“Be careful, Lumprella, remember what happened last time,” said a second witch, gesturing for the head hag Lumprella, the queen of the cackling crones, to stop her hoodoo-ing.

“What happened last time?” Slub Glub asked. The witches glanced at each other, but were mum on the subject. Then one of the hyenas ventured forth.

“They think their witchery has raised the spirits of the dead, and now phantoms are following them, seeking revenge for the disturbance of their rest,” the hyena said

“I know how they feel,” Slub Glub replied.

Lumprella broke down into confessional crowing. “It’s true! Our incantations have awakened the restless souls of the deceased! Our spells are too strong! Our hexes are too effective! Too black in their blackedness and magical in their magicality! The doorways of the doomed have flung open and hideous apparitions from beyond the grave now haunt our waking moments… Soon they will catch up to us and drag us back to their bleak and barren land! That is why we must light our torches with butter from hyena bottoms and ride these creatures though the woods, their hyena mockery reverberating through the shrubbery as we mesmerize their mammal minds, manipulating their mandibles to laugh at all in the night. What else can we do? What else can prevent these ghosts from feeding upon our bones and boiling us in our own brewed stew?”

Willowmina pondered this explanation a moment, and then commented back that this all sounded very complicated and perhaps these ghosts that they were running from were really just fireflies.

To be continued.

Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”

Get the graphic novel in glorious technicolor from Eraserhead Press.

Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb

There is only one way of seeing them, and that is,
seeing the whole of them.
–John Ruskin

Life forms from V12 in the NGC4203 galaxy 10.4 million light years from Earth had inhabited Providence, R.I., for five weeks.

They assumed human appearance and blended well with the local population, even dropping their “Rs” when appropriate.

There were four aliens in all — two females and two males had been created from fabricated human flesh for the mission.

In reality, V12s possessed no gender variations and were autopoietic — self-reproducing.

The terminus of the nanosecond matter transference had been random — not chosen for any reason other than it held a concentrated population of the planet’s dominant species.

Seconds after arriving, the four V12s were successfully moving among the subjects they were sent to study, and with only a short time remaining in their expedition, they believed they had accomplished their purpose.

In 1400 wextars (four days in human time) they would beam back to V12 and submit their findings to Archivius of Mew, the keeper of extragalactic data. The highlights of their report included the following:

• Highest form of intelligence indeterminate.
• Archaic digestive systems and nourishment practices.
• Life spans comparable to primitives on V12.
• Conflicts frequently resolved with violence.
• Cruelty inflicted on other species.
• Technology misused and lethal.
• Atmosphere and surface contamination high.
• Leaders mostly ineffective, arrogant, and ambitious.

The list extended two hundred lines and cast an overwhelmingly negative image of Earthlings, but there were a few exceptions:

• Interesting tonal manipulation with instruments.
• Nurturing behavior with infants and infirm.
• Extensive diversity of spoken idioms.
• High participation in competitive games.
• Still and animated visual material prized.
• Plant arrangements accentuate dwellings and public spaces.
• Myriad dry goods emporiums.

However, in the aggregate, the cons outweighed the pros ten to one.

This did not surprise the V12 researchers, since they had encountered similar outcomes elsewhere during their many exploratory assignments in several different planetary constellations.

As the intergalactic visitors prepared for transfer home, they experienced an irregularity in their vision, which they deduced was a reaction to some disparate compound in the exotic planet’s four basic elements.

Their sight normally colorless, except for black and white, now discerned all degrees of red, and it had a strange effect on them.

Always astute and emotionally detached, they began to experience fuzzy thinking and felt sensual arousal in the presence of their faux gender opposites. This led to experimentation with their human genitalia and ultimately physical union.

For a full day they engaged in libidinous activities until their energy flagged and they lay exhausted in a naked knot.

When they began to revive, another anomaly occurred in their sight. They could now see yellow objects, and the aberrant behavior inspired by the color red was supplanted by extreme anxiety, verging on panic.

They quickly dressed and locked the doors and drew the shades in their living quarters, where they remained silent and alert lest something horrible occur.

When night passed and the sun seeped through the window coverings, the V12s felt their anxiety dissipate, replaced by a rapidly expanding sense of wellbeing. They could now perceive another vivid hue—this one was blue.

Almost instantly, they experienced intoxicating exhilaration and joy, something unknown to them in their long existences.

“Weeip err hurup,” uttered one of the male V12s, observing the wondrous change that had come over him.

“Sherp ssss fafa waiow,” responded the female V12, noting how strange and superb she, too, felt.

Unable to contain the euphoria prompted by all things blue in their field of vision, they left their confines to bask more fully in their newest human sensation.

Happily, they set about to benefit the planet with their advanced knowledge and formidable powers.

In the following weeks, they had significantly improved the quality of life for all of Earth’s living creatures. For example, humans no longer got acne, venomous snakes became loving house pets, and Big Macs and Whoppers became healthy alternatives. However, in their exultation the aliens had overlooked their transfer date and would suffer dire consequences.

The V12s realized their mistake when their ability to see colors faded, and their vision returned to black and white.

“Eeow maiow prrow,” said one of the galaxy jumpers, declaring that it would be 5600 wextars before a series of nebula would shift enough to permit them unimpeded passage to their habitat.

“We will not last,” declared another, using the native tongue.

After some discussion, they decided to preserve as much of their power source as possible in order to last the sixteen Earth days until departure.

They planned to accomplish this by entering a state of suspended animation and by denying any non-V12 impulses that might attempt to assert themselves.

To insure the success of the latter, they covered their eyes to prevent the invasion of color into their ocular pathways.

On the twelfth day of self-imposed isolation, their human disguises began to molder and by the time of their scheduled transfer pieces of the simulated dermal covering had fallen away from the voyagers it was designed to conceal.

The stench of rotting tissue permeated the small apartment building where they anxiously awaited embarkation. The foul odor aroused neighbors and the building’s superintendent tracked the fumes to the V12’s rental.

He knocked on the door several times, but rather than enter the flat for fear of encountering a gruesome scene, he called the police.

“Something’s dead in there,” observed one of the two officers outside the door behind which the V12s awaited their molecular shuttle.

When they took the super’s key and opened the door, the rancid vapors hit them like a tidal wave and they buried their noses in their sleeves as they entered the tenement.

They immediately recognized the source of the stench.

Piled before them were four carcasses.

“Jesus,” gagged the building super backing out of the apartment.

“What the hell … they look like deflated dummies. Like they have no bones,” commented the younger officer.

“Better call the coroner’s office and homicide, Bob. We got some real strange stuff here.”

A sudden noise came from behind the mound of limp corpses causing the rookie policeman to jump.

“What’s that? Something moved over there!” he exclaimed, drawing his gun from his holster.

“Cool it, Bob. It’s nothing. Look.” He peered beyond the decomposed cadavers to four black and white cats of varying sizes and breeds.

“I’ll be damned. Thought they were …”

“What? The boogeyman?” said the elder cop mockingly. “You’re as big a pussy as they are. Let’s get those freaking mousers out of here before they eat the evidence.”

As they moved toward the huddled animals, a bright flash filled the room. When the burst of light subsided, the felines were gone.

It was as if they had vanished into thin air.

Michael C. Keith is the author of numerous books, articles, and stories. He teaches communication at Boston College. This is his third story published on The Fabulist.

“Tell me, mystic lady, why are you riding around on these hyenas, and why are you hypnotizing them into laughing at everyone?”

“Goblin! I’ll banish you to the nether realms!” was her reply, and she pulled a gnarled old wooden wand from inside her natty dress. Waving it wildly towards Slub Glub, she recited this incantation:

Oh putridious fumescense and mottled bottles,

I doom your bones to dry rot and potholes!

The night is a mouth that will swallow you whole

Leaving you shiftless and fruitless in bowl.

Lichen and fungus will grow on your surface

Good riddance to you, oh blue shaded bug face~

Slub Glub liked the poem, and did a bit of a jig while she was reciting it, but didn’t feel particularly banished, and was starting to lose interest in the situation when the hyena that he had been talking to earlier spoke up.

“I think the reason they’re riding us around at night and having us make such a ruckus is that they’re trying to scare away the ghosts,”

“Oh, that makes sense,” Slub Glub replied.

To be continued.

Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”

Get the graphic novel in glorious technicolor from Eraserhead Press.

Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb

[Proofreader's Note: In the urban interior, street art sprouts amid authoritarian architecture like weeds through cracks in concrete, parks and gardens grow wild around the artifacts and intent of designed landscapes, non-native palms are as exotic and meaningless as public-art abstractions. Yet their confluence is exactly where we live. These are digital captures of large-scale, double-exposed analogue film prints, and Goldberg's second set of images published on The Fabulist.]

horticulture_seven (c) David Goldberg

horticulture_four (c) David Goldberg

horticulture_three (c) David Goldberg

horticulture_one (c) David Goldberg

horticulture_six (c) David Goldberg

David Goldberg is a San Francisco photographer whose images have shown extensively in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles. He has published three books and is an instructor of photography at UC Berkeley.

“I thought you witchy women all rode on broomsticks,” Slub Glub commented.

“I’ll turn you into a toad!” cackled the hag. “By the dust of mummies and the crust in tummies, with fang and claw and tooth and awe, I call down thunder and cast you under, a spell to render you a frog, you hog!” The witch waved her torch aloft with great dramatic intent, but the fire on it had gone out, which apparently diminished her hex-casting techniques. “Um, just a moment,” she muttered embarrassedly, and she reached over to one of the hyenas’ hindquarters.

Slub Glub discreetly moved away from the witch and sidled up to one of the hyenas, who was sitting somewhat distant from the rest of the group. “Hyena, tell me, what is that crazy crone doing?”

“Oh, she’s getting some butter from under that hyena. These witches have been using our butter to light their torches.”

“I didn’t know hyenas made butter. Are you related to cows?”

“No, any creature can make butter if they try hard enough. We use it to mark our territory, or at least we did, until these loathsome ladies started stealing it all from us. Then they light their torches and ride around on top of us all night, using their fiendish sorcery to make us hysterical and mean.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“You’d have to ask them.”

To be continued.

Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”

Get the graphic novel in glorious technicolor from Eraserhead Press.

Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb

“They only come out at night.”

In short order a decision was reached, that Willowmina and Slub Glub would stay with the raccoons into the evening, until the hyenas came around. Slub Glub, who still felt that he had been cheated out of his slumber by the rising sun, climbed back into the hollow log with the raccoons and began snoring loudly. Willowmina sat down next to them, folding her branches together and drooping her fragrant foliage onto the boggy earth.

Hours slithered slowly past, until finally the big angry sun in the sky descended, flailing his thousand arms as the world dipped once more into darkness. Then soon after, the silence of the forest was pierced with a chorus of cackling laughter. Hearing the hysterical hyenas in the distance, the raccoons awoke with a start. Slub Glub crawled out of the log, and instantly wished that he hadn’t.

Streaming out of the darkness came a dozen spotted hyenas, their toothy maws twisted into great clownish grimaces. With a bear-like gait they approached, and one of the sleek, fanged creatures learned towards Slub Glub, making an awful kind of laughing sound in his direction.

“Bwah-ha-ha!” the hyena taunted.

Slub Glub couldn’t take such abuse, and he climbed up Willowmina’s trunk to get away from the nasty animal. Willowmina, being significantly taller, had a different perspective. From where she stood she could see that the hyenas, all twelve of them, were not alone – on the back of each was a witch, and each witch was carrying a torch.

With a long sweeping swipe from her biggest branch, Willowmina knocked the twelve witches off their hyenas, and the horrid hags fell down onto the ground.

To be continued.

Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”

Get the graphic novel in glorious technicolor from Eraserhead Press.

Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb

It all started when Eugenia looked out the window one Saturday morning and saw children peddle by on their bikes.

“Sometimes,” she said to Ruth, her partner of four decades, “I wish that we’d had a child all our own, a little boy, maybe, just to leave a little something to the world.”

Ruth sat in her lime green chair. Her clever hands knitted a run of bright red yarn. The needles clicked together — clip-click-clip — a sound that always reminded Eugenia of a new scissors snipping.

“Of course there is the practical side of that,” Ruth said. “Oh, I suppose you could have found a man to do what needed to be done. I certainly wouldn’t put up with that sort of business.”

Eugenia, instead of looking through the window, looked right at it. Her reflection stared back at her.

“Nothing but wrinkles, that’s what I am. Could a person be one big wrinkle, do you suppose?”

“You are lovely, you’ve aged very well.”

“Like a wheel of cheese?”

“More like a bottle of burgundy wine.”

She did look good, Eugenia decided. There was a certain surety in the corner of her eyes that made the wrinkles blend right in, and despite the loss of several teeth, her smile was still warm and pleasant.

Ruth put her knitting down.

“I can’t say the thought has never crossed my mind. With our reputation it would have been quite impossible. Perhaps not these days, but then, when we were young. In those days they would have said we wanted a child for roasting and eating.”

“That’s what witches do,” Eugenia said, and gave a long look to the corner where the children had ridden by on their bikes only minutes before.

“The ones in fairy tales,” Ruth said, her hands clicked the needles together. “But not all, of course.”

“Could a witch conjure a child, do you suppose? If I was a real witch, that’s what I’d do.”

Ruth only nodded and knitted and knitted and nodded. Eugenia could see the faintest twinkle in Ruth’s eye, just a little hint of mischief, and that made the wrinkles around the corners of Eugenia’s mouth crinkle up in her pleasant little grin.

Now there was the odd thing about Eugenia and Ruth’s relationship — it was plain fact that they loved each other in ways that made them a stand out among the crowd.

But this was not the odd thing.

The odd thing was that Eugenia knew Ruth was a real witch, and Ruth knew that Eugenia knew she was a real witch … and they never spoke frankly on the topic, not once in forty-five years.

Not when both they were beautiful slinky women with long thick hair, and all their bits that should be firm and perky were firm and perky.

Not when they were middle aged, and things drooped just a bit.

Not even in their silver years when their hair turned to strands of rich ivory.

Not even when the magical pots in their bellies stopped making magic, and they both grew an odd whisker or two on their chins.

They had always coyly skirted around the odd thing with vague language and the most round about way one could imagine.

However, there was no mistaking the bad luck that might fall upon one of Ruth’s enemies.

For example, there was the policeman who once followed them during an evening walk through the park as Ruth and Eugenia held hands.

He’d made lewd comments and impolitely suggested things that should not have been suggested.

Ruth only mumbled a secret syllable or two, shook her finger at the policemen as he leaned against a tree twirling his billy club and seconds later he was slapping at hornets, and running for the nearby pond.

“Clearly,” Ruth had said later, “he wasn’t looking where he put his hands and stuck them exactly where they weren’t wanted.”

Ruth loved Eugenia very much and she knew their secret language — there was no mistake that when Eugenia asked about conjuring, she was really asking Ruth for a very unusual present.

Eugenia slept heavy, she always had, but when she snored it was quiet lady like and Ruth was forgiving of the noise.

Ruth got out of the warm covers, put her slippers on, and shuffled across the hall as she yawned and scratched. It was close to midnight — certainly no other time would do for conjuring.

She went down the stairs, and found her knitting bag.

Full of yarn — purple yarn and gray yarn, perfect for making sock or scarves. Orange and brown yarn, perfect for Autumn sweaters.

Ruth wasn’t looking for any of these though, she was looking for the magic yarn — stuff spun from spring clouds, carnival cotton candy, spider silks, cat whiskers, the croaks of frogs, and squeaks of blind mice.

She hooked the magic yarn around her old knuckles and wove her fingers back and forth as she created a series of runes and symbols — Jack-in-the-Pulpit as it is sometimes called.

She rarely conjured things of the Gone these days, but tonight she would have to, if she was to gift Eugenia with a special present. In particular there was an imp she knew would happily sneak out into the night and steal an unwanted child for Eugenia.

Because as sad as it was to think, there were plenty children out there that were not truly wanted.

So she continued with her hands as clever and quick as a little monkey.

Finally, the magic in the yarn was evident. It pulsed in a cold blue fire; it dripped bits of cold flame, and up through the hole created into the Gone, a fiendish shape rose up — all shadows and gnashing teeth, slobbering and ectoplasm.

Goat horns ran in tight little spirals around its head, and it sprung up like a jack-in-the-box bouncing, bouncing, bouncing.

“Hello Rutheeeee,” it said with a snarl and made an uncouth snap at Ruth’s nose.

Ruth said, “Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl, behave!”

And, of course, that was the little devil’s name, and he shrunk back and hissed, “Old hag, ugly old witch, what do you want of Tintamarre-bedlam-brawl-pother-and-ruckus? To eat up another noisy doggy, long time no good meat for Ruckus-Tintamarre-pother-bedlam-and-brawl.”

(He tried very hard to confuse her about his true name, by mixing it all up as often as he could.)

“Watch those wicked lips or I’ll darn them up,” she said.

The little devil snickered and gnashed his teeth, which were not really sharp, but more like soggy old roots that had gotten weathered from being above the dirt.

“Ugly hag,” he whispered, and then brightly: “I’ll wager you’re still very pretty, pretty on the inside, though.” He swayed just a bit, leaned over, with one long fingernail pointing out, “What does Rutheeee want?”

It is an unfortunate fact that as witches grow older, they grow a bit weaker and slower, and exactly the opposite is true with demons and devils.

When Ruth had last seen Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl, he’d been nothing more than what a polliwog is to a frog. That is to say, he was young, inexperienced, and quite a primitive, stupid thing.

He had been all too happy to roam the mortal world for a night in exchange for eating up an obnoxious dog that lived next door. A dog that had howled incessantly, and ceaselessly chased Eugenia’s favorite cat.

But Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl had been conjured many time since by young and strong witches, and he’d learned much more than Ruth expected.

“Tintamarre-pother-and-brawl –” Ruth said.

Suddenly she felt a bit nervous as the yarn tightened around her fingers.

She pulled and twisted, and managed to keep the knots under control, “—bedlam-ruckus — I want you to –”, but Tintamarre-bedlam-ruckus-pother-and-brawl didn’t really care what she wanted, not one iota.

The magic yarn tightened around Ruth’s fingers; her old wrists were became tired; her arthritis was quite painful, especially so late at night … and then there was a grumbling of secrets, spells, and runes from Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl’s gnashing teeth, and more tightening of the magic string –

Upstairs, Eugenia slept soundly, but she was dreaming of Ruth in her chair where she liked to knit.

She dreamed that Ruth was knitting them a little child out of bits and pieces of yarn she had pulled from somewhere distant and mysterious.

Her knitting needles were moving so fast sparks flew, and the clicks sounded how a metal spider might sound if it were to crawl up a metal web.

But, then in her dream, there was a terrible, horrible scream.

Eugenia sat up in bed and reached for Ruth to comfort her. All she could find was Ruth’s pillow, cold and smooth.

And then, as horrible as the scream was, it was even more horrible when it was cut short by a mad cackle of demonic laughter.

Eugenia’s heart thumped in her chest as she put on her glasses and found her slippers. It was so quiet in the house she thought she surely dreamed the noise.

She went down the hall where the moonlight cast blue shadows on the floor. Down the creaky stairs … Her hand trembled as she held the banister.

“Ruth!” she said. “Where are you?”

No reply.

Eugenia’s stomach felt all watery, and she was sure that if she saw so much as a mouse stealing a crust of bread she would run straight back up stairs.

Every bit of her was terrified, and every bit of her wanted to go back to bed and put the blanket over her head.

“Ruth?” she whispered as she came into the room they’d been sitting in the afternoon.

She saw Ruth’s knitting bag was turned on its side. And coming out from the bag, among the common yarns, was the magic yarn, glowing blue with dazzling cold fire.

Very faintly, coming from the bag, she could hear the last faded cry for help like a bit of wood whittled down to nothing.

Ruth’s voice disappeared into the Gone, and the string started slipping away, then disappeared into the knitting bag … and without giving it another thought, Eugenia took hold of the string and went with it.

Eugenia held her breath, because she was sure if she exhaled she would certainly lose control of her bladder. This was a practical worry, even a badly timed sneeze could do that these days, much less when she was being unexpectedly pulled through a long and dark tunnel on the end of a piece of magic yarn.

She didn’t have more than a few minutes to reflect on the situation before she was plopped down right in the middle of the Gone.

The magic yarn had slithered from her grasp, and now laid itself down on the ground and had melted into a long path.

One would think that the domain of devils and demons would be a dark and terrifying place, but this is not quite the case. It is an odd place to be sure. Devils and demons can only mimic what they have seen. But their perceptions are imperfect, and they make mistakes.

For example, Eugenia looked up to see a bright green sun shining down, a white sky and blue clouds that seemed to be made of bumpy stone instead of soft wisps of fog.

She was surrounded by a peculiar forest where the trees had branches and leaves made of ice, and fruits made of fire.

It was really not so terrible, she thought as she stood up and looked down the path the yarn had become.

She squinted to see where it went, and then listened, hoping to hear Ruth.

But all she heard and saw was the scratches and clucks of Hen-Who-Runs-Backwards as she ran down the path.

Hen-Who-Runs-Backwards was a fine looking black hen who was completely unsurprising, except for fact she was running backwards.

To the hen’s credit, she did so with much grace.

Eugenia watched Hen-Who-Runs-Backwards run by –

“Bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs! That’s what Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl likes!” the hen clucked and continued on.

Eugenia wondered what that meant, and what a Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl was.

She stood, watched the road for a moment, and it seemed she was alone. There was some doubt in her mind now, that maybe she shouldn’t have just grabbed that yarn without thinking about it. Instead she should have ran right back up stairs and hid under the blankets.

But then she thought of Ruth and how Ruth would always save her the soft center of a warm cinnamon bun when they shared one at the coffee shop. That was Eugenia’s favorite part, but she knew Ruth liked it just as much as she did.

She thought for a moment, and was ashamed to realize she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d offered it to Ruth.

Then she thought about how Ruth tried very hard to keep her temper when Eugenia would let her eyes get the best of her and she would spend a large sum of money on a new pair of shoes.

And she thought about when they had taken a cruise around the coast of Mexico. They had stopped at a port and watched a candymaker mix chocolate.

He added just a pinch of red chili; he explained it was to make the chocolate taste richer and more full, and Ruth had said, “That’s what you are Eugenia, you are the little pinch of red chili in my life.”

She had a great many of these kinds of thoughts, and so instead of just looking down the road, she said “RUTH! Where are you?!”, waited for a reply, and when she didn’t hear anything she started walking.

Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl lived in a silly little house made of moldy leaves and mud, right next to a bog, which was about the same thing as house except a lot wetter.

Inside his home, there was just about enough space for him and a witch named Ruth.

It should go without saying that Ruth was quite unhappy with the situation she now found herself in.

Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl had taken her magic yarn and bound her two big toes together, then twisted it up all around her feet, up around her ankles, then her knees, up to her thighs, then around her soft belly, and right up over her little old lady boobies and right up to her armpits.

This left her arms completely free.

Then the yarn was wrapped right up around her neck, and then right up over her mouth, and continued on up around her head and left her nose, ears and eyes uncovered.

None of this was pleasant, to be sure, but Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl had also hung her upside down on a hook from the ceiling. It was all very uncomfortable.

To make matters even worse Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl had forced her to knit the most horrid strings of slimy goo together. A goo that he seemed to have an endless supply of.

First he’d asked for a little slime hat that he could wear, but seeing what true artisan she was, he thought she might just make him a scarf as well.

Once she was done with that, he needed a new slime sweater, and that was what she was knitting now.

“Pants!” Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl screeched, “Mooooore muculent, Rutheeee! Mooorre muculant!”

Ruth was getting tired, and her hands ached.

The only knitting needles Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl had were made out of rough slivers of bone and they were giving her blisters and her arthritis was burning in her knuckles and her wrists.

“Pleeasssse!” she begged, “Tintamarre-bedlam-pother-brawl-and-ruckus, behave!” But it didn’t work anymore because she had gotten so flustered she couldn’t remember the right order.

Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl just cackled and picked at his turned up snout with a long fingernail, and found a bit more slime for Ruth to knit with.

When Eugenia was afraid she liked to hum, so she was humming like a hive full of bumblebees.

She walked down the road, and it wasn’t long before along Pig-on-his-Hind-Legs came running by. Just as you might expect from his name, he ran on hind legs.

He didn’t even give Eugenia a second glance, instead he oinked twice, and said, “Eggs and bacon, eggs and bacon! That’s what Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl likes!”

Only seconds later the pig was gone and Eugenia thought to herself that she should try to remember what the pig said, because it sounded a lot like what the hen said. And certainly it was worth remembering if it was said so often.

So she stopped humming and began muttering under her breath, “Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl likes bacon and eggs. That’s what he likes. Or was that bacon and eggs that liked Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl or was that brawl-and-pother, or pother-and-ruckus?”

She walked until her little old feet were sore, and her little old ankles felt like little wooden splinters were being driven into them.

When she got too tired, she stopped and rested, and when she got thirsty she pulled an ice leaf off a tree and let it melt on her tongue.

When she got hungry, she tried one of the fire fruits that were actually cold fire — so she could pick them and hold them without any trouble.

She suspected it would be far too spicy for her, but it wasn’t, it was just right.

And after she was refreshed she moved on.

Finally, she came up on a little mud house, with a little bit of smoke coming out of the chimney, and a little stinky bog right next to it. She hid behind a tree, her knees trembled as she tried to muster her courage.

It didn’t seem to muster like she’d hoped so she waited a bit …

… it wasn’t long before she saw the owner of the house, which was of course, Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl.

He came out dressed from head to toe in a brand new slime suit. He was in a more foul mood than earlier, because even in the Gone every demon has a day job he must attend.

Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl’s job was to pop into the mortal world and whisper things into children’s ears.

This wasn’t all bad, but he was strictly limited to suggesting ways to make very loud noises, unexpectedly, and especially around adults.

It wasn’t a terrible job, but some of the other demons got to whisper much darker things, and not just to children.

Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl knew he was a young demon, and he’d work his way up, but it was a long way to go still.

So that was where he was headed when he came out of his house, and then Eugenia saw him explode into a thousand blue and green blow-flies, and shoot up into the sky in a swirling stream.

When he was gone, Eugenia heard the faintest little muffled cry, “Oh, help!”

She knew Ruth’s voice even under these decidedly strange circumstances, so she cautiously tiptoed to the front of the house, and opened the door.

Even a right-side-up Ruth that had been bound would have been a horror for poor Eugenia to see, but an upside-down Ruth was almost too much to bear.

Ruth had worked her chin up and down enough so some of the yarn was loose, and she said: “Eugenia! Help! Find the end of the string and unravel me!”

“But where?” Because there was a great deal of yarn wrapped everywhere around Ruth.

Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl had also bound Ruth’s wrists with a thick bit of slime, so she couldn’t even point.

“Wrapped around my head, I think,” Eugenia said, and so she started looking for the end of the string around Ruth’s head. She fumbled a bit, and then found the end, and started unraveling and unspooling it, bit by bit.

In no time she was using all her strength to lower Ruth to the ground.

When Ruth finally got her wits about her, which didn’t take long, she gave Eugenia a big kiss right on the cheek.

“How did you find me?” she asked. “No, no, no time now, quick, find those knitting needles. Hurry, hurry, he’s going to be back soon—”

“Who?” Eugenia said.

“Tintamarre-ruckus-and-brawl — oh, I don’t remember now!” Ruth said. “I am an old, old woman, and my memory is no good. But I think, if you undo these bindings I could knit us a bag to catch that little devil in, if nothing else.”

So even though it made her stomach twitch, Eugenia pulled the slime off of Ruth’s wrists and found the knitting needles and handed them over.

Ruth started furiously knitting. Eugenia didn’t have a word to say, but she tried her hardest to be useful, so she tried to remember what Hen-Who-Runs-Backwards and Pig-on-his-Hind-legs had said.

“It is all my fault, of course,” Eugenia said. “You know very well that I knew you would — I really shouldn’t have asked.”

Ruth frowned, but kept knitting.

“Not your fault at all. I really should stick to kitting stuff, well, more earthly. I am much to old to conjure demons.”

“What if we have to stay here forever? And he hangs us both upside down? I can’t knit! Ruth, I just can’t do it. My hands are not clever like yours — all I wanted was a little child, to leave a little something to the world — Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl, that’s it!” Eugenia said suddenly remembering, “that’s who likes bacon and eggs, that’s what the hen and the pig said.”

Ruth just smiled and knitted and knitted and smiled.

When Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl came home that evening, he was very hungry and grouchy after a long day of work.

He was also quite disappointed to find Ruth had managed to unbind herself, and was sitting quietly on a big lump of mud that he used for a sofa.

“Soooo, Rutheee, you old waggle-waggle-hag, you got out? But you can’t go home! Can’t go home!”

Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl stomach was rumbling.

And it should be known he was thinking quite seriously of eating up Ruth, but finally he thought she might be a bit tough to chew, so he had decided against it. At least for the moment.

“What’s in the bag?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing you’d be interested in,” Ruth said. “Just some bacon and eggs.”

Hen-Who-Runs-Backwards and Pig-On-His-Hind-Legs had spoke the truth, because just that day they’d been held captive and he had let them in order to make room for Ruth. Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl little horns unrolled themselves, his ears perked up and he sniffed the air.

“Give it to me, then,” he said.

“You’ll have to come get it,” Ruth said, and opened up the bag.

“Just in case, so you stay — shush, shush, shush, Rutheeee!” Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl said, blew his nose into his hand, and flung a palmful of sticky slime right at Ruth. Indeed, it stuck right over her mouth, so she couldn’t say a word.

Then, without another thought, Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl dove head first into the bag.

Ruth pulled the drawstring tight.

“No bacon and eggs!” he screeched, “Nothing! Nothing! It’s a trick!”

He started tearing away at the bag opening.

If you were wondering where Eugenia was this whole time, she was right behind the door, and she jumped out and said: “Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl, behave!”

And of course, Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl had to, and as long as they could remember his name, he had to do what they said.

This is nearly the end of the story, because what came next is quite expected and does not require many details.

Ruth and Eugenia made Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl take them straight back to their little house in the mortal world.

But it should be clearly noted, that bravery and faithfulness is sometimes rewarded in unexpected ways: Eugenia did get her wish to have a child, but just not quite the child she had in mind.

Ruth thought that Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl looked adorable in the little outfits she’d knit for him, and Eugenia thought him to be the perfect child, because unlike most children, all she had to do was say, “Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl, behave!” and like magic he’d behave.

Also, it wouldn’t be fair to say that Tintamarre-ruckus-bedlam-pother-and-brawl truly hated this arrangement, it was at least a bit more satisfying than his day job, and from time to time if he behaved, he’d get bacon eggs for breakfast, and sometimes even a noisy little doggy for dinner.

And of course, they lived happily ever after.

“There’s those blasted bandits,” Willowmina spat, pointing one branch towards a hollow log, from which a couple of bushy tails poked out. Slub Glub stuck his long, curly nose inside and snorted loudly.

“Hey! We’re sleeping in here!” grumbled one of the raccoons from inside the log.

“Hmmmph,” Willowmina muttered, rolling the log over with one of her root-feet. Three raccoons tumbled out of the hollow tree-trunk.

“What’s the big idea?” one of them asked, looking up to the willow tree and then over at Slub Glub.

Willowmina adopted a chiding tone. “Oh, so it’s okay for you to hang out in our hair all night chewing on our leaves, but as soon as we disturb your beauty rest, then heaven help us.”

The raccoons fell silent; surprise and then embarrassment registered on their faces. The black masks around their eyes made them look even guiltier.

“Oooh, right, about that. Um… You’re one of those willow trees from up the hill?” one of the raccoons asked.

“Yes, and my whole family is up there weeping wildly, their foliage falling out from all your rustling! Why can’t you spend the night down here in these hollow logs, instead of bothering us?”

The three raccoons looked at each other and then back at Willowmina. Slub Glub, meanwhile, had gotten his nose stuck inside the log and was struggling futilely to free himself. “We’re sorry,” the raccoons said in unison, and then the largest among them continued, “but it’s not our fault. We only climb on you and the other willow tress to get away from the evil grinning devils, who laugh at us in cruel mockery. And then while we’re up in your branches hiding from them, we get awful hungry and there’s nothing to eat but your leaves.”

Willowmina stared at the raccoons, unsure how to react. Slub Glub had finally gotten his nose free and he approached the group. “Devils? What devils” he asked.

“Hyena devils!” the raccoons shuddered together.

To be continued.

Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”

Get the graphic novel in glorious technicolor from Eraserhead Press.

Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb

When I was a kid, there were no canals, no vaporettos, no peacekeepers.

That San Francisco seems exotically technicolor to me now, like one of those planets the Enterprise visits that seems just like Earth but isn’t Earth at all, for reasons that are never explained — like that one when Kirk lands on the planet of children where disease kills all the adults.

I guess I was about ten when I realized that I, and everyone around me, had gotten on an Enterprise that took us from one Earth to another.

For a long time, everything was weirdly wrong, like the water on the streets and the bodies in the water. The adults were scared of the water and the bodies, but we kids loved the way things fell apart and turned the whole city into a playground.

But then we got old and the new San Francisco became home and the old one seemed to glow just a bit in our memories, and everything that had been strange got dull.

I keep searching for strangeness. I guess that’s why I played the game. They say it’s an escape, but I think in gamespace, where we strip away the meat, you can see what people really are.

He came over the foothills like a monument to himself: eyes the color of ambergris, skin of brass, tall as an adolescent elephant. Centaurs were rare that year; none of us had ever seen a creature as beautiful.

His name was Nessos.

He brought treasure — silver coins and gold chalices, glimmering gems and singing seashells — carried in twin parfleche panniers slung across his back. His only other dress was a cuirass and a feather-lined scabbard, from which sprang the gold pommel of a broadsword.

I need a clan, he said. Yours will have to do.

Across the granite slab at the center of our encampment he spread his loot, and offered his sword in our service.

We talked it over in the bark-covered longhouse.

He’s pretty, said Panpipe, one of two griffins in Chancre Clan.

He’s rich, said Oropher, an elf, and our chief.

He’ll be good in a fight, said Cray, who was, for some reason, human.

I had to pee. I had thought before about keeping a jar by the desk, but I didn’t want my mom to find it.

Jin, you there?

Why does he want to join us?

I turned down the intensity of the wajang and the world seeped in past the gamespace. In the distance I heard a vaporetto chug down the canal. My stomach growled. I still had to pee.

I was still capped, still half in the gamespace; overlaying the sight and stench of my bedroom, I could smell the bark and feel the close, humid air of the longhouse.

In retrospect it’s obvious we shouldn’t have taken him in, but at the time it seemed like a good idea.

Truth is, we hadn’t won a battle in thirty days, and thieves and raiders were nipping at what treasure horde we still had. All we could do was man the earthworks, spears in hands and claws, and hope the gods would be kind that night. We needed new blood and a new sword.

As we voted to invite Nessos to join us, Golub raised the alarm. We raced from the longhouse where we’d been meeting, Nessos falling in behind.

We saw in a moment that a huge pack of human nomads were streaming into the valley like hairy, two-legged ants.

You’re in, Oropher told Nessos over his shoulder.

Just in time, I see, said Nessos.

We braced ourselves at the ramparts for the assault, staring down into the yellows of a hundred wild eyes, but Nessos didn’t wait. With a roar, he charged over the earthwork and thrust his sword through the lead raider’s lungs.

The next raider jabbed at Nessos with a spear while a third, scimitar held high, looped around to his rear.

Nessos kicked back and sent the third man flying into the air and over the earthworks, his neck broken and his ears bleeding.

The spear nicked a foreleg, but Nessos was already pushing backward, sword slashing down. His well-muscled, brassy reach was longer than the spear’s, and the man fell to the ground with his skull split and spilling brains.

We shouted and cheered and charged over the earthworks, taking the fight to the nomads.

Sure, it was lousy tactics. We were outnumbered. We should have dug in and let the raiders wear themselves out on assaults.

But we were sick of hiding behind piles of dirt and though he’d only just joined our clan, Nessos seemed to sense our mood.

Cutting and stabbing and slashing, blood and brains and bowels: it’d been many months since we’d had so much reckless fun in a fight.

In ten minutes the nomads were retreating into the foothills, harried by our arrows. Swords aloft, we jeered at their backsides and Nessos pranced at the center of our little mob, metal flanks shimmering with sweat, grey eyes haughty and fierce.

Take a look at the bookie sites.

My mom is calling. Gotta uncap.

I took the glasses off and uncapped. My mom really was calling.

And now I really was hungry. Starving.

I delicately took my coffee cup down from my shelf, careful not to slosh the amber liquid; I took it across the hall to the bathroom and dumped it in the toilet.

Downstairs, Mom was in the kitchen burning water. She was wearing the sleeveless housedress that made her look like a bag lady.

“Hello dear,” she said. “Playing your game?”

“Yep. We won a match.”

“That’s good,” she said. “You know, Janis says that the government is holding social security this month.”

“Hmmm.”

“So we’ll need the money, sweetheart.”

“OK.” I took a seat at the table and read the back of a cereal box.

Win a free trip to the moon! it said. Send us 1,370,000 boxtops and we’ll send you and a friend to Moonbase Alpha!!!!

“I wish you’d bring some of your game friends to the house.”

“Most of them live in China or Korea. Gaming is bigger there.”

“I don’t see how you can let all those little robots into your brain.” Mom took a bowl of green beans out of the microwave. “Isn’t it uncomfortable?”

“Mom, you don’t feel the nanobots. I do get a little tingle when I cap and enter gamespace. No big deal.”

“What about all that fighting? I watch your games on the screen. It looks like you get hurt.”

“Nah,” I said. “You feel the blows, but even the bad ones are no worse than a slap.”

“Well, better that fake fighting than the real thing. I’m just glad you were never drafted, sweetheart.”

“I was too fat to take.” She knew that, of course, but I always felt this weird compulsion to say it aloud.

“More of you to love,” Mom said, and winked, which for no reason irritated me. She dished sausages onto a plate.

We repelled another raid, then two. We fought a larger neighboring encampment to a standstill, just on a wager.

We accepted two new members, a human archer named Ash and a gigantic carnivorous rabbit named Henry.

Feeling safer and stronger and braver, we ventured out to the Bastinado Archipelago on a quest for a set of bronze pannikins that would fill with any liquid the owner requested, strictly to enhance our reputation.

We formed a party of six, including Nessos, and set out for the island of the owner of the pannikins, a wizard called Dingledoom.

In the fight up to the top of the wizard’s tower, all of us were slain by orcs save Nessos.

The tale of his victory over Dingledoom became the stuff of gamespace legend.

In the center of Dingledoom’s lair there sat a cast-iron caldron into which the wizard could look and see the future. Rather than fight the wizard and orcs head on, Nessos offered to allow the wizard to turn his brass body into a statue if the wizard looked into the caldron and saw the centaur beheaded. If he saw Nessos intact, Chancre Clan would get the tower.

Oh, oh, oh, said Dingledoom, a malevolent gleam in his eye. I get it. A paradox. If I see you headless, you win, and you respawn elsewhere and still get my tower. You’ll probably cut your own head off, you yellow four-legged fiend. Well, I’ll take that wager, centaur!

With a shout of triumph, the wizard cast his most powerful protection spell across the room and over Nessos, who crackled with supernatural glamour.

Ha, ha! cried the wizard. That spell is so strong, you can’t even cut your own head off. Soon you’ll sit outside my door, a doom-laden forewarning to any cretins who’d dare steal from Dingledoom! Orcs, seize him, but harm not one hair on his yellow head!

As the pack of surviving orcs rushed into the lair, Dingledoom leaned eagerly over the caldron. Everyone watching the match saw a scarlet mist rise and we knew an image was forming. We saw the eyes of the wizard widen.

Nessos crouched backward on his hind legs and pushed off. He flew, magnificent, brass flanks shimmering, across the lair and over the caldron, so fast that the wizard hand’t time to lift his eyes. Nessos’s broadsword flashed out. The wizard’s head, mouth agape and eyes alarmed, flopped off the neck and into the caldron’s hellbroth.

Nessos landed on a cherrywood table littered with beakers and goblets, which he completely flattened. The pack of twenty orcs, green and grunting, circled him, but Nessos, cloaked by the wizard’s protection spell, made short work of the lot of them; the audience only saw his sword rising and falling around a bubbling sea of helms and spearpoints.

Soon, the wizard’s lair was painted black with orc gore, limbs and torsos and ugly green heads gloriously scattered across the floor.

Nessos raised his own sword to his neck. The protection spell had been worn down from the orcs’ blows and was now insufficient to protect Nessos from himself.

He whirled around, body curved, hooves at a gallop, and with one quick clanging stroke, he took his own head off. There was no blood; Nessos was fashioned of solid brass.

At that very moment Dingledoom stumbled back into the lair, having respawned (we later learned over ale) at the other side of the archipelago and flown as fast as his magic could carry him back to his tower.

Argh! he cried out, seeing Nessos’s brass head rolling on the ground. Ach!

Nessos wasn’t there to enjoy the wizard’s agony, having respawned at the other side of the continent. He’d sacrificed himself, if only for a moment, for the good of the clan.

And that’s how Chancre Clan, having set out to steal a few magic cups, gained a wizard’s tower and all its treasures.

And we owed our victory to Nessos, the centaur in brass.

If some had doubted him, they wouldn’t anymore.

“Mom, we won a big match.”

“Oh, I know dear. I placed a bet on your little group.”

“What?! Oh mom, you’re family. That’s not legal.”

She looked hurt, her lower lip sticking out. “I placed the bet under Nancy’s name.”

“If the gamemasters find out, I’ll never make the next level!”

“Sweetie, you’re twenty-five years old. Time to grow up. Everyone cheats once in a while.”

We broke camp and moved the entire clan to the wizard’s keep, re-dubbed Chancre Tower.

It turned out to be a damp, dim, and dirty residence, but we didn’t care. Though the victory over Dingledoom had been a kind of mishap, it puffed us up and raised our sights.

More creatures came from across the continent, coming at a rate of one a day on coracles and rowboats, petitioning for membership.

We started getting choosy.

Did everyone see the write-up in the Sing Tao Hourly?

Very cool.

In no time we were planning a raid on a sandstone castle in Hruba Skala, where, it was rumored, a baldanders kept a magical book that Columbine Clan needed to complete a quest.

We’d get the book and sell it to Columbine Clan, who said they’d swap it for a team of fighting pachyderms they’d won in a parlay.

We fancied we’d need a team of fighting pachyderms, though we didn’t give much thought as to how we’d feed them on a desolate islet, or even get them over the water.

We met on the black pebbly beach, since there was no space in the tower large enough to accommodate us all at once.

What’s a baldanders? asked Ash, leaning on his bow.

A monster whose name means ’suddenly different,’ or somesuch, replied Oropher. You never know what form a baldanders may take. Have any among us encountered a baldanders?

None had.

I deem this a job for a team of two thieves, said Oropher, who always favored stealth.

Nay! Turl said. The goblin tells us that a spell protects the castle from thievery. If we know nothing of a baldanders, we should go in strength, and take its castle by force of arms!

Why can’t Columbine get the scroll themselves? asked Nessos.

Oropher smiled. They tried already and they were beaten, he said.

If we could win this island, Nessos said, we can win a mere book.

We debated and in the end agreed we could do better than Columbine Clan, which had a reputation for choking in the breech. As night fell we haggled and planned and drew straws.

The next morning, thirteen of us set out to cross the gamespace to Hruba Skala.

On the way our little band was ambushed once in Brownhills by brigands and once on Mount Fasnacht by the dragon Winifred, but we slew all the brigands and we bought off the dreaded Winifred with a lindy hop performed by Turl and Cray.

That was humiliating. I can hear the gamemasters laughing at us.

Get yer gamefaces on. Here comes the rock city.

The castle was carved from one of the sandstone columns, taller than Chancre tower. It appeared to be abandoned, the windowless holes dim and lifeless, the crenellated peak empty of guards. The cold wind blew and leaves swirled around our legs.

We smelled something burning, far away.

Let’s charge it, said Cray, waving Turl’s dirk.

Oropher scratched his delicate chin. I don’t know. I’m not sure that I like the looks of this.

Oropher, you must be bold, said Nessos.

We’d noticed Nessos testing Oropher is niggling ways; many of us had guessed that Nessos would soon challenge Oropher for leadership of the clan.

You go first, said Oropher. Come back and tell us what glamour guards this castle.

Nessos snorted and rode up to the oak door at the base of the castle. He drew his broadsword and used the pommel to knock heavily at the door.

We waited.

No answer, said Cray. No magic.

Not yet, said Oropher.

Nessos swung the unlocked door wide, and was the first to step in.

You two stay outside, Oropher said to Pythy and Panpipe. When we reach the roof, we’ll fire an arrow into the air. When you see that, come up. In the meantime, keep watch and stay alert.

The rest of us followed Nessos, swords drawn. We filed into a stone-walled anteroom draped in rotting tapestries, with sticks of furniture scattered across the stone floor.

A black spider sat in the corner, spinning a silver web.

Cray prodded the spider with the dirk; the spider skittered to the center of the web.

Spider, he said, does a baldanders live here?

A baldanders? squeeked the spider. What’s a baldanders?

Don’t play with me, arachnid. Cray wiggled the tip of the dirk.

Don’t hurt me! cried the spider. I’m just a little spider.

Oropher slapped Cray’s shoulder. The spider can’t help, he said.

If there’s no baldanders here, said Cray, this insect should know!

He snatched at the spider and caught her in his hand.

Ouch! he cried, hand flying open. The spider flipped to the floor and scampered into the folds of tapestry. That little beasty bit me!

Serves you right, Oropher said. Nessos, you’re still on point. Why don’t you climb the stairs?

Gladly, said Nessos. He trotted to the steps, carved from the very stone. The rest of us followed.

Oropher released a will-o-the-wisp from one of Dingledoom’s scrolls, and it cast a soft green light up the stairwell.

I don’t feel so good, Cray said.

You can be in the middle, Oropher said. I’ll take up the rear.

We fell in single file and Cray took a place between Golub and Henry.

The stairwell was steep, dark, and twisty; moment to moment we could see only the comrade on either side.

The stone glowed green in the light of the wisp and our faces took on the pallor of frogs’ bellies.

I don’t like this, Cray said in the darkness.

You were only too ready to charge in a moment ago, said Golub, whose glowing plate-sized emerald eyes could see in the dark.

I don’t feel … hey! Golub, you’re turning into an orc … Golub’s gone! Watch out!

Cray, what are you …

We heard a sword slash chain mail and suddenly Golub cried out and gurgled. He fell backwards into Ash.

Another orc, another orc! shouted Cray. He put one foot on Golub’s stomach and pulled the dirk out of the dead creature’s chest; with his free hand he drew his sword.

Cray, stop! cried Oropher, pushing his way up the stairs.

Ash raised his bow to deflect Cray’s blade, but Cray split the bow in two and drove his sword into Ash’s throat, both his hands pushing on the pommel.

As Ash slumped to the wall, Cray straightened and gasped. Blood flowed from his mouth. He tumbled on top of Ash, a dagger in his back.

Henry stood over the bodies, his pink ears drooping in the green light.

And our will-o-the-wisp flared, and blew out.

What the fuck?

Put your guard up, guys. We’re in another room.

Mom knocked on my door. I chinned out of the call and turned the wajang down low. The darkness of the stairwell lifted to reveal my bedroom.

“Come in,” I said.

Mom walked in, wearing the pink housedress.

“Sweetie, I thought I should let you know.”

“Know what?”

“Well, I put a lot of money on this match.”

“Mom!”

“Your group is doing so well.”

“Jeez, mom. Jeez.”

“Just try not to lose, OK, sweetie? We need the money.”

Grab the hand of the man in front of you! shouted Oropher. Keep your weapons ready and keep walking. When we get to the next room, I’ll spark a torch.

We ascended in total darkness. The steps ended; the floor leveled and we felt a breeze and we heard our footfalls echo.

I’m lighting a torch, said Oropher.

We saw a spark, two, a short torch flared. Two torches.

And each of us was suddenly two.

Oropher stood beside his double, which held a second torch. Each of the rest of us — Pliny and Henry, Flay and Krake, Harald and Rebus — faced his twin.

Henry confronted a second carnivorous rabbit, its left fang nicked in the same place; Pliny faced another dwarf who raised his axe at the instant Pliny raised his.

They’re Fetches! cried one of the two Krakes.

What’s a Fetch?

And women.

I fought one once on Mount Fasnacht.

We’ve got no choice. Kill the Fetch before he kills you.

When the hacking and slashing and stabbing had ended, the stone floor was slippery with gore and littered with limbs.

Oropher’s torch lay flickering on the ground near Henry’s right arm, and the matted fur started to smolder.

Nessos still stood, and so did Oropher. The rest were dead.

How do I know you’re not the Fetch? Nessos said to Oropher.

You don’t.

We understand each other, Nessos said. He picked up the hem of Krake’s cloak with the tip of his sword, grabbed it with his other hand, and proceeded to wipe the blade clean.

Oropher’s for real — I’m him — but I don’t know about Nessos.

Too bad we look like idiots.

Oropher and Nessos started again up the stairs, led by the torch.

They crossed two more rooms. One was filled with more rotting furniture and tapestries; the second was an armory of doubtful usefulness.

Back in the stairwell, light grew and shadows formed and sharpened, and soon the two stepped out onto a garden on the top of the castle.

The ground was covered with a layer of thick, black dirt, from which grew foul-smelling plants, some white, some black. The plants thickened and clustered around a statue that stood in the middle of the courtyard, carved from rain-worn sandstone.

It had the head of a satyr, the torso of a man, the wings of an eagle, and the tail of a fish. A stone book grew directly from its hand.

From a barely perceptible belt hung a sword. It stood on a mound of masks carved from sandstone, each of the faces individual.

Most of the faces appeared to be terrified.

Though the space was, like the other rooms they had visited, only as wide as six men laid end to end, the walls reached just as high.

A gangway built of wooden staves ran around the wall near the top, with crenels carved into the walls.

These are mandrakes, Oropher said, peering at a black-leafed plant. Crush them and they start screaming. The scream drives you mad.

Perhaps the book is kept in the room we left, Nessos said.

We need assistance, Oropher said. He pulled his bow off his shoulder and drew an arrow. I’ll call the griffins.

He released the arrow over the wall and into the air. They waited.

No one comes, Nessos said.

Oropher shot another arrow.

The wind blew keenly through the crenels, as if the castle were a giant whistling through his teeth.

Oropher crossed the courtyard and started to climb the mound of masks. The statue holds a book, he said. It’s stone, but maybe it’s the one we’re looking for …

He laid his hand on the brown skirt of the statue.

There was a groaning, which came from deep inside the stone.

The horned head of the statue moved and looked down; its hand went to the sword at its side.

Oropher tumbled back down the mound into a plot of mandrakes. The leaves of the plants shivered and screeched.

We have a problem.

Somebody tell the gamemasters …

The baldanders — for now we knew, this was the creature that guarded the book — drew the sword from its stone scabbard, the blade gleaming with sinister glamour.

With the sound of stone breaking, its feet — one a goat’s foot and one a vulture’s claw — left the mound of masks, and the baldanders advanced on Oropher, who thrashed among the screaming mandrakes.

Oropher clapped his graceful hands to his ears and turned his face to the baldanders, who descended like a landslide.

Nessos galloped across the courtyard, sword held high, and he dashed up the pile of masks, flakes of sandstone flying away from his hooves. He reached the baldanders just as it stepped into the mandrakes, crushing one flat. The pitch of the screaming rose. Oropher dropped his hands, teeth clenched, and plucked one of Dingledoom’s scrolls from his belt. He started to read the spell and glamour gathered around him like smoke.

Nessos rammed the baldanders head on, heedless; his blade snapped into three pieces against the sandstone.

He rebounded away and into the mandrakes, falling on top of Oropher.

Now Oropher screamed, his mouth a knife wound, the scroll flipping into dirt, but the mandrakes drowned out his voice.

The blade of the baldanders sheared the air and cut flesh and brass with a single stroke.

That’s it. Match over.

Guys …

I stripped off the glasses and uncapped. I looked at my hands.

Shit.

I turned them around and laid them down on the wajang. It was a white dome, no wider than a plate, with three cables and a wire snaking out, the EEG skullcap lying where I had placed it.

Ugly on the outside, pretty on the inside. I lived half my life inside.

Outside it was night. Rain clattered against the window. I wondered what was in that damn book that the baldanders carried. Maybe it was a probability-generating AI like Dingledoom’s caldron, which told the entire story of the game, from its very beginning to the very end, when the players were all uncapped and the servers were shut off.

Anyone who had that book would know the future of gamespace: who to rob, what to say, where to go. They’d make a killing in meatspace. They’d be richer than Gates.

I stood up and stretched. My back was killing me from sitting for so long.

I heard the telltale floorboard creak outside my door.

“You can come in, Mom,” I said.

The door opened. I could see her hand on the doorknob but the arm disappeared into the shadow of the hall.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“I’m … I’m not sure what we’re going to do, sweetie.” Her voice seemed heavy.

“I think the clan is breaking up.”

“What will we do?”

“I’ll probably buy a new gameface, maybe a human this time, and he’ll enter some tournaments. That’ll make me a little bit of yuan.”

“No, honey. What are we going to do? I needed you to keep winning.”

“Did you lose a lot of money?”

She didn’t answer and raindrops slapped the window. Then the door opened and she shuffled in.

“Maybe you should look for a real job … ” she said, not looking at me.

I felt smaller. A lot smaller.

“Gaming is a real job!” I shouted, and we both jumped, both scared.

I stood up and grabbed my coat from the bed. I turned to the desk, got my glasses, and put them on.

I felt the tingle and my icons popped up in front of me. “I’m going out. Don’t wait up.”

Outside on the stoop it was cold as well as raining.

I zipped up the coat and stepped onto the sidewalk. All the houses were dark; only about half of them were inhabited. Our neighbors had been moving away for years, even before the war.

I still got emails from Jorge, who’d moved to Vancouver. He had a good job as a bioprogrammer. He had friends and a girlfriend.

I walked down Cortland to the Mission Canal and waited for the vaporetto. In the shelter I studied a Sony Wajang ad, with a picture of Kai Wing giving the thumbs up and saying, When I play, I play Sony. Wing was a top-level player in a game called Star Destroyer.

I’d never played it, but I did see a couple of his matches. How much did Wing make for an ad like that? I looked it up on my glasses. Two million. What would I do with two million? Move to Canada, probably. Hang out with Jorge.

Across the canal I saw a squad of Korean peacekeepers, their blue helmets and slickers gleaming in the rain.

They smoked and didn’t talk to each other, not seeming to care how wet they got.

I took the vaporetto into the Mission and transferred at the 24th St. Pier to the forty-eight bus.

We groaned up to Twin Peaks, past the game bangs, with hapa teenagers smoking outside, and the dim bars and pawn shops.

When we crossed Castro the shops and restaurants brightened; there were more people on the streets and no peacekeepers.

I saw one bombed out Victorian, probably hit by a mortar, but otherwise all was intact.

I got off on Grandview and found that the rain had stopped. It was bright and clear, the way it can be after rain, when the moon is full.

In the space between two houses I could see the canals of San Francisco stained by streetlights and the island neighborhoods sitting like shipwrecks on the water. I could even spot the ruins of the Bay Bridge and I remembered Sundays when I was a kid, when we went to Fruitvale for brunch at Aunt Katie’s place.

I checked my glasses for the address Jin had found in the gamemaster system, and slowly walked up the wet street, peering through the dark at the numbers on the houses. I quickly found it, huge and white.

A single window on the second floor was lit yellow; the rest of the windows were dark.

I looked around. It was a rich person’s neighborhood — no one lived in a cooperative here — but even so, a quarter of the houses looked abandoned. I noted that the house directly across the street was one of the empty ones, its windows boarded up, weeds growing in the narrow lawn. There was no one else on the street.

Trying to look casual, I walked across the Takahashi lawn and around the back of the house. No light snapped on, no alarm went off. In the back yard I found a rock garden, with a few short, twisted trees, two benches, and a patio set. I walked up to the sliding glass doors and peered into the living room.

All the furniture was as white as the house and covered with plastic, with an ancient plasma screen filling up half a wall. I tried the door; it was locked, of course.

As I walked back over the rocks, now less careful, I saw a garden gnome sitting under one of the short trees.

I detoured and picked it up and tucked it under my arm. I left the yard and walked down the street back towards the bus.

I admit it: I started watching the house.

The Takahashi family consisted of a handsome middle-aged Japanese guy, a slutty looking blonde, and their hapa daughter, whom I pegged as Kirsty.

She was slim, eighteen or nineteen, with bright eyes and dark hair. I once caught her in the window of her bedroom in her bra, for about twenty seconds before she drew the blinds.

I recorded the image in my glasses. That kept me going for days. Sometimes, it still does.

Kirsty didn’t go to school and didn’t go to a job. She spent most of her time in the house, venturing out to meet friends in the Castro and on 24th St., where they did lunch and shopped.

All of her friends looked just like her: Hapa, pretty, slim, rich, with expensive AI glasses.

I followed her every day for a week.

On the last day I followed Kirsty to a bookstore on the Market canal. When she went inside, I sat on a bench in front of a cafe half a block away. I bought a bagel and fed most of it to the ducks that gathered on the banks of the canal and left white duckshit all over the parapet.

The sky was the color of slate. Vaporettos chugged by, people leaning on the rails. I watched part of a Swords of Blakmar match on my glasses.

After a half hour I realized that Kirsty hadn’t come out. I admit I was a little bit concerned; I had been watching her so much that I’d started to feel protective of Kirsty. I turned off the glasses, threw the rest of the bagel to the ducks and went inside.

I strolled between the shelves, stopping to browse the science-fiction section; I picked up the 45th book of the Wheel of Time series, which had just come out. I kept moving to the rear of the store, keeping one eye on the entrance.

I got to the back and turned around.

When I rounded the corner into the self-help section, I almost walked over Kirsty, who was crouching on the floor. She yelped and jumped up; I stumbled back a few steps.

“Why are you following me?” she said, looking straight at me, fists clenched at her hips.

“What? I’m not … ” I said, not able to meet her eyes.

“You’ve been following me. I want to know why.”

“I, uh, do you play Swords of Blakmar?” I said. I thought: way to go, jerk.

“What? What did you say?”

“You know, the game. Swords of Blakmar? I play in the lower levels, but I’m working my way up. You might have heard of my clan … we got a write-up in Sing Tao … ”

“Do you even know how creepy you are?” Her voice shook and rose. “Do you?”

I could feel the other customers looking at us. I felt really hot.

“Listen, I just want to ask you … ” I raised my hand.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” she screamed.

Now I saw a clerk coming down the aisle behind her.

“I’m not … hey, at least I’m honest, I don’t cheat … ” I said.

“Are you OK?” The clerk asked Kirsty, standing just behind her.

She blinked at him, but didn’t respond.

The three of us stood there, Kirsty lowering her eyes to the floor.

Then she looked up again and she didn’t look angry or afraid.

“I got banned, you know,” she said to me. “From the game.”

“You broke the rules,” I said. “And our clan really tried. We were doing really good.”

The clerk shrugged and walked back up the aisle.

“Only because of me,” she said. “Do you know how hard I worked to build that gameface?”

“It’s true,” I admitted. “The centaur was cool. The baldanders might have been even cooler. It was really scary.”

“Thanks.”

She seemed almost shy as she said this, turning her eyes to the shelf, picking at a book.

“You were good at the game. You could have made plenty of money without cheating. Why didn’t you just fight your way through the levels like everyone else?”

“Because I’m not like everyone else,” she said. “I’m better.”

She turned and walked away.

It made me mad, the way she just walked away.

“I stole the gnome out of your garden!” I bawled at her back. “I gave it to my mom.”

“You keep it,” she said, turning her head in profile. “I hated that creepy thing. Besides, it looks like you.”

Things got bad after that, I guess.

I was too discouraged to game for money — you could say I was depressed — and the government stopped sending social security checks.

Within a year, mom and I lost our house.

We spent a few scary nights sleeping on the banks of the Market canal, me hugging the wajang close under a wool blanket, until the city assigned us temporary housing in the Mission.

I applied for a job-training gameface, and they gave me one.

Pretty soon I was interning for the water department gamespace in risk management, helping figure out all the horrible shit that could go wrong in the city: earthquakes, flood, terrorist attacks, another invasion, thieves, a thousand different kinds of breakdowns.

I imagined each threat as a brass centaur, and I never dropped my guard.

You know what? I turned out to be good at the job. I got promoted from intern to assistant; a year after that, I was running my own risk scenarios in the municipal gamespace.

The pay was fine, and we were able to join a cooperative apartment complex on Corona Island, and Mom got so involved with the neighbors that she mostly left me alone.

When my risk unit came up with a proposal for neighborhood aquaponic greenhouses as a solution to the city’s water and food distribution problems, the department assigned me to launch a meatspace pilot project on Corona.

Pretty soon I was spending only half the day in the municipal gamespace; most of the time I was working with neighbors to build the greenhouse.

I learned how to use a hammer and screwdriver; I lost weight.

The first time we ate fish from the greenhouse tank in the coop kitchen, I looked around at my neighbors and realized that maybe I was helping make things a little bit better.

Which was weird.

I never went back to playing Swords of Blakmar. But sometimes I’d dream I was Oropher.

I was Oropher but I wasn’t in the gamespace; I was here at home on Corona, but bearing a shield and carrying a sword, brave and strange.

I did see Kirsty one more time, five years after the Nessos debacle.

I was at Dolores Park with my mom. It was sunny and dry, for once, and we spread a blanket out on the grass in front of the lake and ate pickles and sandwiches.

Mom wore her bright flower-print housedress and a straw hat. After lunch she lay down and fell asleep spread-eagled.

I finished the new Dune novel I was reading on my glasses (Sandfleas of Dune, which in my opinion wasn’t as good as the last one) and got up to pee.

As I walked back to our spot I saw her, sitting on the bench at the top of the ridge that forms the southwest corner of the park.

Kirsty wore white shorts and a yellow T-shirt, pretty as she had been five years before, and she was looking at something far away, shielding her eyes with both hands.

She was incandescent with sunlight, sitting perfectly still, and of course I thought of the centaur and imagined Kirsty as a solid brass monument to herself.

At that moment I wanted so badly to see Nessos step into the muddy park, kicking up tufts of dirt and grass, sword drawn and gleaming in the sun.

The sunbathers would scream and scatter like the orcs and trolls they really are, scared and suspicious, and Nessos would rear and gallop and sweep through the park like a cold wind and cut them down with his sword and the grass would turn black with blood.

It’d be awful to see and I wanted to see it so badly.

Why shouldn’t something so beautiful and magical have the right to do anything it wanted?

“Furry thieves on four legs! That’s who’s making us cry,” one of the willow trees moaned, and the other tress joined in with more piteous wailing. The youngest female willow tree screamed especially loudly.

“There’s one still in my hair,” she yelled, shaking her willowy branches furiously, flinging a sinister-looking raccoon to the ground.

The other trees recoiled in fear.

The raccoon, still munching on a leaf from the tree, hissed menacingly at Slub Glub and the petrified tress, then bounded off into the distance.

“Alas! These fuzzy demons will be the death of us! Without our glorious foliage, we will die of naked shame!” the tallest willow wailed, tears once again raining down onto the swampy soil.

“Stop!” Slub Glub cried, fearing that a renewed outburst of crying would carry him out to sea. “Dry your sappy tear ducts, I will follow this crooked creature to his lair, and convince he and his gang to cease feeding on your fragile foliage.”

“I’ll come with you,” said the young tree who had flung out the raccoon.

“Good idea,” said Slub Glub, extending a tentacle. “Slub Glub is the name.”

“I’m Willowmina. Pleased to meet you,” the tree replied, and with one of her branches shook Slub Glub’s tentacle.

She bade goodbye to her fellow weeping willows in the grove and then the two of them traipsed down the soggy hill and into the shadows beyond.

To be continued.

Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”

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Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb