The Annals

by Petronius Jablonski

  Now, by what criterion are things considered strange or normal? According to the regularity by which they occur, one might respond. Unfortunately, by this standard a halo above a car is quite peculiar and the strangeness vs. normalcy of a great many things becomes a relativistic mishmash. But this is the mere surface of this issue. A true philosopher feels instinctively that the line separating them is, to an enormous extent (if not altogether), arbitrary or illusory. But how can he dig straight to the root of this quandary, to penetrate the imaginary surface and demonstrate the chimerical nature of the distinction for the common man to see?

  “Is the halo stranger than the existence of life itself?” the philosopher asks.

  “Certainly not. What can be stranger than that?” comes the reply from any man with the barest semblance of cognition. “Explanations of life, its origin and purpose, always seem inadequate, as though nothing could feasibly constitute an answer, as though the question is a gasp of dismay, not a serious inquiry. I’d rather not think about it. Isn’t there a ballgame on?”

  “Is the halo stranger than the fact that Something exists instead of Nothing?” the philosopher asks.

  “Absolutely not,” comes the reply from even a business student. “That’s the most peculiar and disturbing fact there is.” Rubbing his temples he cries, “My mind is awhirl. Bring me a video game. I beg you.”

  “And so,” the philosopher concludes, washing off my faithful Shovel, his labor at an end, “the halo is not really strange. Compared to the existence of life, which we see every day, it is perfectly banal. Compared to the existence of everything, it is more akin to a sleeping pill than a mystery. Rather than giving it a pejorative label and running about in a tizzy, it is simply a matter of getting used to it.”

  “Agreed,” chime the man with the barest semblance of cognition and his comrade, the business student. “Let’s all compare cell phones.”

  Now, far from being a mere principle or abstract utility (like Occam’s much-ballyhooed Razor), my Shovel has the unlimited potential for practical, everyday applications. In fact, as the Reader is about to behold, it saved my life, holding my wits together in the face of what a non-philosophic mind would have deemed unbearably strange.

  • • •

  At the abandoned factory the melting snow blended with the earth to create quicksand. On the last night of my former life I slopped through my first round, returned to the office, and decided that taking the chair outside would be a grand way to ritualistically mark the dawn of spring and defy the failing bulwark of winter.

  A moonbeam illuminated my car like the searchlight from a distant helicopter and the halo throbbed with an unprecedented glare. As it flickered with greater rapidity, the flashes became painful and I averted my eyes. “Perhaps it is being recharged,” I said. I should have known better, but naiveté, not cynicism, is the good man’s weakness.

  Before my next round, a frost of apprehension covered me. My heart drove down a flexuous road of all the wonderful times we had shared. I could scarcely pry myself away and walk back inside. I set out, not stopping at the side door for one last look, as I often did. Even now this stings. Regret, is it not a species of mourning, grieving the loss of what could have been?

  Throughout the round my trepidation mounted. Though inured to the garden-variety “strangeness,” I was daunted by the prospect of teaching a tow-truck driver how to use my Shovel in the event of halo-related mechanical difficulties. I returned and approached the side door, a condemned man on his last walk.

  It was gone as though erased from the guestbook of Existence. There were not even tracks in the mud. The predacious moonbeam persisted, little more than a ghostly Roman column, as if sated. I fell to my knees and shook my fists at the sky while lightning bolts of anguish struck me. To escape their furious energy I pounded the soupy earth, battering a hollow in the mud. But nothing could hide from me what I had lost. Verily, the value of what we love is best estimated by the agony its absence instills.

  Heading to the cliff, my only hope for the clarity of Quietude, I ran beside the warehouse. At the edge, swords slashed my sides. (My robust health was a function of manly anaerobic vigor, not the effete aerobic conditioning common to rabbits and roadrunners. Clearly, when the choice of fight or flight confronted my ancestors, the latter was nary a consideration.)

  I bent over with my hands on my hips, gasping for air, my mind astir with fury. A cold rain shimmered the sheets of the lake. The nightlight above fetched my eyes. I rubbed them, not trusting their wild testimony. In the center of the moon sparkled a rectangular sapphire, brighter than any star. I swooned, inhaled for a minute, and from the depths of my being roared, “Return it at once!”

  I did not think my voice could carry that far, but when a man is bereft of reasonable options he defers to the guide of instinct. The twinkling sapphire rent my heart, sending me into convulsions of longing and rage. However, through the use of my Shovel I preserved my wits. Whereas the common man (assuming he maintained consciousness) would have phoned the police or an astronomer, I, realizing the proceedings were no stranger than life itself, took matters into my own firm and capable hands.

  “Damn you,” I howled into a waterfall of rain. “Insolent satellite. The torrent of my wrath shall flood the valleys of —”

  Reason interrupted me with the reminder that the distance separating us rendered threats idle. “When action is not possible, the groveling cowardice of diplomacy becomes necessary.”

  “What is it you want from me? I will give you anything.”

  The rain lessened. The lake became smooth and taught. An unseasonably warm breeze wafted up the cliff.

  “Fool,” said Reason. “Always begin the bidding with a lowball.”

  The breeze abated. I prepared to repeat my offer, with fingers crossed behind my back, when a voice whispered from below, “Petronius Jablonski, Child of the Four Winds, return on the morrow when the sun is highest and your grievance will be addressed.”

  I knelt down and grasped the edge of the cliff. On the beach, in the light of the moon and the sparkle of my Bonneville, stood a dark figure, a tremendous hulking mass. I could not make out its features, only its vast outline. It spread great wings and with a single flap took off, hoisting its colossal bulk into the air and up the cliff. I pulled my head back and lay prostrate, terrified the creature was coming to carry me away. It flew past like a jet while I probed the mud for a rock to brain it.

  “No. This is the only link to your car,” said Reason.

  The bird’s body was the length of a man’s, only broader and red like a cardinal. Padded with dark and mangy feathers, its wings gave it the forbidding aura of enormity.

  “Return here on the morrow when the sun is highest and the terms of your compensation will be explained,” came a voice from above.

  That voice is coming from the bird, I realized. Though my car had been abducted and taken to the moon, the existence of a giant talking bird struck me as far more incredible. (I had, of course, temporarily dropped my Shovel before making this callow judgment. Given the separation from my beloved, surely this lapse is pardonable. In actuality, as Petronius’ Shovel will reveal, neither the bird nor the abduction are any “stranger” than the fact that dirt + water = mud. The ambitious student is encouraged to check the calculations for himself.) The creature circled me thrice before ascending toward the moon, diminishing until only the ivory plate with the sparkling blue crystal remained.

  Instead of walking all the way to my home in Cudahy, I doubled back to the laboratory after my shift. With the insinuation of peril, it was off limits to all sentries. According to an oral tradition passed down through generations of guards, the whole perimeter had been sealed due to a mishap involving noxious potions. One night when I undid the lock, I noticed a distinct but not unpleasant ether-like fragrance, but I did not perish from any baneful concoctions.

  With my lighter I lit the candles Sandy had spread around the couch in the reception room. Appar
ently fleshly unions are impossible in the absence of burning wax, which acts as an offering to some melting deity of Eros known only to women. I removed my filthy uniform and began a search for warmth and comfort in the fetal position. The calmative vapor teased me with hazy remembrances of salacious times as I closed my eyes and the couch began to fall …

  I sat up at the foot of a marble altar carved to resemble a skull, upon which sat a glass bowl filled with coins of many colors. Behind it stood two bald men in green robes. A giant prism looked out on a garden where swordfish flew from a pond and beached themselves. They bounced ten feet and higher but none perished. In lieu of a ceiling, a purple cloud remained fixed by unseen forces.

  Both men put their heads down as though taking naps. I scooped up some coins and threw them across the room. They transmogrified into a buzzing swarm of gold and silver insects. Coalescing in the center, they returned to their native form and landed on their sides. I tiptoed a zigzag path until I found one on its face. Before I could read it, the strange votaries chanted, “The coin is not for sale. Time creeps on, no faster than your snail.” Honey dripped off their faces, a milky film covered their eyes, and their bright robes billowed from a breeze I could not feel. Metal bricks composed the wall behind them, reflecting a thousand twisted images of me.

  On the coin an armadillo stood back to back with a zebra above the inscription UNITED IN THE DRIVE TOWARD PERFECT EQUILIBRIUM. I turned it over and examined a Latin inscription beneath a pterodactyl when a swarm of coins blasted me in the head. I looked up and another iron fist struck. The votaries were pitching them at me. I covered my face and growled, “Stop.” The voice, not my own, echoed across the room, slowing with each enunciation.

  They raised their hands and looked to the cloud and grinned. A hole appeared and grew as they chanted, “What is perfect does not come from practice. The time has come, now, embrace the cactus.” The coin scalded me. When I dropped it, tiny hands pierced the floor and grabbed my feet and I began to sink.

  I sat up on the couch and slapped my cheeks. Thinking the two eccentrics were in the next room, I looked about for a sharp object. “It was just a dream,” I said. “Perhaps this place is contaminated.”

  On the cliff I sought Quietude, affirming the course of events rather than beseeching the inexorable arrow of Time to make a U-turn on my behalf. But even my excellent lessons failed to bridle my foreboding and despair.

  “Fret not Petronius Jablonski, the Venerable Horned One of the Lake has heard your lamentations and has deigned to grant you council,” said a voice. A feathery arm plopped down on my shoulder. It was the bird, only he did not seem ominous in the light of day. His baggy red overalls were obviously intended to disguise his corpulent state, but it could scarcely be concealed. That he could fly at all thrust a damning accusation of inequality at gravity: If a beast in that condition is permitted to transgress aerodynamic mores, then why not I?

  “Prepare to be comforted,” he said, making pecking motions with his yellow beak, which, in conjunction with his button eyes, brought me the opposite of solace.

  A gale-force wind swept the cliff, ambushing us. I clung to the sanctuary of the bird’s stalwart belly. The earth trembled and the sun split in two, amoeba-style. My comforter pushed me away and let out a frightful shriek, “Brace yourself Petronius, and behold the Venerable Horned One of the Lake,” before launching himself with a flap of his wings.

  Half of the sun remained in place; the other half slid down and stopped above the lake. The water bubbled as millions of knives arose: a rack of colossal antlers. I recoiled at the thought of what monstrous creature from the deep they preceded.

  A figure one-hundred times the size of a man took shape behind a wall of steam. In one hand he held a golden scepter with a red tip, in the other a stone tablet. The dense brume shrouding the surface of the lake coalesced with the hem of his vaporous robe. He glided to the edge of the shore, his robe undulating hypnotically, his hair and beard flowing like tentacles. He navigated the scepter around his antlers, raised it over his head, and looked upon me with eyes like wells of fathomlessly deep water. In awe I held my breath.

  “Ahhchooo!” His sneeze knocked me to the ground, uprooted trees, and sent avalanches of sand hurtling down the cliff. He looked at his tablet and cleared his throat. “Petronius Jablonski, Son of Cudahy, Third Cousin of the Four Elements, Potator of Pabst, Student of Silenus, ahchoo!”

  Emerald meteorites exploded all around. I covered my head from the gelatinous shrapnel and clung to the cliff amidst hurricane winds. It must have been the chilly lake air. I, too, suffered from a bit of a cold.

  “Master of Sheepshead, Heir to Porphyry,” he continued, reading from the tablet and waving the scepter to punctuate his declarations. “Apprentice of Sisyphus …”

  Be done with it already, I thought. The histrionic address became monotonous, especially given my unfamiliarity with the strange titles, but I said nothing for fear of offending him. As he prattled on, I stole a glimpse of the half-sun above. Something whirled within. Though obscured by the orange haze, it looked like a huge brick of gold.

  “Summon your courage. You will need it.”

  The imperious gaze from his ancient face filled me with a haunting sense of my insignificance. His permanence mocked the brevity of my existence. I summoned what little bravery I could in the presence of such a being.

  “I, The Venerable Horned One of the Lake, have summoned you so I may offer my condolement and recompense an injustice.” He pointed the scepter at me and stifled a sneeze. “My impudent nephew, Lunis, abducted your car. As you may have noticed, he has been coveting it. I am prepared to return it, absent the stereo. Or, hear me, Petronius Jablonski, I am prepared to make you an offer, one a chary man would long ponder.”

  I moved my lips and tongue in an earnest attempt at speech but the words failed to congeal.

  “In exchange for your Bonneville you will be sent on a journey. Many times I have seen you pace the edge of this cliff in earnest perplexity. You fervently scour the heavens for answers, fretful of not finding them. The answers you want come from the lake. I am prepared to grant you the understanding you seek.”

  The gold bar slowed its rotations and I discerned its nature. I beheld a car, a great and glorious car, an enormous Cadillac, shining like the sun from whence it came.

  “You will make this journey in the Chocolate Chariot,” he said.

  “You mean a black Cadillac?”

  He checked the tablet. “Not chocolate, I meant chosen. You will make the journey in the Chosen Chariot, a chariot of gold, as bright and powerful as the sun.”

  “Oh most Horned One of the Lake, is that the Chosen Chariot?”

  “That’s the showroom model. You will have to supply the car. But it must be a great and noble Cadillac, and it must be colored gold. On your journey you will see many signs. Some will guide you. Some will confuse you. You must summon your wisdom to tell them apart.”

  “What kind of signs?”

  “Stop signs. What kind do you think? Visions, dreams, aberrances in general. If you focus on the guiding ones the journey will teach you all that a man needs to know and your arrival at the Point of Percipience will consummate that enlightenment.”

  “The Point of Percipience?”

  “The Point of Percipience.”

  “Is it on a mountain?”

  “No.”

  “Is it high upon a hill?”

  He scowled.

  “When must I begin the journey? Many grains of sand must pass through the hourglass before the reins of a new chariot feel natural,” I said, knowing he did not hear such dialect from any mortals in this feeble age.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The car and I will need some time to become acquainted before we embark on any journeys.”

  “Yes of course,” he said, nodding his head and antlers thoughtfully. “You’ll be given plenty of time to — ahchoooooo!”

  A vast sect
ion of the cliff fell to the shore in crumbs. Dazed and prostrate, I stared longingly at the heavenly brick. I could have watched it spin forever.

  “Where was I? Oh yes, on your journey you must pay close attention. For this there are two reasons. Carve them on the picnic table of your heart. First, I am spending a fortune on special effects and I do not want it wasted. Second, not all of the signs are important, only some will lead you to enlightenment. You must be very careful about which ones you attribute importance to.”

  The rotations of the Chosen Chariot had nearly ceased, permitting me to ascertain how its rectangularity surpassed that of my Bonneville. Contrary to nonsense inflicted on the Reader by geometry teachers, this property admits of degrees. Whereas it is the primary criterion for automobile greatness, such a car inflamed me in the way finches inflamed Darwin.

  “Petronius Jablonski, do you understand?”

  “And if I choose the right signs?” I said, returning to my feet.

  “You will obtain the deepest wisdom a mortal can possess.”

  Wind lashed the cliff and the Cadillac quickened its rotations. I knew the Venerable Horned One of the Lake would soon depart and there were many things I needed to clarify. In all the furor I could only articulate a few. “How will I know when to leave? How will I know where to go? How will I know if I am paying heed to the right signs?”

  “When the fruit of the mind is ripe, it’s time to go. You’ll receive a map in the mail.”

  The wind blew furiously and the brick returned to a blur. With a terrible crash of thunder the Horned One entangled the scepter in his antlers. “Damn this thing,” he bellowed. He raised the tablet and threw back his head. The half-sun replaced the brick and the water bubbled and made an earsplitting hiss.

  “But how do I know if I am interpreting them correctly?” I said, silenced by the wind and steam.

  “I, the Venerable Horned One of the Lake, bid you, Petronius Jablonski, an enlightening journey.” A funnel engulfed him until only his fearsome antlers remained. He and the ball of fire descended beneath the boiling surface. A subaquatic glow moved to the horizon and disappeared.