Dweller

by Jeff Strand

  He showered until the hot water was gone.

  Then he slept.

  Then he tried to figure out how exactly he was going to explain his absence from work.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Mr. Zack, folding his arms in front of his chest.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Toby, I don’t believe you.”

  “How can you not believe me? I’m all beat up!”

  “Because when people are in car accidents, they call. Not necessarily the first day, but by the seventh day they usually think to pick up the phone.”

  “I was in Maine!”

  “They have phones in Maine. I’ve seen them. If you bring me a note from your doctor in Maine that says that you were in such bad shape that you couldn’t even make a phone call, or ask somebody to make a phone call for you, then I’ll reconsider. Otherwise, I have to follow my gut instinct that you’re lying. I’m happy to cut you lots of slack, you know that, but I can’t have people working for me who are unreliable. You can goof off and mouth off and boink your girlfriend in the stockroom, but…” He trailed off. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought her up. That was horrible.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “But you understand what I’m saying, right? You can’t disappear for a week and expect a job to be waiting for you when you get back.”

  Toby nodded. “I understand. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  Toby sat on his couch, newspaper open to the classified ads. He’d circled a couple of items, but there wasn’t anything that came close to singing out to him.

  He skimmed the ads again, just in case there was something amazingly exciting that he’d missed.

  Nope.

  He flipped back to the funny pages. Yeah, the comics were way more interesting than the classifieds. Even the ones without punch lines like Gasoline Alley.

  He liked to draw. At least, he used to.

  Maybe it was time to restart his hobby…

  CHAPTER TWENTY GLIMPSES

  1978

  “And here in the last panel, he says, ‘Glub, glub,’ as they dunk him into the toilet.” Toby pointed to the carefully rendered artwork. “What do you think?”

  No.

  “But it looks like a toilet, right? Do you know how hard it is to draw a toilet and make it look three-dimensional?”

  No.

  “It’s a pain in the ass. I really wish you had a better sense of humor, because I need to test these gags out on somebody who can laugh at things other than me hurting myself.”

  “Perfect!” Henry Lynch, an editor at the Orange Leaf Times, held up Toby’s work and examined it closely. “Absolutely perfect. Yes, you’re hired.”

  Toby grinned. He’d cut himself pretty bad with the razor blade, trying to cut the newspaper copy to the exact specifications, and he’d gotten hot wax all over his sleeve when he did the layout, but he didn’t tell that to Mr. Lynch.

  “I need to hire older people more often. Kids today, they have no patience for the art of newspaper layout.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Okay, which do you like better? This”—he held up the drawing of Rusty with a mustache and goatee—“or this?” He held up the drawing of Rusty, clean-shaven.

  Owen offered no immediate opinion.

  “Please don’t poke this one with your claw.”

  When Toby completed his twenty-fifth satisfactory comic strip, he celebrated by making a homemade banana split with extra hot fudge, extra strawberries, extra pineapple topping, extra whipped cream, and three maraschino cherries.

  He felt a little sick afterward.

  Then he reread the strips in order and decided that none of them were even remotely funny. Instead of throwing them away, he taped them up on his bedroom wall, where they could haunt him and provide a constant reminder to do better.

  “Look what I’ve got here. Oooooh yeah.” Toby took the Styrofoam container out of his backpack and popped open the lid. “Two New York strip steaks. One medium well, one rare. Mr. Zack still cuts me a special deal.”

  He erased the pencil drawing of Pugg’s hand for the tenth or eleventh time. It was incredibly difficult to draw a dog holding a telephone receiver. Paws weren’t meant to hold telephones, he supposed.

  After another half an hour, he got the details just right, and reached for the ink.

  “Not that you asked, but I still don’t have a title. Peanuts doesn’t actually mean anything, as far as I know. Maybe I’ll call it Tomatoes.”

  1979

  “What do you know about proofreading?” Mr. Lynch asked.

  “Uh, nothing, but I can learn.”

  “Can you learn today? Helen’s having her baby early and I’m kind of stuck.”

  “So what do you think of this? The strip wasn’t working out, but I did these five as a single panel. I think they’re pretty funny. I couldn’t get Rusty’s hair right so I got frustrated and added a cowboy hat, but it makes him more visually interesting, don’t you think? No? Do you even understand art?”

  Toby reached for his glass of apple juice, spilled the bottle of ink all over the seventh version of the drawing he was working on, and used several words that he could never include in the comic itself.

  “I’m calling it Rusty & Pugg. Not inventive, I know, but it has a nice rhythm to it, right? Rusty & Pugg. Rusty & Pugg. I’d read it, wouldn’t you? Also, I’m going back to the strip format instead of the single panel.”

  Mr. Lynch tossed the newspaper on his desk in front of Toby. “I got three different complaints about this typo. It’s right in the headline. Makes us look stupid.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Raccoon has two c‘s.”

  “It doesn’t have to. Both spellings are correct.”

  Mr. Lynch frowned, then grabbed a dictionary from the corner of his desk and flipped through the pages. “I’ll be damned, you’re right. What the hell is wrong with these idiot readers?”

  “I know there aren’t any monsters in it, but it’s pretty good, don’t you think?” asked Toby, flipping through the pages one by one.

  Yes.

  “I’m going to mail the samples off to a few syndicates tomorrow. Wish me luck, buddy.”

  Happy.

  “Me, too.”

  1980

  “Do you know what today is? I bet you have no idea. Exactly twenty years ago, I discovered your cave. Can you freakin’ believe that? We’ve known each other for twenty years! That’s crazy! It’s more than half of my life! And we’ve both got some gray hair to show for it.”

  He scratched Owen behind the ear, which is where most of the monster’s gray hair had sprouted, though he also had small tufts on his shoulders. Toby hadn’t really noticed his own until his last haircut, when he looked at the pile of hair on the barbershop floor and saw more gray than black.

  “To celebrate twenty years of friendship, I’ve decided that this bullshit about me walking four miles each way to your cave has got to stop. So look what I drew for you.”

  Toby unfolded a large piece of paper and handed it to Owen. The talon of Owen’s index finger tore through the center.

  “That’s okay, it’s just a copy. That’s the plan for your new house. Shack, to be more accurate, but it’ll be nicer than what you’ve got here. I’ve picked out a nice spot maybe a mile from my house, we’re going to cut down some trees, and we’re going to build you a nice new dwelling.”

  “Hear anything yet?” asked Mr. Lynch.

  “Not yet.”

  “Not from anybody? How long has it been?”

  “Nine weeks.”

  “Well, if Rusty & Pugg gets picked up, I’ll happily cancel Hagar the Horrible to make room.”

  “What are you drawing?” asked the woman, pausing to glance at his table as she walked to her own booth. Her tray had a single burger and fries—maybe she was having lunch alone.

  “It’s a comic strip.”

  “Oh, are you a cartoonis
t?”

  “Trying to be.” Toby tilted the strip, which didn’t really help her see it better but gave him something to do with his hands. “The dog is Pugg and the human is Rusty.”

  He sat there, watching nervously as she silently read the strip, which involved Rusty getting a letter from the IRS. She looked a couple of years younger than he was, had curly red hair, and had eyes that were such a beautiful shade of green that they seemed almost otherworldly.

  Would she laugh at the punch line? Or at least smile?

  He could imagine her smile. Radiant. Perfect white teeth.

  “Hmmm,” she said, showing no sign of amusement as she looked away from the strip. “Interesting. Good luck with it.” She walked to her own table and sat down to eat.

  Toby crumpled up the strip.

  Toby had found a spot where he could make sufficient room for Owen’s new home by only cutting down three trees, which he was pretty sure he wasn’t actually supposed to be doing, so he hoped nobody would hear the crashes.

  It was unlikely that anybody would. Somehow Toby and Owen’s forest had escaped the notice of the evil logging industry all this time (Toby liked to think that the loggers would love to ravage the land, but were frightened away by whispered tales of a deadly monster that lurked within) and he’d never seen a single human being out here during his walks, so he figured the risk of Owen being discovered was extremely low.

  All of the exercise was keeping him in good shape, but he was getting to the age where sometimes he was a little sore after getting back home from his visits. In another decade, he’d be thankful he’d built the shack.

  He was a little concerned about bringing Owen closer to the populace…but, what danger was he really creating? If Owen wanted to leave the forest, he would, whether he was four miles away or one. As far as Toby knew, he’d never left the woods again after the…incidents, and was unlikely to leave it ever again.

  “Dear Mr. Floren, though we reviewed your materials with great interest, we regret to inform you…”

  As Toby chopped up the logs, Owen dragged them out of the way. Owen was strong and pretty good at basic manual labor but he wasn’t much of a tool user, or else Toby would have made him chop up the logs himself. Putting a sharp bladed weapon into his claws seemed like a potential descent into unnecessary amputation.

  “Now, don’t expect indoor plumbing or electricity or anything like that,” Toby said. “We probably won’t have windows either—I don’t think you want any hikers peeking into your living room. Basically just think of it as a wooden cave that’s closer to my house.”

  Like cave.

  “I like the cave, too, but this is seriously overdue. Anyway, you’ll have a door, just like civilized people.”

  This envelope was thick. Too thick to be only his samples back.

  How thick was a syndication contract? With all of the complicated merchandising rights and stuff, he could easily see a contract being ridiculously thick.

  Don’t get too excited, he warned himself. This could be a hundred pages of detailed description of how much they hated my submission, followed by a demand for me to never submit them another piece of work for as long as I live, followed by a restraining order, just in case.

  It wasn’t.

  It was, however, just a form rejection, along with a free catalog from their parent company.

  “You like it?”

  No.

  “Remember, it’s just the frame. It’s not the completed shack.”

  Love it.

  “That was incredible,” she said, as Toby rolled off her. “I just can’t even describe it. You made me feel like a woman again.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m in a state of shock at how good that was. We need to do this again. You’ll call me, right?”

  “Do I get a discount next time?”

  “If you become a regular, we’ll see.”

  She fixed up her makeup as Toby got dressed. It was hard to be flattered by her confessions of bliss when he knew that he’d been laughably bad in bed, and when he knew she’d overcharged him but he’d been too embarrassed to negotiate.

  And he knew the feeling of self-loathing would kick in as soon as he left the hotel room. But he also knew that it would fade by morning.

  Three bills. Four pieces of junk mail. No self-addressed stamped envelopes.

  Damn.

  “Owen, hold it! Hold it, Owen! Owen, I’m losing it! Owen—!”

  The entire north wall crashed to the ground.

  “You suck, Owen.”

  At least he could incorporate this into a comic strip.

  “I’d like to start writing articles,” Toby said.

  “That’s a great idea. I was thinking the same thing.” Mr. Lynch searched around his desk for a few moments, found a manila folder, and handed it to him. “Write up these obituaries and have them to me by three.”

  Toby and Owen stood in the clearing, looking at what they’d accomplished.

  The shack looked…well, it looked like crap. But it was sturdy, moderately furnished (including a mattress that Toby had dragged all the way out here, nearly throwing out his back), and—most importantly—a lot closer to Toby’s house.

  “Welcome to your new home. Try not to bring too many bones in here.”

  “Dear Sir or Madam, thank you for your recent submission. Unfortunately, we no longer review unagented queries…”

  1981

  “I’m not deluding myself, right? This is good stuff, isn’t it? I’m not saying it’s brilliant, but it’s better than a lot of the strips out there. You’d think somebody would read it and laugh. You’re not just humoring me, are you? I mean, I know you’re not the best person to judge punch lines, but you like the artwork, right?”

  Pretty.

  “Thanks, but it’s not supposed to be pretty. It’s supposed to be wacky and funny. I just don’t want to spend this much time on it if it’s not something that people are going to enjoy.”

  In the dream, Owen slashed at the old man with his claws, slicing a red crisscross pattern across his entire body. The pieces of flesh tumbled to the ground as his grandchildren screamed. Then Toby was sitting in the front row of the funeral he hadn’t attended outside of his dreams.

  “Whose fault is it when a wild animal goes berserk like that?” asked a woman seated directly behind him. Her voice had an almost musical lilt.

  “Why, it’s Toby Floren’s fault, of course!” the man next to her replied.

  “I agree. It’s every bit as much his fault as if he’d stabbed a knife into that poor old man and that poor young woman.”

  “He should be severely punished,” the man said.

  “You don’t understand…it’s not my fault,” Toby protested. “We’re friends. I don’t own him. Whatever he does, no matter how bad it is, is out of my…”

  He realized that he was no longer dreaming and was in his bedroom, talking out loud. He wished that he could just wake up screaming, like a normal person did—at least in the movies.

  Dear Toby,

  Thank you for your submission of Rusty & Pugg, and our apologies for the delay in our response. Your talent as an artist is very evident from these sample strips. Unfortunately, though we enjoyed the art very much, we felt that the humor was weak and often confusing, and that neither Rusty nor Pugg had a strong enough personality to make the strip a success.

  We wish the very best of luck in your future endeavors.

  “I got my first personalized rejection!” Toby shouted.

  Two self-addressed stamped envelopes were in Toby’s mailbox the same day. A thick one and a thin one. The last two. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if he’d been waiting all of this time, and got two acceptances the same day?

  He tore open the first envelope, the thick one, and pulled out the cover letter: “Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately—” This one didn’t even have a salutation.

  Okay. Down to one.

  He opened the envelope, took a deep b
reath, and then wondered if he should take the letter to Owen’s shack so they could read it together. If this were good news—and Toby couldn’t help but feel that it was—they should share the joy. How awesome would it be to get the very last response, walk it all the way to the shack, and have it be an acceptance? They’d scream so loud that the walls of the shack would blow apart.

  The envelope was only thick enough to contain a letter. They hadn’t returned his samples.

  He should definitely walk it over to Owen.

  Screw it. He couldn’t wait that long. He pulled the letter out of the envelope and unfolded it.

  “Dear Sir, thank you for your submission. However, we regret to inform you that your material, while interesting, doesn’t meet our present needs. We wish you—”

  Damn.

  He wasn’t going to give up, but this was disheartening in a big way. He supposed that most cartoonists went through this process for several years before getting the big “Yes,” but he was off to a late start. Christ, he was almost forty.

  He looked at the letter again, as if the message might have changed.

  “—doesn’t meet our present needs. We wish you the best of luck with Mom & Runts, and if you create other projects in the future, please feel free to send them.”