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| copyright © 2008 CROSSING CHAOS enigmatic ink. All rights reserved. |
| STORMING by ANDERSEN PRUNTY (Featured in Arcane Distortions One coming July 2009) |
The storm calls on Wednesday. I answer on the phone downstairs. The
storm sounds angry and hateful, rumbly and static-filled. I hang up the phone
and my right foot begins vibrating. I’ve been chosen. I suppose I should let
the boarder know. I knock on his door. It’s right next to the phone. The
boarder is a circus strongman. I don’t know his name. I call him Mr.
Strongman. He signed the lease with an “X”. No help there.
His door swings open. He’s a classic circus strongman, standing there in
his crimson singlet. His black hair is greased and parted down the middle. An
ostentatious handlebar mustache, waxed to perfection, reaches out from either
side of his face. Years ago, training for the Olympics, Mr. Strongman strained
his mouth and has been unable to speak through it since. Instead, he has
trained his left deltoid to speak. He turns around and his deltoid says, “Hello.” I
always want to touch it but I resist the urge. He would probably break me in
half.
“My foot’s vibrating,” I blurt out, gesturing down to it. Even with a shoe
on, you can tell it’s moving, twittering rapidly back and forth like something’s
trying to get out.
Mr. Strongman is looking at me over his shoulder. Surprise and a certain
amount of horror fill his eyes.
“You know what this means,” I say.
“I certainly do,” his deltoid says.
“I think you’d probably better go.”
“I’d rather not.”
“If you stay here, it’s quite likely you’ll die.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“I would rather you didn’t. I don’t want to be responsible for another
person.”
“I’d rather not move all these weights.” Mr. Strongman gestures into his
room. It’s filled from floor to ceiling with globular iron weights in varying
diameters. He has a point. I wouldn’t want to move all that stuff either.
“Surely you have some strongman friends who can help you?” I’m nearly
pleading with him.
“They’ve all passed on.”
“Suit yourself then.”
“Do you know when?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Soon, I imagine. With the way my foot’s vibrating.”
“I’ll be prepared.”
“You can only prepare so much for something like this.”
“You’ll have to go see the doctor next.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Would you like me to go with you?”
I think about it. Maybe it would be nice to have company. And I do not
have a car.
“If you’re willing.”
“Let me get my keys.”
He disappears back into the room and I hear the clattering of iron
weights. I don’t know what that has to do with keys. When he comes back to
the door, his muscles are ripped and he’s sweating profusely. “I had to do a
few reps.”
We head out to his tiny two-seater parked on the curb. The car is rusted
and leans to the driver side. Probably because Mr. Strongman weighs so much.
“Wanna drive?” he asks. We both know this might be my last time to do
this.
“Sure.”
He tosses the keys at me. His throw is slightly off. I miss the keys. They
hit me on the side of the face and clatter down to the sidewalk. Bending down
to pick them up, I can hear my foot vibrating. I look up at the sky and do not
see a single cloud but I know this will change. The storm will come. The storm
will rage through and change everything. How could I have let life become so
stagnant?
We get into the car and I drive us to the doctor’s. It’s a small single-story
shack on the outskirts of town. It doesn’t take very long. The town is not very
large. I get out of the car.
“I’ll wait in here, if you don’t mind,” Mr. Strongman says.
“No, not at all. I’ll be right back.”
I walk through the parking lot, taking tentative steps around the vibrating
foot. I pull the door to the doctor’s open. He has one of those bells that jangle
over the door. He’s asleep in the middle of the floor. I approach him and
nudge him with my foot. He lets out a final honking snore and pries his
bloodshot eyes open.
“My foot’s vibrating.”
He’s in the perfect position to observe this. He rolls over onto his side,
facing my foot. He puts his hand around it and squeezes. He puts his ear to
the shoe.
“So it is. Can you help me up? We’ll get this taken care of.”
I hold out my hand and he clasps it.
“Come on back here with me.”
I follow him through a tattered wooden door. It creaks open and bangs
shut. There is an old cot in the middle of the dimly lit room.
“Sit.” He points to the cot.
I sit down. He grabs a giant pair of what look like hedge clippers and
pulls a chair over beside the cot.
“Upsy daisy,” he says and pats his thigh.
I put my vibrating foot on his knee. He grabs the handles of the clippers
and angles the business end around the top of my foot, just below the ankle.
“Here goes,” he says, and takes a mighty clip.
My foot is now off. There isn’t any blood or anything.
“That went well,” he says. “Now for your surrogate.”
He goes to a large box in the back corner of the room and rummages
around. He comes back carrying a very large yellowish eagle talon.
“I’m afraid this’ll have to do.”
He sits back down on the chair and lines the talon up with the bottom of
my leg. He grabs the clippers and does the same thing he did to remove the
foot, the blades slicing through the empty space. When he’s finished, the talon
is affixed securely to the leg.
“There we go,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“We’ll get this sent off for you.” He holds my foot up in the air.
“That’d be great.”
Mr. Strongman has pulled the car around to the front of the building.
That’s very considerate of him. I slide into the passenger seat.
“When we get home,” I say. “We’ll have to begin dismantling the house.”
He grunts and guides the car away from the doctor’s.
The tiny car squeals to a stop in front of the house. I place my new right
foot, my talon, out onto the sidewalk. An old lady walking by looks at it and
says, through her bent and twisted face, “So it’s true.” She gives me the evil
eye and continues on her way. I want to shout something after her but she
has every right to be angry.
The phone is ringing from the house. Mr. Strongman, aware of my
condition, races to answer it. I’m walking up to the house when he appears in
the doorway, his back to me, his deltoid saying, “It’s for you.”
Walking on this talon is tricky. After a couple minutes I reach the phone.
It’s the storm again. It sounds closer. Even angrier. I imagine it gathering
steam somewhere over the plains of Kansas. Taking in deep breaths and roiling
around itself. Ready to spew out its vitriolic guts on me and my house. I could
argue with it but it wouldn’t do any good.
The next two days, Mr. Strongman and I dismantle the house. I pull the
siding off the lower parts. He’s good with the ladder. He’s able to get the
second floor. We strip off the siding and place it in the back yard. He places his
weights over the various piles. The walls are huge and very heavy, giant
chunks of drywall. I supervise as he pulls them from the support beams. He
stacks these in the back yard as well.
“You want me to do the roof?” he asks.
I squint up at the roof. “Nah, it needs replaced anyway.”
“It’s too bad this has to happen to you.”
“There’s no other way. I want to let you know this house is yours after
the storm, for all your hard work.”
“Aw, thanks. That’s not necessary.”
“I insist.”
“Very well.”
“Now I think I’m going to go wait for it.”
“Need any help.”
“I’ll get it. You should probably hide in the basement... when the time
comes.”
“I’ll stay out here with you. I can’t let you do something like this alone.”
“It was meant to be done alone.”
“It could have been me who answered the phone.”
“That’s not the way it works. You know that.”
He lowers his head as if he is already in mourning.
I grab my green lawn chair I bought just for this occasion and enter the
house through the missing wall. We left the stairs because both of us decided
we didn’t know how they would go back together. It wouldn’t matter to me
anyway. I climb the stairs to the second floor.
From downstairs, the phone rings.
No one answers it.
The day is sunny.
I study the horizon.
And then I see it over the house across the street. Black and perilous.
Moving quickly. I clutch the arms of the lawn chair, set my jaw and wait for it.
Downstairs, Mr. Strongman is supporting himself in a doorway that is
lacking a door.
The giant cloud reaches my house and stops. There is a loud boom of
thunder. Lightning shoots out. Rain pounds down. I notice there is a crowd of
people gathered on the sidewalk. They ooh and aah as the storm delivers its
beating. A funnel cloud extends down, beginning at the edge of the lawn and
working its way toward the house. I release the lawn chair and push myself to
the edge of the floor, where the wall used to be. I raise my arms to the storm
and, like a hateful father, it scoops me up and lifts me into its black fold.
Below, I see Mr. Strongman squinting up at me, at the storm carrying me
away. I wonder if he was the one who had called the storm or if it was really
just my time.
The inside of the storm is cold and loud. It races across the mountains,
toward the coast. We reach the ocean in a matter of hours and it coughs me
out. I plunge down into the salty water. Somewhere, a sea gull is laughing at
me. I pull the water into my lungs. It is cold. I put my head down and swim
toward the shore, eager to start over toward the shore, eager to start over.
storm sounds angry and hateful, rumbly and static-filled. I hang up the phone
and my right foot begins vibrating. I’ve been chosen. I suppose I should let
the boarder know. I knock on his door. It’s right next to the phone. The
boarder is a circus strongman. I don’t know his name. I call him Mr.
Strongman. He signed the lease with an “X”. No help there.
His door swings open. He’s a classic circus strongman, standing there in
his crimson singlet. His black hair is greased and parted down the middle. An
ostentatious handlebar mustache, waxed to perfection, reaches out from either
side of his face. Years ago, training for the Olympics, Mr. Strongman strained
his mouth and has been unable to speak through it since. Instead, he has
trained his left deltoid to speak. He turns around and his deltoid says, “Hello.” I
always want to touch it but I resist the urge. He would probably break me in
half.
“My foot’s vibrating,” I blurt out, gesturing down to it. Even with a shoe
on, you can tell it’s moving, twittering rapidly back and forth like something’s
trying to get out.
Mr. Strongman is looking at me over his shoulder. Surprise and a certain
amount of horror fill his eyes.
“You know what this means,” I say.
“I certainly do,” his deltoid says.
“I think you’d probably better go.”
“I’d rather not.”
“If you stay here, it’s quite likely you’ll die.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“I would rather you didn’t. I don’t want to be responsible for another
person.”
“I’d rather not move all these weights.” Mr. Strongman gestures into his
room. It’s filled from floor to ceiling with globular iron weights in varying
diameters. He has a point. I wouldn’t want to move all that stuff either.
“Surely you have some strongman friends who can help you?” I’m nearly
pleading with him.
“They’ve all passed on.”
“Suit yourself then.”
“Do you know when?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Soon, I imagine. With the way my foot’s vibrating.”
“I’ll be prepared.”
“You can only prepare so much for something like this.”
“You’ll have to go see the doctor next.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Would you like me to go with you?”
I think about it. Maybe it would be nice to have company. And I do not
have a car.
“If you’re willing.”
“Let me get my keys.”
He disappears back into the room and I hear the clattering of iron
weights. I don’t know what that has to do with keys. When he comes back to
the door, his muscles are ripped and he’s sweating profusely. “I had to do a
few reps.”
We head out to his tiny two-seater parked on the curb. The car is rusted
and leans to the driver side. Probably because Mr. Strongman weighs so much.
“Wanna drive?” he asks. We both know this might be my last time to do
this.
“Sure.”
He tosses the keys at me. His throw is slightly off. I miss the keys. They
hit me on the side of the face and clatter down to the sidewalk. Bending down
to pick them up, I can hear my foot vibrating. I look up at the sky and do not
see a single cloud but I know this will change. The storm will come. The storm
will rage through and change everything. How could I have let life become so
stagnant?
We get into the car and I drive us to the doctor’s. It’s a small single-story
shack on the outskirts of town. It doesn’t take very long. The town is not very
large. I get out of the car.
“I’ll wait in here, if you don’t mind,” Mr. Strongman says.
“No, not at all. I’ll be right back.”
I walk through the parking lot, taking tentative steps around the vibrating
foot. I pull the door to the doctor’s open. He has one of those bells that jangle
over the door. He’s asleep in the middle of the floor. I approach him and
nudge him with my foot. He lets out a final honking snore and pries his
bloodshot eyes open.
“My foot’s vibrating.”
He’s in the perfect position to observe this. He rolls over onto his side,
facing my foot. He puts his hand around it and squeezes. He puts his ear to
the shoe.
“So it is. Can you help me up? We’ll get this taken care of.”
I hold out my hand and he clasps it.
“Come on back here with me.”
I follow him through a tattered wooden door. It creaks open and bangs
shut. There is an old cot in the middle of the dimly lit room.
“Sit.” He points to the cot.
I sit down. He grabs a giant pair of what look like hedge clippers and
pulls a chair over beside the cot.
“Upsy daisy,” he says and pats his thigh.
I put my vibrating foot on his knee. He grabs the handles of the clippers
and angles the business end around the top of my foot, just below the ankle.
“Here goes,” he says, and takes a mighty clip.
My foot is now off. There isn’t any blood or anything.
“That went well,” he says. “Now for your surrogate.”
He goes to a large box in the back corner of the room and rummages
around. He comes back carrying a very large yellowish eagle talon.
“I’m afraid this’ll have to do.”
He sits back down on the chair and lines the talon up with the bottom of
my leg. He grabs the clippers and does the same thing he did to remove the
foot, the blades slicing through the empty space. When he’s finished, the talon
is affixed securely to the leg.
“There we go,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“We’ll get this sent off for you.” He holds my foot up in the air.
“That’d be great.”
Mr. Strongman has pulled the car around to the front of the building.
That’s very considerate of him. I slide into the passenger seat.
“When we get home,” I say. “We’ll have to begin dismantling the house.”
He grunts and guides the car away from the doctor’s.
The tiny car squeals to a stop in front of the house. I place my new right
foot, my talon, out onto the sidewalk. An old lady walking by looks at it and
says, through her bent and twisted face, “So it’s true.” She gives me the evil
eye and continues on her way. I want to shout something after her but she
has every right to be angry.
The phone is ringing from the house. Mr. Strongman, aware of my
condition, races to answer it. I’m walking up to the house when he appears in
the doorway, his back to me, his deltoid saying, “It’s for you.”
Walking on this talon is tricky. After a couple minutes I reach the phone.
It’s the storm again. It sounds closer. Even angrier. I imagine it gathering
steam somewhere over the plains of Kansas. Taking in deep breaths and roiling
around itself. Ready to spew out its vitriolic guts on me and my house. I could
argue with it but it wouldn’t do any good.
The next two days, Mr. Strongman and I dismantle the house. I pull the
siding off the lower parts. He’s good with the ladder. He’s able to get the
second floor. We strip off the siding and place it in the back yard. He places his
weights over the various piles. The walls are huge and very heavy, giant
chunks of drywall. I supervise as he pulls them from the support beams. He
stacks these in the back yard as well.
“You want me to do the roof?” he asks.
I squint up at the roof. “Nah, it needs replaced anyway.”
“It’s too bad this has to happen to you.”
“There’s no other way. I want to let you know this house is yours after
the storm, for all your hard work.”
“Aw, thanks. That’s not necessary.”
“I insist.”
“Very well.”
“Now I think I’m going to go wait for it.”
“Need any help.”
“I’ll get it. You should probably hide in the basement... when the time
comes.”
“I’ll stay out here with you. I can’t let you do something like this alone.”
“It was meant to be done alone.”
“It could have been me who answered the phone.”
“That’s not the way it works. You know that.”
He lowers his head as if he is already in mourning.
I grab my green lawn chair I bought just for this occasion and enter the
house through the missing wall. We left the stairs because both of us decided
we didn’t know how they would go back together. It wouldn’t matter to me
anyway. I climb the stairs to the second floor.
From downstairs, the phone rings.
No one answers it.
The day is sunny.
I study the horizon.
And then I see it over the house across the street. Black and perilous.
Moving quickly. I clutch the arms of the lawn chair, set my jaw and wait for it.
Downstairs, Mr. Strongman is supporting himself in a doorway that is
lacking a door.
The giant cloud reaches my house and stops. There is a loud boom of
thunder. Lightning shoots out. Rain pounds down. I notice there is a crowd of
people gathered on the sidewalk. They ooh and aah as the storm delivers its
beating. A funnel cloud extends down, beginning at the edge of the lawn and
working its way toward the house. I release the lawn chair and push myself to
the edge of the floor, where the wall used to be. I raise my arms to the storm
and, like a hateful father, it scoops me up and lifts me into its black fold.
Below, I see Mr. Strongman squinting up at me, at the storm carrying me
away. I wonder if he was the one who had called the storm or if it was really
just my time.
The inside of the storm is cold and loud. It races across the mountains,
toward the coast. We reach the ocean in a matter of hours and it coughs me
out. I plunge down into the salty water. Somewhere, a sea gull is laughing at
me. I pull the water into my lungs. It is cold. I put my head down and swim
toward the shore, eager to start over toward the shore, eager to start over.