” agreed Cityman. He was keen to knock off early. He was taking his girlfriend to the movies that night. “I’m going to see And Still the Robber Barons Aren’t Happy,” he told Triangle.

Triangle yawned, his beak opening wide on a seventeen-inch prehensile tongue and vestigial cube-like teeth. “Better you than me,” he declared. “I don’t find today’s comedies funny.” Dr. Triangle was a bird-like anthropoid.

In another hour the rest of the team wandered in. Triangle, for all his evil, ran a fairly loose operation. As long as the work got done, he wasn’t too strict about start times or how long a break or lunch his people took. He never could understand how villains in films and TV were always killing henchmen who failed an assignment or made a mistake. “That’s no way to run anything,” he told Cityman more than once. “Much less an ‘evil’ undertaking.”

“Alright everyone,” Dr. Triangle called from his seat at the controls, using his wing adapters to move levers and knobs with finger-like precision. “Let’s see if we can send a really nasty smell into the Suggestible Trapezoid’s headquarters.”

The Last Pee-Pee

Clark Seville drove over to Brad’s house later that day. He told no one at the radio station he was quitting. “Let it be a mystery,” he said to himself. “Whatever happened to that nighttime DJ with the sexy voice?” he could imagine everyone wondering. As the morning crew prepared to take over, Seville gathered his things as innocently as possible, fondling a few choice LPs with bittersweet recollection. He visited the restroom one last time before leaving.

“Brad lives a good hour from here,” he thought as he unzippered his fatty bear organ from his corduroy trousers. “Better take a leak now.” He sighed contentedly as he urinated, looking around at the by-now familiar graffiti.

“Miles to go nuts;” “Heavy Metal is today’s Jazz;” “Wanda blew my horn;” crude pictures of faces. Seville wondered that he had never added anything to the walls. With a snicker he suddenly took one hand off his bear stick and fished out a pen from his pocket. What should he write?

“What do homoerotic photographers pour on their pancakes?” he carefully penned. Answer: “Mapplethorpe.” There. It had nothing to do with jazz or radio, but it was all he could come up with. He had thought of that one a long time ago while posing as an artist’s model (doubly “posing,” get it?) but never had a chance to use it.

He started to stuff his things back into their different compartments when someone entered the restroom. Seville, in his stall, listened carefully, for the other person was talking.

“I don’t like it,” the person said. “I don’t like it one bit.” There was a pause while the person listened. “No, Jerry. We’ll have to try something else. I want more of a ‘WKRP’ feel. Carpet on the walls, you know; ‘70’s.” He listened again. “Yeah, I like the jazz. By the way, why aren’t you in my valise?”

Clark Seville carefully peeked through the gap between the door and the wall of the stall. He saw a figure in a long coat and a big, ugly hat.

What was “WKRP?”

Quantum Belly Button Fronting Black Hole Speculation

Clark Seville arrived at Brad’s house with many questions and curious emotions running through his head.

“Here,” Seville greeted Brad, “Got you something.”

The young man had stepped out of his little house wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

“Who are you?” Brad asked.

“You know me as ‘Slick Smoker,’” Seville answered, using his on-air name as he handed over the Bobby Hutcherson LP he’d swiped from the station.

“Wow. What are you doing here?”

“Well, you sounded a little down,” Seville replied with his eyebrows furrowed gently. “Thought I’d come by and give you a little present.”

“Well, thanks, but I don’t have a record player.”

“Oh, Brad,” Seville chuckled convincingly.

“How’d you know where I live?” the young, disheveled man wondered.

“The power of modern broadcasting technology,” Seville responded. “I think you know something about that yourself.”

“What do you mean?”
Seville stepped closer.

“I need to know where the Flex Eagle Transmitter is, Brad. I need to know how to gain access to it.”

The young man stepped back.

“You’re much bigger in person, you know,” he joked.

“I… don’t want to have to hurt a fellow jazz enthusiast, Brad.”

“Hurt?” Brad nearly dropped the record.

Seville used a special new gadget recently cooked up by Dr. Schlangie’s team of wonder-workers. He uncorked the reverse paralysis bottle and sucked Brad’s presence into a polka-dotted void. With a deft move Seville caught the falling LP and replaced the cork. Dr. Schlangie had explained that no ordinary cork would do. It had to be made from the bark side of the moon tree.

Brain Poison Myth Diminishes

With the information extracted from Brad and a few hints gleaned from a quick ransacking of the young man’s house, Seville was soon on his way to the location of the Flex Eagle Transmitter. He contacted Dr. Schlangie and told him all.

“I don’t want to rush you, Seville, but Dr. Triangle has already begun his foul work. He’s drenching HQ with a horrible odor. It’s like that powder they use to kill fire ant mounds,” Dr. Schlangie lamented.

“I understand,” Seville confirmed. “Nearing the Transmitter coordinates now. Full update later.” He switched off the two-way talk machine and put all his attention on flying the big black van, now equipped with balloon harness and flapping wings, down into the vapid reducto half-sphere. As the automatic descent mechanism began its work, Seville took the opportunity to observe his breathing in a semi-meditative ritual born of his new-found Dead Man’s Freedom practices. Too bad his now-completed book couldn’t be used at the moment. He had to keep his eyes on the rock wall surrounding him. As he breathed he nodded firmly again and again, bold truths making themselves felt in a way he had not acknowledged before. There was no “brain poison” keeping him from the peace and patience he had long sought.

By the time he landed on the helipad and the van’s pseudo-lungs began retracting the bear-shaped balloon, Clark Seville knew a calm beyond calm, like an ocean stilled by the absence of time. Guards in Dr. Triangle’s retinue surrounded the van, weapons drawn. Seville exited the vehicle with his hands raised, heart rate lowered, eyes open.

“Take me to your leader,” the big bear-man called cheerfully. That was something they said in science fiction movies, wasn’t it? A sort of joke, it was. The guards took him by the arms and marched him down the ramp and into the bowels of Dr. Triangle’s expensive mountain base. The hum of the Flex Eagle Transmitter filled the background.

Audience in My Skull

“So,” Dr. Triangle greeted Clark Seville, “You are the great Clark Seville. I knew they’d send you.”

“It was inevitable,” Seville agreed. “Although I don’t know how accurate the label ‘great’ is.”

“Do you know who I am?” Dr. Triangle asked, peering closely at Seville.

“Well, you’re Dr. Triangle,” Seville responded.

“That’s not my birth name,” the evil scientist bird-man told him.

“Look, I’m not here to play guessing games…”

“My real name is Bustle. Edward Bustle.”

Seville’s calm was nearly shaken, but, such was the efficacy of even a beginner’s exposure to the Dead Man’s Freedom techniques, he found himself facing this revelation with equanimity and indifference.

“Henry’s brother,” he replied, nodding. He kept on nodding, nodding, and nodding. He nodded with full realization as he uncorked the bottle containing Brad’s “presence” and flooded the techno-wizardry-crammed chamber. He nodded as he nodded off, falling into a sleep that defied death because he just didn’t care even as he cared intensely. He, the performer, cared, but he, the audience, didn’t give a damn. He, the audience, was rapt with suspension of disbelief, while he, the man on the stage, knew what a sham it all was.

One of the shared tenets of the Suggestible Trapezoid and Dead Man’s Freedom’s philosophies came to him as he woke up in some cave: “Everything is Inevitable.”

“It’s like poetry, isn’t it?” he asked an attendant fussing over his unclenchable fists.

“Well, anything’s possible,” the attendant replied, trying to humor the big bear.

“No,” Seville whispered. “No, it’s not. The audience will only put up with so much.”

THE END

Lance Ash

Saturday, May 18, 2024

How Much Longer (my reaction to the Alito flag story)

Lampclouding #30

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