Biff Mitchell's Blog: Writing Hurts Like Hell - Posts Tagged "speculative-fiction"

(Note: This one was first published in the Stranglet Literary Journal)

I’ve given myself a week to live. I think that’s a reasonable timeframe. One week.

It’s going to be tough. I just received another call. From her. Like nothing’s happened. Like everything’s normal. It shook me the first time she called. It shook me a few minutes ago. Tomorrow at 7:29 PM, it’ll shake me again.

She talks about ordinary things: “Did you find that clicking sound in your car?”

I try to keep my answers short. I get a feeling that she only has so long. About ten minutes, including the silences, those wordless seconds when we’re likely more connected than when we’re talking, when all we can do is feel each other’s presence. “Do you still think about me?”

…

“Yeah. I do.”

…

“Did you get the new air conditioner installed?”

Deliberately drawing out the silences, savoring the closeness that comes from knowing the other is waiting, as though we become real knowing someone is waiting for us.

I’d like to say I waited my whole life for her, but I didn’t. She was sprung on me out of the blue, something I would never have seen coming because I really didn’t need―or want―it at the time. But suddenly she was there and going back to the way things used to be was…well, I’ve given myself a week.

I was on my way to the Cedar Tree Café for a hazelnut coffee, something I’d been thinking about all morning, mentally savoring the sweet nut taste and the hot cream-thick liquid. My agent had just called with great news; my latest book had just been picked up by a publisher of photography books with some of the biggest names in the field on their list. Mine was a book with a hundred and twenty images of shopping carts that had been abandoned around the city, pictures of shopping carts left on curbs, stashed under verandas or pushed over the banks of ravines. I had a picture of a cart that someone had lugged up to the top of a billboard advertising the city transport system.

It was a three-year project with thousands of images pared down to the essential. I used the carts as a metaphor for the sense of abandonment that runs through industrial/digital society, but I won’t get into that now. Maybe later.

It was a big step forward. I was excited. I was on top of the world. I was in a hurry. I didn’t see her as I rounded the corner. She was right in front of me, standing there with a vacant look in her eyes, something I noticed at just about the same time I walked into her hard enough to knock her off her feet, hard enough so that her ass hit the ground about the same time her head hit the door―the metal rim of the door. I should have turned around and headed back to the studio right then.

But I didn’t.

I was stunned motionless. She lay on the sidewalk, slumped against the door, her plaid skirt pushed up revealing slim legs with black leggings. There was a couple on the other side of the door looking through the glass at her. They couldn’t open the door with her lying against it and I could see the struggle in their eyes: wait until she’s not against the door before opening it, or risk hurting her more by opening the door so they could ask, “Are you hurt?”

And, yeah, I just stood there like a frozen turkey until she lifted her hand up to me. It took a few seconds to sink in: she wants me to help her get up. Her eyes were a deep brown that created an earthy aura around her eye lids. She didn’t seem angry or hurt, not even flustered. She seemed amused, calm. I thrust my hand out clumsily, missing her hand by a good few inches. She grabbed my wrist and pulled herself up, almost pulling me down in the process. Not that she was heavy, it just took me by surprise. I was suddenly face-to-face with her. She was beautiful, with brassy brunette bangs bouncing off her shoulders and cutting sharply across her forehead. She reminded me of pictures I’d seen of hippy women during the 60s: no lipstick or makeup or other fakery―just natural beauty. A black turtleneck suggested college girl from some other period. I didn’t see a purse. She was smiling.

The couple at the door were outside now. The woman asked, “Are you alright?” She ignored the question, still smiling, looking straight up into my eyes. I think I was blushing as I stammered out a barely coherent apology, gesturing with my hands, lusting for a hazelnut coffee, in a hurry, rounding the corner…but, oh my god, she was beautiful.

“You’re Steven Glen, aren’t you?”

She knew my name.

This wasn’t as much a surprise as it might seem. My work had been exhibited around town for several years and I’d been interviewed by newspapers, television and regional magazines. I wasn’t a celebrity, but I wasn’t invisible.

I nodded yes.

“I saw your exhibit at Ingrid Mueller’s Art + Concepts two months ago.”

I nodded yes.

“You’re very talented.”

I nodded yes.

“You don’t talk much do you?”

I nodded…”I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you until...”

“It’s OK. I’m all right. Back of my head’s a bit sore, is all.” She rubbed her backside. “Sore butt too.”

My god, she was beautiful. I was feeling a bit woozy from just looking at her. “I was in a hurry, not thinking. Just got some good news.”

Her smile widened. “And your good news was?” She seemed cheery and relaxed, but for some reason, I couldn’t shake that image of her eyes just before I knocked her down, the vacancy. There was something almost chilling about it.

But she was so beautiful.

I bought her a coffee―hazelnut, of course. She loved it. I told her about the book, how it as a big step for me. In fact, that’s all we talked about: me―my books, the shopping carts, my exhibitions, my artistic vision. Whenever I asked her about her own life, she turned the talk back to me, and I let her. Ego: that slippery plain of victories leading to ultimate defeat. I should have pressed her but I was on a ME high with a beautiful woman, and less than two hours later we were at my place, in bed, naked.

Yeah, that fast. I should have known something was out of whack. But I was on top of the world. I was invincible. Nothing could bring me down.

Her name was Heather. Heather Smith. Although I’m still not sure if that was her real last name. I’m not even sure if that was her real first name.

While we were drinking the coffee, I asked her, “How would you sum up your life?”

She said, “I’m the seed pod that fell into the river and was carried out to the ocean. How about you?”

And, of course, I blabbed on about myself, never bothering to ask what she meant by the seed pod, and that was the closest she ever came to saying anything really personal about herself other than to talk about her current mood, how things went at work, where she’d like to dine out.

Her moods were always the same: tranquil in a disquieted way, as though something was rumbling under the surface. She was a graphic artist for a company that produced educational software. My sum total knowledge of her work: the graphics have to be meaningful. But I did know if the day went well, fast, slow, or challenging. In the time that we were together, we never dined at the same place twice and in all that time she never failed to take my breath away.

She moved in the day after we met. The last thing in the world I wanted was a roommate; I didn’t even want a relationship, didn’t want the complications. I was so close to having everything I’d always wanted. I needed to focus on the book, on the exhibition for the book launch. Plus, there was the commercial photography―the weddings and portraits―to pay the bills. My life was too busy for a relationship. I thought about this while I was waiting for her to show up with her things and I made up my mind that I was going to tell her that we should wait a bit. This was too sudden. It wasn’t like me. I’m sorry but…

I answered a quiet knock on the door. She stood in the hall wearing blue jeans and a dark gray sweater, a suitcase in each hand. She took my breath away.

“Just two suitcases?” I said.

“I like to keep things simple.”

I kissed her and she walked through the door into the rest of my life.

Two suitcases.

***

Living with a woman was something new in my life. I’d had women stay the weekend but this was different. It was an adventure. Physically, she didn’t put much of a dent in my apartment. We shared my dresser, and the closet was less stark. Cosmetics, brushes and hair products appeared in the washroom along with a cherry red bathrobe and matching towel. We moved the couch to the middle of the room, closer to the TV, which I started watching more in the evenings. Things materialized in the refrigerator: yogurt, tofu, plastic containers of bean sprouts. All-in-all though, she made as much an imprint as a hotel guest.

But she brought a certain color and texture to life in the apartment, as though I’d turned the settings of my life to black and white and she re-set them to color.

My apartment was no longer just a place to eat, sleep, shower and catch the news; it was a place to live and create memories with color and texture. I looked forward to going home and finding her waiting for me. Seeing her on the couch or strolling out of the kitchenette or just hearing her calling out from the washroom: “Be out in a minute.” I never tired of her beauty. In fact, I never really got used to it―like it was something I could never define or understand. Like her.

Just like her.

***

We ate together, usually in the dining area, with music in the background and candles in the foreground. Sometimes we ate in the living room and watched TV. Conversation was sporadic. We didn’t talk much and when we did it wasn’t for long. I talked about my book, my exhibitions, plans for my next photo project, problems with my commercial work. She talked about things in the news or asked questions about my work, my artistic vision, my hopes and fears.

Weekends we got out of the apartment, starting with the Farmers’ Market early Saturday morning. She loved the Market: the stalls with fresh produce, the crafts (which she adored but never bought, not even letting me buy them for her), the exotic foods (her favorite was mild chicken samosas), the buskers juggling bowling pins or staging puppet shows. She never once became impatient because a line was stalled by people stopping to talk or someone just stopping to take in the movement and noise. She blended well into crowds.

After the market we took to the sidewalks for some window shopping or drove into the country where I’d take pictures of barns and ponds as backdrops to her beauty. Sometimes we’d go to a mall where she’d admire everything and buy nothing. She loved the shopping experience but wasn’t into accumulating things, except for the odd piece of clothing.

No matter what we did, though, her conversation focused on what was happening around us: “Oh look! A puppet show!” “Can you get the water lilies in just behind me? What kind of lens do you need for that?” “How do you think I’d look in that red dress?” She lived in the immediate.

We didn’t go to church on Sundays. Sunday was our stay-at-home-in-bed-and-make-love-all-day-long day. Conversation was mostly me telling her over and over how beautiful she was, how perfect she was, how much I needed her.

***

After a couple of months, I stopped doing portraits. I needed time to work on proofs for the book and re-write captions and the artist statement―a sprawling twenty-page monument to ambiguity, which I eventually pared down to a few pages. I needed time to start my next project: abandoned toys. These were pictures of toys, like play kitchens, play houses and pedal cars left on curbs for trash day, or left at the back door of the Salvation Army store. I had a rough concept about what I was doing, something along the lines of shedding the tools of our youth, learning to let go as part of the growth process. Something like that. I was having a hard time focusing and I can’t say that it was her fault. It was my fault. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, day and night, even when I was with her. Yeah, even when I was with her. I think most people think about other things when they’re with the ones they love because they’re right there with you, where you just feel them and think about other things.

In my case though, she’d be right there, lying beside me or sitting across the table from me, and I’d be wondering about her, wondering about her day, wondering about her past, about who she was and what she was doing when she wasn’t with me.

Wondering about why she was with me.

***

“So what meaningful graphics did you do today?”

“Mostly boring ones.”

“Boring? How so?”

“Just boring. Visual representations of boring material.”

“What kind of material?”

“Really boring material.”

“You’re not going to tell me anything about your job, are you?”

“Did you find out about that clicking noise in your car?”

***

We’d been together almost six months when I first noticed it. By that time I’d cut my commercial work down to almost nothing, taking occasional jobs to pay rent on the apartment and studio. She took care of all the other expenses, and the publishers had given me a generous advance―something unheard of for a still not-so-well-known photographer.

I spent my days roaming the city looking for cast-away toys―snooping around alleys, frequenting dumpsters, scouring the early morning streets on trash pick-up days. I’d finished the work on the shopping cart book. My next exhibition was a few months away, in conjunction with the book release.

I was at the studio, going through pictures I’d taken of her over the weekend. On Sunday we’d gone to the college campus, to the geology building, where they’d painted the walls in one of the stairwell alcoves with a lifelike forest motif. The alcove stretched up three stories with towering rainforest trees. The predominant color was deep green. She was wearing blue jeans and a loose red blouse, the first time I’d seen her wearing a bright color other than her bathrobe. It was raining lightly that day and she had a red umbrella. There was a long bench built into the wall at the base of the forest mural. She lay down on the bench with the umbrella open beside her. The contrast of colors was breathtaking. I took almost a hundred pictures.

I’d just deleted the ones that were definitely a no go, leaving me with ten images to process. In three of them, taken in succession, she was looking straight into the lens, smiling seductively. The bright irises spread a light brownish tint over her eyelids and the hollows of her eyes. Even looking at pictures of her caught my breath. I zoomed in on her eyes. The screen turned monochrome brown. My chest began to tighten with excitement as I leaned forward to let myself be lost in those eyes. And that’s when I saw it.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, only that it triggered a cold flash across my back and froze me like in those moments when you wake up feeling threatened by something you can’t define but and you know that if you move, it’ll pounce. It was the vacancy I’d seen in her eyes the first time we met, but it was more―like a pit descending into bottomless nothing, a complete absence of…I didn’t know what. I jerked back, fearing I’d be sucked into something from which I’d never return.

I sat at my desk, sweating, cold, shaken, fingers trembling. My thoughts tripped over explanations that might make sense of what I’d seen.

After a few moments I calmed enough to lean forward into her eyes and confirm what I’d just seen but it was gone, if it had ever been there. It could have been stress, change of lifestyle, anything.

I spent the next couple of hours working on the remaining pictures. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. In each of the pictures she was beautiful and her eyes took my breath away without swallowing me whole.

I didn’t mention any of this to her.

***

“As a photographer, there’s something I find really odd about you.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t have any pictures.”

“Pictures?”

“Yeah, pictures…family, travel, childhood, school. How come you have no pictures?”

“Well, hun, as a photographer, you weren’t around then to take them.”

***

I started losing it. Whatever I’d seen in her eyes wouldn’t let go. I went through hundreds of pictures, burrowing into her eyes as she sat on the edge of the fountain by City Hall, zooming into her eyes as she smiled under a black moustache at the dollar store, digging deep into her eyes as she waved to me high in the air from a swing at the playground across the street― searching her eyes in picture after picture.

But it was gone. I tried to chalk it off to imagination. Stress. A disagreeable lunch. I tried to doubt what I’d seen, distrust my eyes, but that look in her eyes when we met hovered over me. I remembered the chill I’d felt.

***

I started an obsessive campaign of picture-taking, catching her while she ate, watched TV, slept, showered, dressed and undressed.

“Steven?”

“Yes?”

“I’m undressing.”

“I know. And I’m taking pictures.”

“Steven?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you taking pictures of my eyes while I’m undressing?”

***

I put over a thousand images through every Photoshop routine I could think of, including a barrage of special effects like fish eye, sepia, duo tone, HDR, everything I could think of. I varied the resolutions, hues, temperatures, white balances, color saturations, brightness, sharpness, densities.

Did I mention I was obsessed?

***

I decided it was time to talk to her about it. We were eating authentic Mexican food in an authentic Mexican restaurant with authentic Mariachi music in the background.

“I know I’ve been acting weird lately.” I was on my fourth Corona

“Oh, you noticed?” Sometimes she could be a bit of a shithead.

“Yes, I did.”

“Steven.” She leaned forward, looking me straight in the eyes. “There’s something wrong.”

“Yes?”

She reached over the table and took both my hands. “When you’re not taking pictures of my eyes, or working on my eyes on your computer...”

“Yes?”

“You stare.”

“I stare?”

“Into my eyes, constantly. Like you’re looking for something.”

“You have beautiful eyes. I…”

“Steven. This is a nice restaurant. Don’t make me pour a bottle of beer over your head.” She squeezed my hands tightly as she talked. “I want it to stop…the whole eye thing. It stops.”

I nodded yes.

“Give me your word.”

“I promise. I’ll stop. No more eye fixation.”

***

For a while, I managed to reign in the eye fetish and pay more attention to her as in: “Nice to see a man who appreciates his woman undressing for the camera.” I immersed myself in my abandoned toy project and scoured the streets looking for toys left on the curbs for trash day or tossed beside dumpsters. Gray drizzly days were my favorite, with the rain adding a bit of the old sparkle to the colors of the toys, now contrasted so vividly with their drab surroundings and suggesting the magic they once cast on the children who owned them.

I was picking up more commercial work. My book release was a month away, and I was almost ready for the exhibition and launch.

She seemed to be more excited about the exhibit than me, talking about it incessantly, asking me if I was excited, telling me how beautiful the prints were. Her favorite was of a cart sitting in snow up to its lower tray. Behind it, a field stretched into a narrow line of trees. Behind that, a black storm-filled sky stretched across the horizon moving with a precision edge into a sunny cloudless sky. The play of light between the storm and the clear sky was surreal and foreboding. The cart was about thirty feet into the snow and, strangely, there were no footsteps leading out to it, as though it had just appeared there.

Things were looking good.

For the time being.

***

“I know hardly anything about you.”

“What’s my favorite pizza?”

“Sausage.”

“What’s my favorite color?”

“Brown. Chocolate brown.”

“What’s my favorite food?”

“When you want a break from health food…steak, medium rare, baked potato with sour cream, and broccoli with cheese sauce.”

“What’s my favorite song?”

“But, what’s this…?”

“Indulge me. What’s my favorite song?”

“These Eyes.”

“Most men wouldn’t be able to answer those questions.”

“So?”

“So, you know me better than most men know their women.”

***

There’re two schools of thought about balance. One claims that the purpose of our lives is to attain a state in which everything is completely in balance and then keep things that way until we die. This is a kind of spiritual approach. The other claims that it’s just fine to work towards a state of balance, but then we need to find ways to throw everything into chaos again so that we can start over trying to achieve balance. This would be an evolutionary approach with the rationale being: if things are always in balance, nothing happens—nothing goes forward, nothing goes backward. We have stasis. No progress. No evolution.

I guess I’m one of those people who need to evolve.

Things were too good between us. It was driving me nuts. Who was I to have this perfect relationship with this breathtakingly beautiful woman who never complained, who wanted the same things I wanted, who treated me like everything I did and thought was essential, who never told me how to live my life and who arrived on my doorstep devoid of historical baggage?

These were the kinds of crazy thoughts I was beginning to have. On the one hand, I was afraid to push things; on the other, I couldn’t resist the urge to push.

I started investigating. Google, LinkedIn, MySpace (after all, she was a graphic artist), Facebook, Twitter, online directories and dozens of other cyber ways to stalk a person were all dead ends. I couldn’t find a single pixel of her on the Internet.

Of course, it didn’t take long before she noticed that I was acting crazy again.

***

“My brother and I used to love toasted peanut butter sandwiches dipped in tea with lots of milk and sugar for breakfast.”

“Peanut butter is good for growing bodies.”

“Mom used to pack salmon sandwiches for lunch. Every day. And a banana. And Kool-Aid.”

“The salmon would explain why you have such a strong heart.”

“What was your favorite breakfast when you were a kid? Let me guess…bran flakes.”

“Why would you say bran flakes?”

“Um…I don’t know. Just a wild guess.”

“Did you get around to taking the car in about that clicking noise?”

***

“You look tense tonight, Steven.”

“Got something on my mind.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It is.”

“How serious?”

“Really serious.”

“You just put half an inch of salt on your baked potato.”

“I like salt.”

“With a bit of potato on the side?”

“Who are you?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is this why you were taking all the pictures, tracking me all over the internet?”

“Tracking you? What…”

“Browsers have this thing called histories. You were searching for information on me day after day. You even searched for things like demonic eyes. I’m guessing in relation to me.”

“You knew all this? Why didn’t you say anything?|

“I was hoping you would either find whatever it was you were looking for, or come to your senses.”

“I need to know about your past.”

“You need to get over this obsession.”

“But why can’t you just tell me…”

“OK. I was raised on a farm. I came to the city. I met you. Happy?”

“Is that true?”

“No.”

“Then...?”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes. Of course I…”

“Then just love me.”

***

But I couldn’t just love her. I pushed it like picking a scab trying to heal over a major artery.

We were home, drinking wine, watching a Seinfeld re-run, eating homemade guacamole. I felt like I was sitting beside myself, watching myself reach for the remote and turning the TV off, watching as I turned to her.

“Tell me about your past.”

“You don’t want to know about it.”

“I have to know about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Where did you come from?”

“I told you…a farm.”

“You told me that wasn’t true.”

“Maybe I lied about it not being true.”

“What was it I saw in your eyes?”

“Probably your imagination.”

“What are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing that should mean anything to you—to keeping us together.”

“But I have to know.”

“Maybe I don’t want to know.”

“But you do know.”

“I just want things to stay the way they are.”

“Things will stay the way they are, but I’ll know. I have to know what you know.”

“What I know—and all I have to know—is that I love you and I want things to stay as they are.” She stood up and walked slowly to the window. She stared towards the park but her eyes seemed focused on something far away, lifetimes away. It was a sad stare that flushed me with guilt. I should have backed off then. I should have put my love before my curiosity and gone to her and held her and told her everything would be all right. Just like in the movies. But I didn’t. She stood by the window for a few minutes before turning to me. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “The truth is, Steven, I don’t know. I remember my job and the people I work with, but that’s all. I went home after I met you and packed some things. As soon as I arrived at your door, I forgot where I’d come from. At work, I sort of floated through each day listening to people talking about things I should have known about but didn’t. I played along with them. It happens less often now. But, Steven, I can’t even remember the things they used to talk about. All I remember is you. And what we have. And I don’t want to lose it.”

“But you have to remember.”

***

Finally, she remembered.

I came home late one night. She was sitting on the couch. I said something about being sorry for missing supper but she ignored me. The hair running over her shoulders was like a chocolate waterfall. Even the back of her head thrilled me. I walked quickly to the kitchen to see what I’d missed eating by candlelight.

There was nothing. Not even the smell of cooking. Evening sun cast a surreal aura over the kitchen. There was a note on the breakfast table. I picked it up and read.

Steven dearest,

I remembered. Thanks, Steven. We should have left it alone like I wanted. Just left it alone.

As for what it is: no, you don’t get to know that. At least not yet. I’ll be in touch. Oh, and sorry for the blood stains on your couch.

Love always,

Heather

The calls started a week later.

***

When I think of it now, I got home at around close to eight that night. The blood on the couch was still slightly warm. Maybe it was 7:29 when she pushed the butcher knife into her stomach, maybe that exact moment when her soul fled her body. Maybe that’s why she calls every night at that time. I’ll ask her about that next week. It’s the kind of thing I should ask face-to-face.

One week.

I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to talk myself out of this. Though I can’t see that happening, and it’s going to be tough waiting through those seven days. But like I said, I have a solid objective within a reasonable time frame. She’s waiting for me. She knows.

And I need to know.

A kettle boiling water into dry hell―Kyle’s first thought as he stepped out of the air conditioned building. Pools of heat wavered visibly on the rooftops of mini vans and cars parked in the asphalt lot as Kyle cussed himself for wearing a suit and tie. But the radio had said rain today, just like it had yesterday, when the temperature had soared to an energy-sucking ninety-five. He loosened his tie and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. He took a package of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, opened it and thumbed out a cigarette, thinking that maybe after this pack he’d try quitting again. Yeah, quit the damned things for good and stay inside all day in the office rooms filled with computers and cool air. Pocketing the pack with one hand, he reached into his pants pocket with the other and took out his lighter. Sweat popped out of his underarms as he fired his cigarette and put the lighter back in his pocket. God, it was only mid morning. What would it be like in the afternoon? He took a deep drag, his first cigarette of the day, and felt his head spin into a nicotine high.

He blew out a long stream of bluish smoke that traveled straight ahead, dissolving into the air without even a slight movement upward. No wind to cool down the scorching heat. Sweat dribbled from the pores in his forehead. He wiped it away with the palm of his hand and then dried his palm on the inside of his jacket. He took another long haul on the cigarette, wondering why the hell they couldn’t put aside just one small air conditioned room for smokers, a room with vents to pump the circuit-destroying smoke outside into this godawful hot day.

Beside him stood a three foot high air conditioning box churning out a strained humming sound, the diamond mesh grill on top ripped open by a snow plow during the winter. Kyle looked at the splayed metal and thought that maybe the heat wasn’t so bad after all, not after the skin-numbing temperatures of a winter that had seemed to freeze and storm forever. The problem with weather, either too cold or too hot, but at least you didn’t have to shovel driveways in the heat.

As he lifted the cigarette to his lips, he noticed movement inside the darkness of the air conditioning unit. He blinked. Probably just heat waves under the torn metal. But it moved again, and not like any heat wave. Must be the nicotine high, playing tricks on his eyes. He stared at the hole in the unit. The metal was ripped right down the six foot length of the gray metal box with a round gouge in the middle where diamond-shaped mesh curled up and away from the hole like grisly lips. Another movement, something long and dark, it looked like. Something solid.

Kyle wiped sweat from his forehead again, wiped his palm inside his jacket again, stepped closer to the, felt air even hotter than outside blast into his face. Just as he was about to step back, he saw it again. Something long and dark, black, shiny black. He blinked his eyes again, wiped sweat from his brows, and stepped away from the unit. Yeah, just the nicotine high, and the heat, the godawful heat, and him wearing a suit, his shirt soaked under his arms and across his back.

He looked at his black Honda, parked thirty feet away, heat waves dancing on the hood where the protective coating peeled and flaked in white streaks. From parking under a pine tree, the autobody guy had told him. Have to strip it down to the undercoat and repaint. Too late to fix the protective coating. Bloody pine trees. Cost a fortune to have it painted.

And then he heard a faint thump in the direction of the air conditioning unit. He looked, saw nothing. Must be the motor stressing out on the heat. Or maybe it was his head stressing. And then another movement, something definitely long, slender, black, moving from one side of the gouge to the other. Something loose in there? Blowing around in the exhaust? But the movement seemed too slow, too deliberate. What the hell was it?

He took another drag on his cigarette, exhaled the smoke before inhaling it fully, walked right up to the unit and looked into the hole.

There it was.

A twig? Too small. A branch? No. A thick, black spine, leading to what looked like a joint, and then tapering to another joint, and tapering into a smaller spine. No, not a branch, not wood, but something definitely familiar. Where had he seen that shape before?

He bent forward cautiously. The long black spine moved slowly back and forth. Gotta be something caught in there, moving with the exhaust. And then another one appeared from the left side of the hole, exactly like the first, long and shiny black, three spines tapering down through two joints. And they both stretched straight forward and stopped, forming two parallel spines about six inches apart, each at least three feet long.

Where the hell had he seen those before? Still bent forward, peering into the torn grill, He stepped back. Something too deliberate in the movement of those things, something too familiar that wasn’t invoking any pleasant memories, something sinister in the way they just lay there side by side, so intent on remaining still.

And then he heard it.

Not from outside, but inside, inside his head, like something effervescent bubbling into his awareness, the bubbles bursting into words strung together with no tone, no pitch, no base or treble. Just the meaning of the words.

“What are you?”

Kyle jumped back, almost losing his balance, the cigarette dropping through his fingers, burning them as it passed through.

“Shit!”

Regaining his balance, he looked around, eyes popped wildly, shaking his hand as though he could shake the burning away. No one was there. Just hundreds of empty cars boiling under the blistering sun, and beyond the parking lot, the city fuming in a smoggy haze. Gotta be the heat, the nicotine high. Sweat stung his eyes. He wiped them with both hands, felt the pinching hurt in his fingers begin to loosen into a throb, then waved his hand in a futile attempt to cool the burning fingers. He looked back at the hole in the grill.

The spines were gone.

Too creepy. Too much heat. He stepped quickly to the door, opened it and walked into the cool of the building.

***

You could almost bounce off the wall of heat and sear your brows in the process. It took Kyle’s breath away. The metal door thumped closed behind him as he reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarette pack. His mind bristled with flashing screens from hours of research on the Internet, the muscles in his right palm throbbing from using the mouse. Have to fill out a requisition for one of those ergonomic models. His burned fingers had stopped throbbing. Lighting his cigarette, he glanced briefly at the air conditioning unit, still humming its strained monotonous tune.

Christ!

Two long black spines stretched out in the hole. Damn, what are those things? Time to get to the bottom of this. Ignoring the alarms firing in his head and stomach, he marched directly to the unit, bent forward and gazed at the spines laying motionless, side by side on top of the fan box. He dropped his cigarette onto the butt-cluttered cement, crushed it with his heel and moved his hand slowly toward them.

Just as his hand reached the opening in the grill, the spines moved. And something in the grillwork right under his head moved. What the hell was that? His hand froze. His body froze. He watched as a dark mass of material roiled under the rusted mesh, moving with slow, fluid motion. The spines curled under at their joints and disappeared, the dark mass gliding forward to replace them. Kyle’s eyes widened, their lids the only part of his body that wasn’t paralyzed solid. The mass in the unit was round and translucent black with a coat of short shimmering hair. It must have been as big as a medium-size dog, or more like a large beach balloon, but bloated in the center and tapering to a point at one end. It turned smoothly around and the end facing Kyle lifted.

First, he saw a flat, crusty section attached to the bloated black beach ball. Sprouting out from the bottom of this, he saw eight of the long spines. The crusted shell rose to reveal four liquid black eyes forming a square under a shell-like brow. Beside the square of eyes, two more larger sapphire blue eyes bulged menacingly. Below the eyes, two hairy black appendages like swollen, droopy lips sucked in and out. Each appendage had two reddish black fangs that curved inward, almost touching each other as the appendages sucked slowly in and out.

Goddam, a spider.

Kyle broke through the spell and jumped backwards. He heard the flat dead-like words bubbling in his mind again.

“What are you?”

Everything in Kyle’s body was moving now, especially his sweat glands, his shirt and pants starting to drench. His heart thumped hard enough to make his head spin. And the words intruded into his mind again, floating somewhere between conscious and unconscious, sanity and insanity.

“What are you?”

And that’s when Kyle realized that the words came from the spider.

The realization came in layers: a spider, a giant spider, a giant spider somehow throwing words into his brain, a giant spider asking him what he was. Mustering his senses like melting tar in the sweltering heat, Kyle broke through the barrier of impossibility and whispered: “What?”

“No need to talk out loud. Just think it.”

Whispering again: “What?”

“Just direct your meaning to me. Just think your words.”

Kyle thought: “How ..”

“That’s it. Just like that.”

“But …”

“Yes?”

Kyle stared into the eyes, four black and two blue, all six of them vibrating with inner life, seeming to float around in their hairy sockets, surrounded by the monstrous body with the black fangs moving slowly in and out like breathing.

“What the hell are you?”

“I think I asked you that first, only somewhat more politely.”

What kind of craziness? The thing was talking to him. He was talking back to it. The damn thing had to be real, but the damn thing couldn’t be real. He reached for this cigarettes, the outside of the pack was moist with sweat. He opened the pack and fumbled out a cigarette, hands shaking. Returning the pack to his shirt pocket, he groped in his pants for this lighter. Craziness! Maybe some kind of Internet surfing-induced hypnosis? Too many screens flashing by on his monitor, like the dividing line on a dark night, inducing highway hypnosis? He lit his cigarette with difficulty, lip muscles shaking as much as his hands. Sweat stung his eyes. He wiped it away with the lighter hand, left his wet hand on his cheek still holding the lighter, took a long drag on his cigarette, his eyes transfixed by the six eyes moving around but knowing they were focused on him, and he heard more words.

“No, Kyle, you’re not crazy.”

Kyle’s jaw dropped. “You know my name.”

“It’s in your mind. But what are you?”

“No way, you first.”

The spider’s head lifted up slightly, the eyes now all definitely focused directly on Kyle. “I’m me.”

Kyle pondered this a moment, still shaking from head to toes. “Fine. That’s what I am too … me.”

“But, what are you when you say me?”

Some of Kyle’s shaking began to loosen up in the rhetoric. This is not the way a spider talks. Not to mention that spiders don’t talk. And spiders don’t get this big. But there it was, a big spider, a giant black spider in the air conditioning unit. And it talked. “OK, I’ll bite. I’m a person, a human being.”

“What’s a human?”

“Oh no, you next, what the hell are you?”

“No, Kyle. Let’s focus on one thing at a time, take this step by step.”

Some kind of goddam analytic psychologist spider? What the hell was going on here? “Look, I don’t even know if you exist! Why should I answer questions from something that might just be a figment of my stressed-out mind?”

“How do you know that you exist?”

Kyle thought a moment. He knew the answer to that one, knew it from first year Philosophy. He took another puff on his cigarette. It came to him: “I think; therefore, I am.”

“Well, Kyle, I think too. Therefore, I am. And you’ve been reading my thoughts. Therefore, you know that I think; therefore, you know that I am. What’s a human?”

Kyle blew out cigarette smoke in a rush, the long blue stream racing through the windless air right into the face of the spider. The spider recoiled.

“Hey, watch that stuff! It burns my eyes!”

Kyle’s eyebrows lifted. The shaking in his body stopped abruptly, the spider not so menacing now in its vulnerability to the smoke. “Sorry.”

The spider shifted back into a relaxed crouch on top of the fan box, its movements smoothly fluid and silent, almost graceful. “Apology accepted. So what is a human?”

He thought. Images came to mind, images of people working, playing, doing a million different things, but how to describe human? Surely the spider could see that he was a smooth-skinned biped with hair on his head. Start with apes? Describe evolution? Opposable thumbs? The ability to think abstract thoughts? He took another drag on his cigarette and blew it out, this time away from the spider. He replied: “Look, I’m going to have to think about this. It’s kind of a complex thing. And I have to get back to work. Can we talk about this tomorrow morning?”

“You’ll come back?”

“Yes, I’ll come back. I come out here every day, twice, for a smoke break.”

“You’ll tell me what human is?”

“I’ll tell you what human is.”

“Will you bring others?”

Kyle thought about this. Tell Ernie and Jim when he got back upstairs? No. What if he was just imagining this? They’d think he was nuts, and maybe he was. Best to keep this to himself, for the time being. “No, I’ll come alone.”

“Good. I don’t like crowds.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m not sure. I just know it.”

Kyle dropped his cigarette and crushed it out. “Tomorrow, then.”

“And you’ll tell me what human is. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

More like six of them. Gotta be going crazy. Find out tomorrow, if it’s still there. Kyle opened the door and walked into the building as the spider glided back into the darkness of the air conditioning unit.

***

Almost like God had waved a wand over the sky and the earth, the weather had changed overnight, cooling down under a slate gray cloud cover. A soothing breeze brushed against Kyle’s face as he stepped out of the building, cigarette and lighter in hand. He ignored the breeze, the sky, the parked cars, and looked straight at the air conditioning unit. And there it was, crouched as yesterday on top of the fan box. So it hadn’t just been the heat, or Internet hypnosis. And any further doubt was shattered when the deadpan words invaded his mind.

“Good morning, Kyle.”

It was still unnerving. “Good morning. Sleep well?”

“As well as can be in here. Not much space to stretch out.”

“Ever think of moving to the suburbs?” Kyle lit his cigarette.

“What is suburbs?”

“Oh, just a place with more room, bigger air conditioners.” Putting his lighter back in his pocket, he stepped closer to the unit. “Just joking. Didn’t sleep much last night. Thought maybe I was going crazy or something.”

“I suppose I would have that effect. I don’t socialize much.”

What the hell was this thing saying? How would it even know to say these things? Kyle scratched his head, stared into the lidless, unblinking array of eyes. “You seem to have a good vocabulary for a spider.”

“Is that what I am? A spider?”

Kyle thought a moment. “I’m not sure. It’s what you look like. But different, bigger.”

“Then, that’s what I am. A spider. Have you had enough time to prepare your explanation of humans?”

Kyle sighed deeply. Between bouts of wondering about his sanity, he’d thought about being human, what it meant. He had his answer ready. “Yeah, I think I can describe humans.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Yeah, sure, where?”

“Just a manner of speaking. Please, tell me about humans.”

Pausing his thoughts for a moment, Kyle took another long drag and blew the smoke out, away from the spider. Today the smoke arced upwards in the light breeze, disintegrating quickly into the surrounding air. “OK. But, keep in mind, I’m not the world’s biggest expert on this kind of thing. Took some philosophy in college, read a few books, but mostly, this is just from living my life as a human.”

“Knowledge by experience is good.”

Kyle thought about this a moment. Where does it come up with these remarks? Got a library in that damned air conditioning unit? TV? “We weren’t always the way we are.”

“Nothing is.”

“Look, can we do away with the running commentary? This is hard enough as it is.”

“Sorry, Kyle. Please continue.”

The spider’s mass moved backwards gently, as though relaxing, the eyes still seeming to move, but not move, the black fangs breathing in and out from their hairy appendages.

“We started off as fish, turned into apes, evolved from apes into humans. It took millions of years but, during that time, our brains evolved into something that set us off from all other animals on earth, and maybe all life forms in the universe. We developed the ability to think, to solve problems, to think in the abstract.” Damn, none of this was coming out right. Why hadn’t he written it down the night before? It all seemed so apparent then. “What I mean is, we have the ability to change the world around us so that we enhance our ability to survive.” Kyle paused again, puffed on his cigarette.

“That’s it?”

“Well, that’s enough, isn’t it?”

“I can do all that. With the exception of fish and apes, I must be human.”

“But you can’t change the world around you.”

The spider waved one of its long, spindly legs over the inside of the unit. “Made some changes in here.”

“Oh yeah, like what?”

“Would you like to stick your head in and take a look around?”

Kyle shuddered. Duck his head into the unit right under those two chomping fangs? Not likely. “Think I’ll pass on that.”

“You’re still nervous. Is that a human trait? To be nervous?”

“Only when we feel threatened, or when we’re in a situation where everything is uncertain, or improbable. Like when we’re talking to giant spiders that can’t possibly exist, and we think maybe we’ve gone over the deep end.”

“Would you like to touch me? Maybe that will convince you that I’m real.”

Kyle’s stomach tightened at the suggestion. “Thanks, but …”

“Right. Nervous.”

“No offense meant.”

“None taken. But is that really all there is to being human? It took you the whole night to come up with that?”

Kyle puffed on his cigarette, getting smoke in his eyes. He rubbed them with his free hand. “Well, no, it’s a lot more than that. I told you I wasn’t an expert on this. I’ll have to give it some more thought. I have to get back to work. Meet you here this afternoon?”

“You’ll come back?”

“Of course I will. Didn’t we already go over this yesterday?”

“That’s right. I hope I didn’t sound insecure. You’ll come alone?”

“Covered that ground too.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

Kyle flicked his cigarette onto the pavement. In the distance beyond the parking lot, the tall buildings of the city appeared as gray as the sky, floating in their sea of exhaust and smoke. “Catch ya later.”

“Catch you later, Kyle.”

He opened the door and walked into the building. The spider remained on the fan box.

***

Mid afternoon, and the clouds were beginning to open up with a miserly sliver of blue sky here, a sprinkle of sun beams there. So what happened to the rain the radio promised? Kyle walked to the air conditioning unit. No giant spider. Nothing in there. He bent forward. “Hello, Mr. Spider!”

“Hello, Kyle.” The words rippling across his cerebral landscape like tiny bubbles bursting with meaning before taking any particular form.

Kyle watched as two long, black legs speared over the fan box and shifted to the left, the unimaginable black beach ball sliding in from the right. The spider perched on the box and lifted its head, all this in one elegant, fluid motion. The eyes focused on Kyle, but moving still, taking in the back of the building and the area around Kyle. The fangs moving in and out, in and out, slowly, like labored breathing.

“Before we get into this human thing… ” Kyle put a cigarette in this mouth, lit it. “…I have a question for you.”

The spider crouched motionless, only the fangs and their appendages moving, slowly, in and out. “The floor is all yours, Kyle.”

Where the hell did it learn that? “I’ve been wondering about this all morning.”

“Applying abstract thought?”

“Hey! The commentary …”

“Sorry. Please, continue.”

Another puff on his cigarette. Gotta give these damned things up. Maybe not a good time now, though. “Where do you come from?”

Silence. The fangs moving in and out. The legs spread out over the sides of the fan box, motionless. The lustrous, black body, motionless.

“Hello.”

“Yes, Kyle.”

“Oh, OK, just wondering if you heard the question. Where do you come from?”

“Here.”

He puffed again on his cigarette, eyes squinting with puzzlement. “Here?”

“Where I am.”

Kyle thought about this a moment, shrugged. “Oh yeah, well, that makes sense. Been anywhere else?”

“No, just here.”

“I see what you mean about your social life.”

“I get by. But enough talk about me. Let’s talk about this human thing.”

Suddenly, the spider’s eyes seemed to go wild, gyrating in their sockets, the appendages froze. In one quick movement, the spider was gone. Hearing something behind him, Kyle turned in time to see a red Dodge Caravan pulling out of a parking spot about fifty feet away from him. The driver, a man with short dark hair and a black suit, eyed Kyle as the mini van pulled out slowly and then drove to the far exit. All I need now. People watching me talking to an air conditioning unit. When Kyle looked back at the unit, the spider was there.

“A little on the shy side?”

“I enjoy my privacy.”

“Then, why are you talking to me?”

“Why not?”

Kyle expelled a long, forceful sigh. “Have you ever heard about semantics?”

“No. Are they a human thing?”

“Yesterday morning, I would have said yes. You seem to be an exception, though.”

“Thank you, Kyle. I’ve never been called exceptional before.”

“Have you been called anything before?”

“Not that I can think of. But again, enough chatter about me. What about this human thing?”

Kyle flicked an ash off his cigarette, took another puff. Blew the smoke out. “OK then, back to the human thing. I suppose the best way to put it is … we’re the caretakers of everything around us.”

“You clean things up?”

“No. Well, yes. In a manner of speaking. We have the ability to look around us and see the way things are. Then, we apply abstract thought and see the way things could be. Then, we apply creativity to abstract thought and this gives us a vision of how to turn the way things are into the way they could be.”

The four black eyes in the center, though motionless, seemed almost to be spinning with movement deep inside.

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why change things from what they are to what they could be?”

“Well, to make them better.”

“I see. Could you give me an example?”

Kyle thought about this a moment, snapped his fingers. The spider jerked back. Kyle jerked back, regained his composure quickly. “Let me guess. Sensitive to sound?”

“Right on the money.”

“Sorry about that. Something we humans do sometimes when we get an idea.”

The spider moved forward slightly, relaxing back onto the fan box. “Apology accepted. What was your idea?”

“Rivers.”

“Rivers?”

“A body of water that flows through the land. If I want to drive my car from one side of the river to the other, my car will sink and I’ll drown. That’s the way things are.”

“I see. Not a happy prospect. But why do you want to get to the other side?”

“That’s not important. Maybe just for the sheer hell of it. Maybe I left something there and I want to get it back.”

“So you’ve been there before?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Well, you must have crossed the river without drowning. Why not do the same again?”

Kyle threw his arms up. The spider backed up again. “I haven’t been across the river!”

“Then how did …”

“It’s not important!” He tossed his cigarette down, and in the same movement, brought his hand up to his shirt pocket, took out another cigarette and lit it. The spider moved forward and relaxed. Kyle blew out a stream of smoke. “Let’s say I’m just curious about what’s on the other side of the river.”

“I can live with that.”

He glared at the spider. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “Now, I want to change the way things are. So I apply some abstract thought and realize that I could drive across the river … if I had a way to do that.”

“How would you do that?”

“That’s what I’m coming to.” Another puff on the cigarette. “That’s the first step in being human. I accept that there is a way to cross the river. We’ve just gone from the way things are to the way things could be. And now we add a little creativity to the situation.”

The spider’s legs moved. Kyle asked: “What?”

“Oh, nothing. Just getting ready for the revelation.”

Smart ass spider. What the hell, talking to a giant spider. Well, this argument has the logic, even if the situation doesn’t have any. “The creativity is what allows me to put two and two together.”

“You use it to add?”

“In a way, yes. I use it to add up the things around me. For instance, I see trees. It occurs to me that, if I cut the trees down, and attach enough of them together, I can build a road out of wood that will span the river, what we call a bridge. Then, I can drive across the bridge without losing my car and without drowning.”

Again the spider’s eyes seemed to roll about without moving, the in and out movement of the fangs quickening slightly. “Amazing.”

Kyle’s eyebrows lifted as he puffed again on his cigarette, looked almost mockingly at the spider. “The human mind is amazing. Probably the most amazing and complex thing in the whole universe. It makes us special, gives us the ability to be the caretakers of everything around us.”

“The trees might not agree with that.”

“The trees?”

“Wouldn’t they die when you cut them down to make your bridge?”

“Of course they would. But they’re only trees!”

“But they’re alive.”

“But they don’t think.”

“I see; therefore, they don’t exist. Pretty shaky bridge.”

“No, they do exist, but they don’t think.”

“But you said…” “I know what I said, but that doesn’t apply to trees, or rocks, or anything that can’t think enough to ask if it can think.”

Silence.

Kyle lifted the cigarette to his lips, puffed slowly.

“Well, I’m glad I can think.”

“What?”

“It would appear to make me safe from the caretaker’s creativity.”

“I have to get back to work.”

***

A light breeze cooled the morning air under a blue sky studded with random puffs of cloud. Kyle watched the spider mount its perch on top of the fan box, repulsed by the horror of a creature so deadly grown so large, but mesmerized by the fluid beauty of its movement, fascinated by the anomaly it posed in everything he knew for certain.

“Beautiful day,” he said.

And the words came like hooded specters drifting through his mind. “Cool during the night, but nice now.”

An image of the spider shivering in the night-cooled metal of the unit dropped into Kyle’s mind and he almost felt sorry for it. He took the cigarettes from his jacket pocket, stared into the translucent eyes, his focus moving from one to the other, wondering how he looked through them. “I worked out a plan.”

“Plans are good. They give direction, establish order in chaos.”

“Exactly. Now, to continue…” Kyle lit his cigarette, took a deep drag, blew the smoke out slowly. “…I think the best way to handle this is to just let you ask questions and I’ll answer.” A horn honked loudly from the street beyond the parking lot. Kyle noticed that it didn’t seem to have an effect on the spider. “Horns don’t bother you?”

“I get used to them, and the sirens. You humans live in a busy world.”

“Not much going on in your air conditioning unit, I guess.”

“Just the usual things.”

Kyle decided to let that one go, took another drag on his cigarette, stared into the eyes smoldering with spider consciousness. “So, any questions?”

“Just one. How does it feel to be human?”

Damn, where was that covered in first year Philosophy? Psych 101 maybe? Kyle thought, dragged fitfully on his cigarette. He caught his fingers in mid snap, just as the answer came to him. “It’s kind of like a feeling of being in control, of nothing being impossible.”

“That must be a powerful feeling. Can you explain it?” The spider shifted its weight slightly to the left. Must get uncomfortable supporting all that weight on those spindly legs.

“Let me think now.”

“Take your time, Kyle.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Sorry.”

“OK, here’s the way it works. As humans, we can control the world around us. Remember the bridge across the river? “How could I forget? A beautiful example.”

Kyle wondered. Smart ass, or sincere? He shrugged it off. “Well, that bridge would have actually been constructed out of metal.”

“Good news for the trees.”

“I’m sure they’re all breathing a sigh of relief. But it would have been constructed by people we call engineers, using something we call engineering. Engineering applies things like technology and science to control the world around us, to build things, to change the world into something that makes it better and safer for humans to live in.”

“Just humans?”

Well, no, for all living things.”

“Except the ones that don’t think.”

“I’m not going to get into that.” Kyle puffed on his cigarette. Damned spider with a one track mind.

“I’m sorry, Kyle. Sometimes I become fixated on details and miss the larger picture.”

God, where does it get these things? Graduated from Arachnid U? “Fine. Let’s look at the larger picture, then. But first, any questions…that don’t have anything to do with trees?”

The spider crouched forward, eyes seeming to blaze with movement under their surface sheen. “Just a small clarification.”

“Shoot.”

“Engineering is what makes it possible for humans to control the world?” “Engineering is one of the things. Like I said, it uses science and technology. These are really the things that make it possible for us to control the world.”

“How?”

Kyle sighed loudly. “I was getting to that. It works like this…science allows us to understand how the world works. Technology allows us to take what we learn from science and make the world do what we want it to do.”

“Could … “

A raised finger to shush the spider. “For example, science shows us how atoms work, and technology allows us to use the way atoms work so that we can build power stations to keep us warm in the winter and bombs to protect us from our enemies.”

“You protect yourselves with atoms?”

“No, we protect ourselves with the things that atoms do.”

“And what do atoms do?”

“They make large fires that destroy cities and make them uninhabitable for years.”

“And this is how you use atoms to keep yourselves warm in the winter?”

“In a way, but on a smaller scale. That’s where control comes in. We control the fire so that it heats buildings without burning them.”

“And using them as bombs means not controlling them?”

“No, it means controlling them so that they’re out of control somewhere else, away from us, in our enemies’ cities.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to just eat your enemies?”

“That’s what a spider would do. Spiders don’t have science and technology.”

“But spiders would be able to live in their enemies’ cities after eating their enemies.”

Frustrated, Kyle looked at his watch. “Gotta get back to work. Let’s try this again this afternoon.”

“You seem to be angry.”

“Not angry, just a little…I don’t know what. But, this discussion doesn’t seem to be going anywhere constructive. Let’s just try again later.”

“You’ll come back?” Kyle frowned.

“You’re right, Kyle, we’ve covered that ground. You’ll come alone?”

Kyle cocked his head to one side, remained silent.

“Right, alone. I’ll see you this afternoon. Have a good morning, Kyle.”

Walking away from the spider, Kyle felt his mind stewing in frustration and possibly a hint of anger. Getting flustered and boggled by a spider? Maybe start smoking at the front of the building? No, can’t do that. Not now.

***

The day was still breezy, the sky spotted with puffs of cloud as Kyle stepped out of the building. In the distance, high rises sparkled above the haze of smog. Kyle took a few steps toward the air conditioning unit, saw the black mass of the spider hunched in the darkness as his hand reached for his cigarettes. “New plan. I’m going to sum it all up, and we’ll leave it at that.”

“Is it wise to switch plans unilaterally?”

No longer phased by the spider’s retorts, he shrugged as he lit his cigarette. “Do it all the time. Called adapting on the fly.”

“You change plans on flies?”

“Just a manner of speaking.” Pocketing his lighter, a thought occurred to him. “By the way, you must eat a lot of flies.”

“Not really. Never acquired the taste.”

“Then, what exactly do you eat? I mean…” waving his hand over the direction of the spider’s body, “…you have to be eating a lot of something.”

“Oh, this and that. I try to keep my diet balanced. Tell me about your new plan, Kyle, your summing up of it all.”

He held a deep drag of smoke in his lungs for a few seconds, then blew the smoke out slowly, a bluish white plume rolling through the air from his mouth. “First of all, let’s forget about the allusion to caretakers. We’ve done a lousy job of taking care of things.”

“Admitting the mistake is the first step toward correcting the mistake.”

Kyle thought for a moment, puffing on his cigarette. “How do you know these things?”

Shifting its weight slightly to one side, the spider lifted its appendages, the fangs moving in and out slowly, and then crouched backwards a few inches. “I have thoughts about these things.”

Kyle waited, dragged on his cigarette. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Kyle shrugged. “OK, then, so … we’ve polluted the world, screwed up the weather, murdered millions in senseless wars, used science and technology to make money for a few while ignoring the suffering of the millions we exploited to make the money, and we’ve created nuclear and biological weapons that might eventually kill us all off.”

“Why?”

Kyle looked at the spider, smiling the smile of a victory won, nodded his head. “I knew you were going to ask that.”

“Then, you have your answer prepared.” The spider crouched forward.

“I have.” Another puff on his cigarette. “It’s because we know things are going to work out in the end. We know that our science and technology will save us in the end, because they are, after all, an extension of ourselves. What you said about admitting the mistake being the first step to correcting the mistake. You’re right.”

“Thank you, Kyle, it’s…”

“It’s the way we do things, throughout our history. We make mistakes, we learn, we go on. And what gives us the will to go on is a thing we call hope.”

“Hope?”

“We have hope in the future, belief that things will work out.”

“And that’s it?”

Exasperated, Kyle blew a long plume of smoke in the direction of the spider. The spider backed up. “Hey!”

Kyle waved his hand in front of him, an effort, too late, to stop the barrage of smoke. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. A little frustrated, I guess. What do you mean by: ‘That’s it?’”

The spider moved forward slowly to the top of the fan box. “Apology accepted. I meant, that your hope seems to put the future on a shaky foundation.”

“How’s that?”

“Shouldn’t you be doing something other than hoping?”

“We are doing something. We have people working on these things.”

“Who?”

“The scientists and the technologists.”

“The people who made the mistakes?”

“Well, yes, they’re the ones who understand the mistakes, and how to correct them.”

“And if they don’t?”

“They will.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s in the nature of humans. Nothing’s impossible for us.”

“So, the rest of you sit around and hope while the people who make the mistakes correct them.” “No, we keep track of what they do, form groups to protest and watch over the things we don’t like, pass legislation, write letters to the editor, post angry letters to news groups, promote dialogues, demonstrate.”

“Does it work?”

Kyle threw his cigarette on the ground, crushed it with his heel. “I have to get back to work.”

“You seem angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Flustered?”

“No, just a little drained.”

“You’ll come back…”

“I’ll be back tomorrow. Alone.”

“Sleep well tonight.”

“You too.”

***

Lighting his first cigarette of the day, Kyle looked over the puddles left by the early morning rain in the parking lot, the radio finally right. Yeah, predict it till it happens. Must be a lot of hand shaking at the station, maybe a few medals passed out, letters of commendation, promotions in the weather department, and predictions that, maybe, today we’ll have sun. To the west, small puffs of cloud trailed in the wake of the heavy cumulous clouds fading into the east. The spider looked dry and relaxed, legs spread over the sides of the fan box. Kyle’s hair was disheveled; his eyes, bloodshot.

“You look terrible this morning, Kyle.”

“Thanks.” Kyle pocketed his lighter, blew smoke through his nostrils. “New plan.”

“Didn’t like the way the last one was going?”

“It was going nowhere.”

“Time to change the fly.”

Kyle pursed his lips and opened his mouth with a pop. “Something like that. Here’s the way it works. Each of us humans do our own thing. We have scientists and technologists to do the science and technology things, accountants and financial experts to do the business things, laborers and clerks and salespeople to do their things. We specialize in our own areas and we all work together to make the world a place that makes sense. But, each of the things we do takes time and ability, just enough time to keep each of us busy with our own thing. So we have to rely on the people who are doing other things to do them right. And if they don’t do them right, we have to raise hell until they do them right. We can’t just start doing them ourselves.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“It is.”

“Sounds too complicated.”

The spider froze, Kyle dragged on his cigarette, eyes on the ground as a blue Cavalier drove past them, splashing through the puddles. The woman behind the wheel ignored Kyle as she drove by.

“What do you mean by ‘too complicated’?”

“Sounds like a lot of potential for things to get out of control.”

“Sometimes they do. But, we get them back into control and go on.”

“Can you give me an example?”

Another long puff, and then inspiration following on the heels of nicotine ingestion. “OK. Money markets depend on thousands of variables and the cooperation of just about everybody who works in the markets. Sometimes some of the variables go haywire and people stop cooperating. The market collapses. But, then, people start cooperating again and the market rebuilds and comes back stronger than ever.”

“Until some of the variables go haywire again.”

He flicked his cigarette into a puddle where it fizzled out in a puff of smoke, and reached for his pack in the same movement. “You’re making me smoke a lot more.”

The spider slid forward a few inches, the huge black beach ball body rippling with the movement. “Why do you light those things and blow out the smoke?”

Kyle thought a moment. How to describe why he smokes? How to describe why he does something he wants to quit doing. “They make me feel better.”

“Then they must be good for you.”

“No. They’re bad for me. They ruin my lungs and heart with thousands of deadly gases, make my breath stink, stain my teeth and harden the capillaries in my brain. They make it hard for me to walk up stairs without losing my breath.”

“And that makes you feel better?”

Bloodshot eyes rolling, head cocked to one side, smoke rushing out of his nostrils. “No! That makes me feel really bad. But smoking them makes me feel relaxed, like everything is OK.”

“Even though everything isn’t OK. Even though they’re killing you?”

“I don’t think about that part.”

Silence from the spider as it shifted its body again, the luminescent eyes motionless in their sockets, but turbulent with whatever fluids washing about under their surfaces. “Is this a hope thing, Kyle?”

“A what?”

“You hope that you won’t die from them?”

That’s gotta be it! Somewhere, somehow, this thing has read a book about psychology. “That’s right! I hope I won’t die. And, if I do get sick, doctors who specialize in making people well again will make me unsick. But, that’s not the point. I can’t just stop smoking.”

“Why? It seems like the right thing to do, especially for a being with such a well-developed mind that it controls the earth.”

“Controlling the earth is one thing. Quitting smoking is another. Smoking is an addiction.”

More shifting from the spider, the eyes compelling in their motionless movement. “Can you explain addiction?”

More smoke exhaled through nostrils, the bluish white plume rolling over Kyle’s jacket and shirt, dispersing into the air about him. “It’s when we want to stop doing something, but we can’t because we depend on it for a sense of well-being. A sense of well-being that we get from the thing we’re addicted to.”

“Then, why did you start to depend on it in the first place?”

Shrugging, arms upraised, eyes brimming with anger, Kyle began to reply, dismissed the thought before it formed, puffed on his cigarette again, staring into the deep wells of blue and green surrounded by fine hair, sunlight bristling along their short lengths. Only six of them? For a second there appeared to be hundreds, all focusing through the bone of his skull, deep into this brain. Shaking his head, he snapped the mood. “My friends smoked. It was the thing to do.”

“Your friends were killing themselves, so you joined them?”

“It’s called peer pressure. It’s a human thing.”

“Can I forward a suggestion, Kyle.”

“Be my guest.”

“Wouldn’t it have been better to have persuaded your friends to quit?”

“They were already addicted. And, besides, it was the thing to do. They wouldn’t have listened.”

“Sounds like the caretakers should learn to take care of themselves before taking care of the world around them.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You needn’t get angry with me, Kyle. Just making an observation.”

Kyle sighed, flicked his second cigarette into a puddle, lit another. The spider watched. “OK. Point taken. We’re not perfect, but we try. We try to better ourselves; we try to better the world. Sometimes we make mistakes. Then, we correct them. Then we make more mistakes and we correct them. We get better as we go along. Things get better.”

“Convince me, Kyle.”

“What?”

“Convince me that you can make things better.”

Interest perked, Kyle stared deeply into the eyes, shifting his vision from one to another, wondering which of them was focused on him. All of them? How does it process input from six sources? The same way humans process from two? “OK. I’ll bite. How do I convince you?”

“Throw down that cigarette. Stop smoking now. Prove that just one caretaker can take care of himself.”

An exasperated sigh, another puff of smoke exhaled roughly. “That’s not going to prove anything. It won’t make a spot of difference on the rest of the world.”

“But it’s a start. It’s one of the caretakers correcting a mistake, making this thing you call hope something real. Just throw down the cigarette.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t. I want to smoke. No, I don’t want to smoke. I want to quit. But I can’t quit.”

“Why?”

“I’m not ready.”

“When will you be ready?”

“When things are better.”

“When will things be better?”

“When I quit smoking.”

“Kyle …”

“No! That’s not what I meant! It’s more complicated than that.”

“Kyle…”

“I’m getting confused. I’ve been under a lot of stress at work. I’m talking to a giant spider, answering questions that there’s no way it can be asking. Having doubts from something that lives in an air conditioning unit.” He stepped closer to the unit, bent down toward the spider, bringing his face inches from the terrible eyes. “It’s just too damned complicated for a spider to understand.”

“You’re right, Kyle. Not only does it seem complicated … it seems senseless. You aspire to control the world, but you can’t control yourself. It all sounds pretty fucked up to me.” The words bristled with the fury of thousands of bubbles popping soundlessly through Kyle’s mind.

“What would you know about it? You’re just a spider!” His own words burst through the air, flaring in a noiseless play of color in the hundreds of eyes spinning in the sockets under the bony brow.

“But I have one uncomplicated thought.”

Kyle pushed his face into the face of the spider, nose almost touching the coat of fine hairs below the eyes. “And what the hell might that be?”

“I’m hungry.”

The panic too late, as hundreds of eyes seemed to bore into his brain, the sting of fangs piercing both sides of his neck simultaneously, a sense of being lifted off his feet, a feeling of skin ripping against the barbed metal of the grill, and then numbness, all feeling dissipating into quiet terror, the words flowing dead-like through the remnants of his fleeing consciousness. “And when I’m hungry, I do something about it.”

***

Blistering heat. Too cold inside with the air conditioning turned up so you have to practically wear a sweater while you work, and then outside for a smoke and come back covered in sweat and freeze even worse. No wonder people get colds all summer long. Crystal struck a match, lit her cigarette, staring at the air conditioning unit. Must’ve been my imagination this morning. Maybe a trick of the heat. Too much pressure at work. Maybe coming down with something. That’s it! Coming down with that cold everybody’s getting. Viruses spreading like plague through the air conditioning. And then, from somewhere inside her head, like something effervescent bubbling into her awareness, the bubbles bursting into words strung together with no tone, no pitch, no base or treble. Just the meaning of the words: “What are you?”

(NOTE: This story was originally published as a standalone ebook by Echelon Press between 10 and 15 years ago. It's based on a true story, of course.)

Sometimes you have to cry before you laugh…or just do something that’s not anywhere near laughing…like being confounded, grossed out or puzzled. The Weekly Man is a mystery of sorts. In terms of genres, it would fall loosely into speculative/magical realism/humor/social commentary/not always so humorous. Something along those lines.

The first episode is not humorous. My apologies. It’s kind of serious, kind of gross, kind of foul-mouthed and kind of hopeful. You won’t like the main character…for now. However, if you don’t like serious/gross/foul-mouthed/hopeful, you can just skip it. It’s being published on a Sunday anyway, and my friends tell me they’d rather stay home and watch football than go into work so that they can have a coffee break and read the first episode of The Weekly Man.

Oh well.

But honestly, the first episode won’t make any sense until almost halfway through the novel anyway; however, it sets a tone that’s important coming into the story because, sometimes, it’s necessary to erect humor on a solid foundation of muck.

Dark muck.

There’s something deeply wrong with humans (that would be you and me), but I won’t get into that now. I will later…well into the story when, hopefully, you’ll see something intrinsically wrong with the way the lives of the characters unfold. It’s something we do all the time and it’s probably going to kill us eventually and that’s why the story starts on a down note.

There will be humor, but you won’t be slapping your knees or choking on coffee. It’ll be quiet and bothersome. And it’ll go well with your morning coffee.

Follow The Weekly Man at theweeklyman.com.

It was one hell of a busy summer. I finished a novel and gave up on another one (for now, anyway). I put together a game and marketing plan for the world’s first free daily serialized coffee break novel (seriously, Google it). The novel is currently running on my parallel blog, www.theweeklyman.com .

I also, visited Fundy Park for the first time with my bestie, Stephanie, and will definitely be going back. I discovered a lake I’d been wanting to see for years along with my friend, Nanook of the Nashwaak.

I also put together my first solo exhibition featuring my macro photography and board drawings. I did 37 boards last winter and lost over 20 pounds. They were addicting to the point that I would start right in on them as soon as I got home from work and forget abut things like eating and making a lunch for the next day.

I did the actual drawing at home but took the boards into the studio to paint and varnish them.
I’ve visited the studios of many of my artist friends and it always fascinates me to see their works in progress and then see them on display with all the messiness of creation left behind. I think this is what many skeptics fail to see when they look at a painting and say something stupid like, “A few dollars for paper and a few dollars for paint…and you sell it for ten times what it’s worth.”

Bastards.

I hate these people with a passion. I’d like them all to work for me for free for one year. You know, doing whatever they’re good at and not being paid for it. Or being paid a couple of dollars an hour. On the other hand, these are most likely to be people who don’t do so well on their jobs because they’re not smart and they talk too much. Maybe I don’t want them working for me and just messing everything up.

So, with that aside put aside, seeing the work in progress gives you a true sense of the intense focus and commitment that goes into creating art. I’ve seen artists on the verge of collapsing from hunger and fatigue because they had a deadline for an exhibition and they’ve gone for days without sleep and they’ve survived on coffee and air.

And this isn’t always a matter of the artists not preparing properly. Often, it’s because the gallery or other venue has changed the rules, the dates, the physical venue or whatever. Or, preparing for the exhibit leads the artist into new areas and the temptation to add some of the new stuff to the exhibit. Fortunately, most galleries don’t allow this, or there’d be a lot more crazy artists jumping out of windows and off bridges.

For me, working on the boards was one of the most fulfilling and mystical experiences of my life. I believe that where there was life, there will always be life. Life is energy and wherever that energy has existed, there will always be some remnant of it…like when you cut down a tree, the tree’s life energy doesn’t just disappear…patches of it inundate the wood like shadows of the tree’s memories, and you can feel that energy in the boards even after they’re cut into useable sizes from the tree.

Before I start drawing on the board, I spend some time getting a feel for its life energy, and that’s what directs the tip of my gel pen to bring out the board’s story.

And the stories are never boring.

Mr. World News: So, Biff, how did the first week of your free daily serialized coffee break novel go?

Biff: It went well, Mr. News. I only lost half my usual readers.

Mr. World News: Half? That’s horrible.

Biff: Tell me about it. Now I have just one reader.

Mr. World News: And what are your plans now?

Biff: I’m going to get that reader back. I may have to send money…or maybe I could just learn how to write. That can’t be too hard.

Mr. World News: No, uh, that should be…(looks at schedule)…you are Biff Mitchell, right?

Biff: Did you want the evil one or the nice one?

Mr. World News: (looking confused) I was hoping for the…uh…nice one, I guess.

Biff: Great. That would be me. Are you one of my readers? Are you the one who stopped reading?

Mr. World News: (looking uncomfortable, about ready to run) Um…back to the first week. What was that first week like, Biff?

Biff: (gets faraway look in eyes) Let me see. It was…hell. Pure hell. It rained every day. I posted a bad link and one of my readers (the one that stayed) sent me a death threat with a graphic description of what will happen to me if I screw up again. MS Word caused massive format changes of an evil manner in WordPress. My iMac died just when I needed it the most and needs a few hundred dollars worth of repairs, but I have a MacBook, so the posts went on. Other than pure bloody hell…things went well.

Mr. World News: (eyes glazed) It…it sounds like…an interesting first week.

Biff: And there are only 9 more weeks to go. I think I’ll jump off a bridge tonight.

Mr. World News: (looking around to ensure there are no bridges close by) Is it true that you have two versions of the novel?

Biff: Yep. It looks fine on my blog if you’re on a desktop or laptop (https://theweeklyman.com/). But it looks like crap on a phone. I know this for certain. I saw it on my iPhone and immediately sent myself a death threat. So I put together a cell phone friendly site (https://biffmitchell.com/welcome-to-t...).

Mr. World News: It certainly sounds like a lot of work, Biff. How do you manage it?

Biff: Awakeness

Mr. World News: Awakeness?

Biff: Yes, I wake up each day and do things.

Mr. World News: Um…uh…yes. That’s very interesting, Biff. Good wholesome advice. (hands Biff the microphone and runs over a hill and into the setting sun)

Biff: (looking at mike in hand) I wonder…was he that other reader?

(NOTE: You can start reading The Weekly Man at any time. All the episodes published so far are at the welcome screen. https://biffmitchell.com/welcome-to-t...)