by Andrew Smith
We had no idea of the time when we were down in Eden.
We also had no idea about what was beginning to happen up above us in Ealing.
Nobody did.
THE QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE
WE FOUND EDEN’S library at exactly the same time the Hoover Boys and Grant Wallace found Eileen Pope and Hungry Jack in the alley at Grasshopper Jungle.
Now Eileen was very busy. She was getting filled up with the seeds of a new apex species for Planet Earth. She was happy. Eileen was the queen of the new universe. But she was hungry, too.
While Devin Stoddard, the same Hoover Boy who had kneed me in the balls the Friday before and was now a lumbering six-foot-tall mantis beast, pumped future generations of little Devin bugs into Eileen Pope’s swelling abdomen, she pivoted her thoracic midsection around clockwise and clamped Devin’s head in the toothy mace of her grasping arms. Devin Stoddard did not resist. He pumped and pumped and pumped. Devin Stoddard continued pumping semen into Eileen Pope even after she had eaten his entire head.
Eileen Pope was doing the two things bugs like to do.
The other bugs watched and waited. They wanted more turns on Eileen Pope, even if she was still hungry after eating Devin Stoddard. When Eileen Pope finished eating, the only thing left of Devin Stoddard was a gooey smear across the floral sofa in Grasshopper Jungle.
And, at the exact moment we found Eden’s library and Eileen Pope was crunching her way through Devin Stoddard’s exoskeleton to get to the slick and nourishing goodness inside her mate, Johnny McKeon was locking up From Attic to Seller Consignment Store for the night.
Johnny decided to take a box of garbage out to the dumpster in the alley of Grasshopper Jungle.
It was not a good idea.
THE LIBRARY AND THE NEW TALLY-HO!
HISTORY SHOWS THAT an examination of the personal collection of titles in any man’s library will provide something of a glimpse into his soul.
Such was the case with Dr. Grady McKeon’s library beneath the ground.
Here was Dr. Grady McKeon’s collection of books: There was a wall of novels. And every one of the novels in Dr. Grady McKeon’s library was an American work. Also, every novel had been written by a man.
Before going down into Eden, I never knew that American men had written so many books and shit. The men who wrote the books in Dr. Grady McKeon’s library weren’t just guys, they were monuments, and had names like Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Dreiser, and on and on. The most recent novel, if you could call it that, was The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.
There was not a copy of The Chocolate War, however, but that stood to reason.
Another wall in Dr. Grady McKeon’s library was filled with books on all kinds of scientific subjects: botany, evolution, taxonomy, genetics, and reproduction. The books on reproduction caught my eye. They were very old and conservatively worded, however.
But the most wonderful feature of Dr. Grady McKeon’s library were the rows of desks, each of which had been furnished with supplies for writing and drawing.
It was meant to be that Eden would have its historian.
“This is meant to be,” I said.
I sat down at one of the desks and looked through the assortment of pens and empty leather-bound logbooks. I felt around with my feet in the carpeting beneath where I sat. It was difficult for me to adequately concentrate on writing without Ingrid sighing under my toes.
So I said, “What am I going to do, Shann?”
Shann said, “I don’t know, Austin.”
Shann was smart. She knew I was troubled about things. She always let me have room. In some ways, Shann was like Ingrid.
“This is where I will write the history of the end of the world,” I said.
Shann said, “Uh.”
Then I picked up some thick permanent markers and opened their caps. Naturally, I smelled them. I do not know why, because that is not my job, but history shows that every time a teenage boy opens a permanent marker, he will first sniff it before deciding how to go about defacing the planet.
That is what I did.
On the empty wall above the desk where I sat, I drew a big hairy thing—a bison—in as close a likeness as I could manage to the figure that had been drawn so many centuries before on the wall of a cave at a place called Altamira. Maybe it was my great-times-one-thousand-grandfather who’d drawn the Altamira bison. It would have been back when the world was like this: messed-up and poisonous, and a few scared and confused specimens found their way inside a cave called Altamira that may just as well have been a silo called Eden.
They would have gone down in that cave to start things over again. Perhaps my great-times-one-thousand-grandfather also smoked cigarettes and wore a medallion of a virgin Polish saint around his neck. He would have experimented, too. Maybe he was also confused about the people he was in love with, and whether or not there was something wrong with him for frequently finding himself sexually attracted to the guy he grew up with.
You know what I mean.
Thinking about being inside a cave with Robby and Shann made me feel very horny.
Robby said, “Nice cow, Austin.”
“It is a bison,” I pointed out.
“Oh,” Robby said. And he added, “Nice buff, Porcupine.”
Robby and Shann were great friends, true friends. They both allowed me the space that I needed. While I wrote the history of our day inside Eden, Shann and Robby sat and waited quietly. But there was still much of the silo we had to explore, so I rushed and abbreviated, and when I was satisfied that I had gotten down the important details of our discovery, I tucked the logbook under my arm and led the way out of the library and deeper into the mysteries of Dr. Grady McKeon’s sealed-in universe.
Just across the hallway from Eden’s library was a bar.
An actual bar, inside a compound designed to resurrect mankind.
Robby said, “I christen this bar New Tally-Ho!”
“Eden Five needs a gay bar,” Shann said.
“Everywhere needs gay bars, Shann,” I pointed out.
This was true.
We went inside the New Tally-Ho!
In the same way the Eden No Coins Required Launderette put to shame the dirty laundry joint at Grasshopper Jungle, the New TallyHo! was immeasurably more luxurious than Waterloo, Iowa’s one and only gay bar.
There were built-in wine coolers and every kind of liquor I had ever heard of in my life, and some others that I had not.
There was a bottle of something called Krupnik, which came from Poland.
Once again, all roads crossed where I stood.
The New Tally-Ho! was impressively furnished, with a wide mahogany serving bar and a floor-to-ceiling mirror behind racks of immaculately arranged bottles and crystal ware. There was a pool table with a perfect felt surface. It sat in the middle of the floor with plenty of space around for proper play. A dart board hung on one wall. The chalkboard beside it still recorded a match from four decades back, between someone named Doc and another player named Virgil. Doc, apparently, was not such a good dart player.
We killed this big hairy thing. We played darts. And that was our day.
None of us was in the mood to try drinking alcohol. Drinking was reckless, and made us unconcerned about doing stupid shit.
“Um,” I said. “Let’s not get drunk, Robby.”
We agreed to save that experiment for some other time.
Robby knew what I meant.
After our trip through the bar, we found a medical clinic that looked like it was equipped to do surgery.
“Lots of drugs in here,” Shann said.
“An entire navy of kayaks,” I added.
Eden was built like a starfish. Its arms radiated outward from the room we called the lecture hall, which was just beyond the mudroom and lockers and showers, where Dr. Grady McKeon had somehow managed to install a salvaged antique Nightingale urinal.
At the end of the arm that hou
sed the medical clinic, there was a full-sized bowling alley with two complete lanes and a rack of balls and shoes, all of which had been personalized with the names of their owners.
Seeing those relics, as well as the scoreboard that had been kept for darts in the bar, made me suddenly aware that all the first people who had ever been down inside Eden were most likely dead.
“This is kind of creepy,” Shann said. She stared at a swirling pink bowling ball with dainty finger holes and a gold-etched name on it that said Wanda Mae.
Wanda Mae was the first Queen of Eden.
She was fertile, left-handed, and enjoyed having sex with multiple partners in Eden. Wanda Mae also liked to bowl.
People in Iowa liked to bowl.
Robby said, “Bowling creeps me out, too, Shann. Except for the fact that it is the only sport that encourages its participants to smoke cigarettes.”
I wanted a cigarette.
I tapped Robby’s shoulder. I did not have to say anything to him. Robby Brees always knew what I was thinking, even when I was thinking about something other than smoking.
We lit cigarettes and backtracked to the final unexplored arm of the place called Eden.
And there we found the most important treasure the silo had yet to offer up: Eden’s Movie Theater.
I will tell you.
VENTILATOR BLUES
BACK IN THE lounge, Robby uncovered a cache of reel-to-reel tapes in the cupboard below the tape machine.
“I would be happy to stay down here forever,” Robby said.
“The future of mankind is . . . Um. Inside our jumpsuits,” I said.
“I wonder what time it is,” Shann said.
“It is time to begin the rebuilding of the universe with hybrid Austin-Shann-Robby offspring,” I answered. I did not want Shann to think about leaving the silo.
Robby held up a box with a glossy black-and-white photo printed on its cover. It held a reel copy of Exile on Main Street.
“It’s a miracle. This is like heaven,” Robby said.
“Eden,” I corrected.
Exile on Main Street, according to Robert Brees Jr., was the most brilliant rock album ever created.
“In Eden, it is permanently the nineteen-seventies,” Robby affirmed.
“I never want to go home again,” I said.
Robby wanted us to spend the night in Shann’s silo.
He said, “Let’s sleep here tonight.”
“I’ll cook dinner,” I offered.
The opportunity was daring and thrilling to me. My heart raced with the thought of an Eden slumber party.
Shann said, “I can’t spend the night with two boys. What would my mom say?”
I said, “She will probably say for you to use condoms.”
“Shut up!” Shann answered.
“You are right, Shann. Eden needs us to not use condoms. It is our duty to repopulate Planet Earth with our handsome Iowan children,” I said.
Robby threaded the new tape onto the machine.
Robby and I smoked. The three of us were having a beautiful time in Eden. We laughed, and I drew pictures of Shann and Robby in their jumpsuits, dancing together.
I asked Robby to recite Dulce Et Decorum Est, and he did. It was beautiful. I wanted to watch Robby kiss Shann. I wanted Robby to kiss her the real way, like I would, but there was no way Robby would just do something like that.
The song that played was called Ventilator Blues.
Everybody walking ’round
Everybody trying to step on their Creator
SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS WHILE SOMEONE ELSE DANCES
HERE IS WHAT happened while Shann and Robby danced together, and I fantasized about watching Robby put his tongue in Shann’s mouth:
Johnny McKeon stepped out into the alley at Grasshopper Jungle. Johnny carried a cardboard banana box someone had left behind in the garage of a foreclosed home in Ealing.
Johnny McKeon intended to toss the garbage into the same dumpster that Hungry Jack ate from at least once per week.
Hungry Jack’s real name was Charles R. Hoofard. Charles R. Hoofard was born in Indiana and had served in the United States Army in Vietnam, where he participated in the extermination of an entire village of women, children, and elderly people. Hungry Jack was now a claw-armed six-foot-tall praying mantis thing, and he was waiting in line to fuck Eileen Pope.
Eileen Pope had been breeding all day and she was near exhaustion. Eileen Pope was also a claw-armed six-foot-tall praying mantis that had just eaten her most recent sexual partner, the Hoover Boy named Devin Stoddard. Devin Stoddard kneed me in the balls on the previous Friday when he and his friends beat me and Robby Brees up for being queers.
I was pretty sure I was not exactly queer.
But I was not certain.
Devin Stoddard was born in Crete, Nebraska. He once got fired from a part-time job bagging groceries at the Hy-Vee for smoking marijuana in a parked car when he was supposed to be gathering shopping carts.
At that moment, Eileen Pope’s husband, Travis Pope, was inside The Pancake House, which looked as though it had been fire-hosed with blood and ground meat.
Travis Pope ate nine people inside The Pancake House.
It was a terrible mess.
Travis Pope had been very hungry after fucking Eileen all day long, ever since they had hatched out in the wreckage of Travis’s Nissan truck. Travis Pope also enjoyed the sugary taste of spilled imitation-maple-flavored syrup on raw human beings.
Travis Pope had never been a blueberry syrup man.
The imitation-maple-flavored syrup served by The Pancake House was made in New Jersey.
At the same time, Johnny McKeon opened the back door to From Attic to Seller Consignment Store, Eileen Pope clamped her four bristly upper arms into the woven fabric on the sofa in Grasshopper Jungle while Grant Wallace impregnated her over and over and over.
Hungry Jack and the two remaining Hoover Boys, who were also now claw-armed six-foot-tall praying mantises, postured and hissed with their toothy arms erect, sparring over who would get to deposit his semen inside Eileen Pope next.
Eileen Pope was nearly finished getting pregnant. She was as fertilized as a genetically modified cornfield in Kansas, and was getting ready to lay millions of squirming eggs. Eileen Pope was still hungry, too.
Eileen Pope decided she would eat Grant Wallace soon, and then she could go find a dark, protected place to build her foaming mass of eggs.
Johnny McKeon did not notice the breeding swarm of bugs as he walked out into Grasshopper Jungle carrying his box of refuse.
The box Johnny carried was full of VHS porno movies.
The movies were made in a place called the San Fernando Valley, which is near Los Angeles, California.
Johnny McKeon did not enjoy watching pornography anymore. He had grown out of that preoccupation. Johnny would have given the tapes to Ollie Jungfrau, but Ollie stayed home from work at Tipsy Cricket Liquors that day.
Ollie was lucky.
Ollie Jungfrau would have wanted those movies. Ollie was a connoisseur of porn, and he especially enjoyed sex films from the 1980s, which was when these particular ones had been made.
It was just past 8:00 on Thursday evening.
Ingrid was still sleeping beneath the desk in my bedroom.
Will Wallace was driving home from the Tally-Ho! in Waterloo. Will Wallace was drunk. He glanced at himself repeatedly in his rearview mirror, and he thought about the young man from Vinton, Iowa, who had been hitting on him during happy hour at the Tally-Ho!
The man who’d been hitting on Will Wallace was a paramedic. He was handsome and lonely. Will Wallace wondered what it would be like if he tried being queer. He had never experimented when he was a teenager, but he tried to imagine himself doing something sexual with the handsome young paramedic from Vinton. Will Wallace was drunk and excited by the thought. He was very horny by the time he got to Ealing. Will knew what he would do to his wife as soon as he got the chance.
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Will Wallace had a vasectomy.
He thought about buying some condoms at Tipsy Cricket Liquors, just in case he ever got especially drunk and daring with anyone in Waterloo.
Will Wallace tried calling home on his cell phone, but there was no answer. Sometimes his wife got angry at him for coming home drunk after hanging out at Waterloo, Iowa’s one and only gay bar. Will assumed his wife was not answering her phone because she was mad at him. The actual reason she was not picking up her phone was that she had been eaten by Grant Wallace, who was at one time Will’s son.
Will Wallace decided to make amends for flirting with a gay man. He stopped off at Satan’s Pizza and ordered a surprise Stanpreme for his wife and children. For dessert, he thought his wife, whose name was Dorothy, would like something sweet and alcoholic. So Will Wallace drove across the street to Tipsy Cricket Liquors, where he planned to buy some condoms for himself, and coffee liqueur and vanilla ice cream for Dorothy Wallace.
It was not such a good idea.
Here is what happened at Grasshopper Jungle while I watched and dreamed about Shann and Robby dancing together:
Johnny McKeon dropped his box of VHS pornos at his feet. He said something like What the hey? or Ain’t that strange? when he saw the six-foot-tall bugs that buzzed and vibrated around the abandoned sofa in the alley.
Johnny McKeon never cussed.
Eileen Pope was crunching her way down through Grant Wallace’s triangular head. Grant was still pumping his semen into her oviduct and his pinchers clamped rigidly into Eileen’s thorax. One of Grant Wallace’s arms broke off and it flexed, opened and closed, opened and closed, wriggling in the stew of piss and insect semen on the asphalt of Grasshopper Jungle.
Tyler Jacobson, one of the other Hoover Boys who was now a six-foot-tall, tooth-armed monster, picked up Grant Wallace’s twitching arm and began eating it like a massive stalk of celery. Roger Baird, the remaining Hoover Boy bug, attempted to mount Eileen Pope and impregnate her as she ate Grant Wallace, who was also still joined with Eileen in the final act of making future clusters of little Grant Wallace larvae inside her.
