The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island (6 page)

I tuned the radio antenna of my mind to a sweet station where our lips came together for hours, and as long as we stayed very still, and kissed very quietly, and used only the muscles used for kissing, worried thoughts no longer harried me. And I didn't have to feel bad about Fanny Fod, or angry that the front door was laughing at me.

Sometime later she pulled away. She said, "That is enough of that. It is time to inspect other parts now." She moved her body forward, planting her pancake crotch right over my face.

I flailed my arms. I was suffocating. I could not swallow the maple syrup filling my throat.

"Breathe through me. My flesh is porous," she said.

I opened my mouth. Syrup poured out, unclogging my esophagus. Her pancake body reabsorbed the syrup. Her pores split open into soft little urchin mouths. Each one of her pores suckled my face as she gyrated. The mouths expanded. They became so large they grew into each other until all the tiny mouths lost themselves in one giant mouth.

The mountain of doors disassembled. The doors waddled, slithered, and floated. They came to surround us. A few of them ignored us in favor of the front door. Those doors wasted no time engaging the front door in acts that, from the sounds they made, gratified their sexual desires.

The doors that surrounded us took hold of the pancake. She quivered and moaned, dissolving into a joy that called to mind, in its physical manifestations, a pickle seized by epilepsy. The doors pulled her off of me and pinned her to the floor. They spread her wide as if to rape her. Syrup oozed down the puffy wedge of her snatch. She quivered and moaned. My brain tingled.

"Come with me," she said.

Lying beside her in this way, I felt giddy and awkward.

"What? Come where?" I said.

The doors' knobs slinked outward into rubbery, snakelike poles.

"Come have fun with me, Mr. Door Inspector," she said.

"I don't know how to have fun," I said. It was true. I'd never had fun in my entire life.

"Come inspect me, then."

Several doors raised me to my feet. Two more grabbed hold of my little pickle and guided it into the pancake's dripping crotch.

We engaged in the awful activity that followed for approximately twice the time it takes to hang oneself. All the while, I thought of better things I could have been doing, like finding a path into the heart of Fanny Fod, the one I truly loved.

At least the doors were able to satisfy themselves. They stroked their knobs as they bore witness to our performance of the esoteric biological ritual. The doors distracted and unnerved me, but at least they did not try to penetrate my pickled anus with their knobs.

Eventually, a splotch of brine was milked from my little pickle and the inspection ended.

*

I got paranoid. I feared this pancake was in cohorts with her doors to take advantage of me, to use me in some nefarious fashion, something far worse than what had already been done. My little pickle shrank back to nothing.

I stood up. I pushed my way out of the circle of doors and clenched my fists. I punched at the air. I was sweaty and paranoid, sticky and regretful. I wanted no one around. I could not contain myself much longer.

"Are you happy, Mr. Door Inspector?" the pancake said. "Would you like to inspect me again?"

"No," I shouted, then rescinded. "Okay, but only if we do it my way."

"We can do it any way you like," she said.

I pushed my way back into the circle of doors. I moved to the center and lay down on top of her.

The pancake squirmed beneath me.

My little pickle remained flaccid.

"I'm so glad," she said. "Are you glad?"

I opened my mouth to speak. I looked at the doors around me. I could not answer her question. I could no longer tolerate this insulting audience.

"Are you glad?" she repeated.

I responded with a head butt that broke her face apart. Her syrupy brains oozed out, and that was that. The pancake was dead.

She turned green and stiff beneath me.

My little pickle lengthened, throbbing and alert.

"Are you glad?" I asked the corpse.

I forced myself inside her and gave her a final go.

With a dead partner, I almost enjoyed the act.

I stood again, ready to fight the doors if they tried to attack. They stroked themselves, staring blankly. I staggered toward the open front door. A writhing pack of other doors groped and sucked its knob.

I fled.

DEATH OF A HUMP CHILD

I ran from the house of doors. It was night now and I did not know where I was going or what I was doing or why I had murdered the pancake and if a pancake police force existed and if they did exist would they track me down and how did pancakes treat killers? I ran without knowing where I was going, but I had to get away all the same. I could not stay there. I could not stay anywhere. I had to find my rocket ship.

I ran down a street. Potato houses towered overhead. Pop music shrieked through the air. Pancakes leaned out the windows and danced in the yards and waved to me as I passed. "Come join us," they said. "We're having so much fun."

No you're not, I thought. You're not having any fun. You just think you're having fun, but you've been conned. You all think you're happy because you're drugged all the time.

"Happiness is real, real is happiness," they said, as if reading my thoughts. I was under psychic attack.

I dashed past so many dancing pancakes. They moved like marionettes controlled by clumsy, trembling hands.

I felt I'd run down this street for my entire life, until it finally ended. The gleeful shouts and pop music died.

The street ended at the shore. I collapsed in the shallow lap of waves and closed my eyes. My burning lungs began to cool. I opened my eyes and looked upward, expecting the sad moon of Pickled Planet, but the night was moonless. The sun stayed visible, green. Like all green things, the sun was dead. Its glow streaked the pancake shore. I followed the glow with my eyes, then sprang up, aghast at what I saw. Not far away, a child pancake was humping an ovular hole dug in the side of my rocket ship.

With a hard, earnest thrust, he threw his arms in the air and shouted, "Wee, oh fun!"

I squatted on all fours like a beast. My body shook. My body emitted a sweet odor, but the scent of syrup was not enough to calm my nerves this time. I would kill the nasty little prick.

The pancake pulled away. His little pancake burped sticky stuff onto the green-lit beach. It was my turn to show him what fun was really about.

He stood there oblivious, stroking the sides of my ship. For the love of decency, I thought, hump something that is alive.

Hypocrite.

Silently, I pounced. Years of feeling invisible to the world had made me as stealthy and agile as any pickle. If sadness hadn't pickled my planet, I could have become what the cucumbers used to call
gymnastics champions
. Imagine that. Gaston Glew, gymnastics champion. Instead, I was killing children on a foreign planet.

I took the pancake child by surprise. I punched my fists through the back of his head and ripped his eyes out of his face. He giggled as he leaked brain.

I guess you could not hurt the really happy ones.

I tossed his eyes into the waves and climbed into my rocket ship. I started it up, then got an idea. I fetched a case of brine chowder and climbed out of the ship.

"Fun for sale," I said. "Who wants fun? This fun comes in many flavors. Fun for sale!"

"We, oh fun," the pancake said. Everything in his body had leaked out through his face.

"I want fun," he said.

"How much fun do you want?" I said.

"I would like enough fun for everyone."

"Coming right up," I said. I set down the case of brine chowder and kicked him in the stomach. He doubled over but did not go down. I jerked him straight and leaned in close and bit his nose off. He was the first pancake I'd taken a real bite of. His nose was rich with clotted syrup.

I took a bite from the corner of his mouth, getting a little lip in with the rest because the pancake/maple syrup combination was killer.

I swallowed the piece of his face.

"Are we having fun yet?" I said.

He looked very stupid and surprised with part of his face missing.

I kicked him and this time he fell. He threw his arms to his sides and strained his mouth to cry, "Wee, oh fun!"

"Now lie still," I said.

I took three chowder cans from the case and stomped them into the pancake's belly. I stomped the rest of the cans into him, three at a time. His mouth was pushed so far into the island's surface by the cans, there was no way to know whether he still thought we were having a fun time. When I stepped off of him, all that remained was a perfect circle of half-buried chowder cans. Syrupy blood leaked beyond the circle's perimeter.

I had felt good while killing him, but post-kill, I plummeted back into the dumps. I'd messed up again. There was no justice in revenge. This twerp didn't deserve to die. I could have just made off in my rocket ship. He may have been screwing around with it, but only because he didn't know any better.

"I'm sorry," I said.

It was the first time I'd uttered an apology in my life. Who was I speaking to? More than the mere child. Who then? Father and Mother? The ghosts? The sun and his bacon vultures? The pancake and her doors? I was apologizing to the living as well, to Fanny Fod and others who might someday step into my path and be destroyed forever.

I could not let myself damage things anymore. I was best off blasting away in my rocket ship and living out the sad remainder of my existence alone in outer space, having experienced my pin drop of happiness.

I looked out at the green-tinted syrup sea and wondered, Why must I suffer the Eternal Plight of the Pickle? Why must my heart be full of brine?

I was alone on the beach with the dead pancake child. I felt like I had spent a lot of my life standing next to dead things. I did not like standing next to dead things, so I waded out waist-high into the sea and let the syrup's healing powers soothe me.

After a while, I sloshed my way out of the sea and went straight to my rocket ship. I removed what remained of the brine chowder, tore out the control panel, and detached both rocket boosters. They were still packed with the ashes of Father and Mother.

When the rocket ship was totally empty, I went over to the pancake child's humping hole. I took a deep breathe and sealed my mouth over the hole. It was sticky.

I blew all the air in my lungs into the hump hole. The ship's walls expanded a little, like a balloon. I blew again and again until the ship lifted up, floating a few inches off the island. Encouraged by my progress, I blew into the hole faster, blowing into the hole at a tremendous rate. The ship floated higher, up to my head, then above me. I kept on blowing until the ship was almost out of reach. I jumped and wrapped my arms around it. I slipped inside the rocket-ship-turned-balloon.

I'd removed the controls because it had occurred to me while standing in the sea that a great deal of my unhappiness stemmed from a drive for control. If I wanted to move forward, I had to shed all of that. I had to surrender control. My surrender began with my removal of the steering wheel and ended with my turning the rocket ship into a gigantic balloon.