The third day rolls around, and our flight back up to New Hampshire is that afternoon. I watch Shary hunched over her cat head, with Judy’s boyfriend sitting a few seats away, and my heart begins to sink. I imagine bundling Shary out of here, getting her to the airport and onto the plane, and then unpacking her stuff back at the house while she goes right back to her game. Days and days of cat-faced blankness ahead, forever. This trip has been some kind of turning point for Shary and the others, but for me nothing will have changed.
I’m starting to feel sorry for myself with a whole new intensity when Judy pokes me. “Hey.” I look up. “We need to stay in touch, you know,” Judy says.
I make a big show of adding her number to my phone, and then without even thinking, say: “Do you want to come stay with us? We have a whole spare bedroom with its own bathroom and stuff.”
Judy doesn’t say anything for a few moments. She stares at her boyfriend, who’s sitting a few seats away from Shary. She’s taking slow, controlled breaths through closed teeth. Then she slumps a little, in an abortive shrug. “Yes. Yes, please. That would be great. Thank you.”
I sit with Judy and watch dozens of people in cat masks, sitting shoulder to shoulder without looking at each other. I have a pang of wishing I could just go live in Graceland, a place of which I am already a vassal in every way that matters. But also I feel weirdly proud, and terrified out of my mind. I have no choice but to believe this game matters, the cat politics is important, keeping Lord Hairballington in his place is a vital concern to everyone—or else I will just go straight-up insane.
For a moment, I think Shary looks up from the cat head in her hands and gives me a wicked smile of recognition behind her opaque plastic gaze. I feel so much love in that moment, it’s almost unbearable.
The Super Ultra Duchess of Fedora Forest
There is a perfect valley, nestled near the foot of the Sherbet Mountains and bordered by the River of Middling Ideas. It’s just a two-day ride away from the Lazy Geyser, which grants good luck to anyone who throws a coin in its path at the very moment when it finally gets around to erupting. There, in that valley, in the shelter of the fedora trees, is the most splendid place in the whole world to make your home.
Once, that valley was home to a small cottage, in which there lived a mouse, a bird, and a sausage. They were the best of friends, with the perfect partnership.
Every day, the bird would fly into the forest and collect wood. The mouse would carry in water from the well, make a fire, and set the table. And then the sausage would cook their dinner, slithering around in the fry pan to coat it with grease for their vegetables or grains.
The sausage had fled the Republic of Breakfast Meats, during one of High Commodore Gammon’s occasional campaigns to purge the realm of improper “meatizens.” (It usually started out with the Canadian bacon, which wasn’t even proper bacon at all, and then spread to those accursed chicken-fried steaks, and then turned into just a general massacre.) The sausage heard the sounds of trucks and loudspeakers, and barely managed to pack up her few precious belongings (such as an MP3 player that contained all of her beloved EDM tunes, which she loved to listen to and dream of becoming a DJ someday).
The sausage had barely made it through the border from the Republic of Breakfast Meats to the Federation of Circus Animals, thanks to some help from a kindly blood pudding who forged some traveling papers for the sausage. Once in the land of Circus Animals, the sausage had found shelter in a trailer with a friendly balloon elephant, who was best friends with an actual elephant. (“People can never tell us apart,” the balloon elephant had said, making a squeaky-squocky noise with his laughter. The flesh-and-blood elephant had just snorted through her trunk.) From there, the sausage had traveled south, skirting the edge of the Monster Truck Preserve.
Once, this land had been home to men and women. People had built the houses and roads, and they had made places for all the creatures of the forest and all the food items of the table. Even the balloon animals and monster trucks had known exactly where they belonged. That had been paradise, and now the men and women were gone, and everyone lived in a fallen state.
That, at least, was what the cartoon Blanketsaurus standing on a sardine crate was saying, on the day when the sausage had met the bird and the mouse. The Blanketsaurus, whose skin was a beautiful soft fluffy wool-cotton blend, had stood facing a crowd of every kind of person you could imagine, in the market square of the town of Zay!. “We’re just all jacked up,” the Blanketsaurus insisted. “Our shiz is a mess, brothers and sisters and others. We can’t ever even have any purpose at all without the humans.”
The sausage had made a dismissive noise, like a sausage makes when she’s getting a bit steamed. “Who needs humans?” she had whispered. “I never even saw a human. Never saw a need for one, neither.”
That was when the mouse had spoken up. “I just don’t know. I sometimes have the feeling that my life has no organizing principle, ya know? I’m living with a bird, in this cottage in the valley, and we’re just playing house. What are we even doing with our lives? Some days, I just want a human to chase me into the wainscoting. And I don’t even know what a wainscoting is.”
“A wainscoting is a sort of musical instrument,” according to a nearby cactus, who was kind of a know-it-all. “It plays mournful sounds, like the wind on a lonely, moonless night.”
“We don’t need any crunking humans,” the sausage had insisted. “We don’t need anybody besides one another. We can make our own rules. You and that bird can figure it out, all on your own.” And the more the mouse had told the sausage about her life with the bird, the more the sausage had piped up with ideas about how to make it work, and how they could get everything set up just right.
So that was how the sausage ended up living with the mouse and the bird, and the three of them had a perfect system. They were able to salvage enough valuable artifacts of the former human world to sell in the town of Zay!, and soon they had amassed a great many fine possessions. Meanwhile, the sausage finally had a place to practice her DJing, and she started spinning at some of the smaller raves and warehouse parties, over near Confetti Canyon. Her DJ rig included a big mic, with various cool effects, and a built-in speaker on wheels, for outdoor parties.
For years, the mouse, the bird, and the sausage lived merrily together. In the evenings, they played video games and worked on their dance routines. The mouse, who had grown up in a barn full of serious square dancers, was learning to throw it down. (The mouse hailed from a farm many miles away, and she always told the bird and the sausage that if you wanted to see serious drudgery, try farm work. Farms were like a chore wheel with a million spokes, man.)
“You guys are the best friends I’ve ever known, man,” the bird said to the mouse and the sausage one night, when they were kind of crunked up on aromatic bark that the bird had brought back from the town market earlier that day. “I’m serious. I never really felt like I belonged with the other birds. But you guys, you are my sisters. I never thought I would find my place in the world with a mouse and a sausage.” The bird was perched on his usual chair back but kept wobbling.
“You too, absolutely,” the mouse said, wrinkling her nose. “I feel like I just always had a sausage-and-bird-shaped hole in my life, and I never even knew.”
“Awww, I love you guys,” the sausage said, greasy tears rolling down her face.
Nobody knew what kind of bird the bird was. He was just “a bird.” People would sometimes try to identify his actual species: like, maybe he was a bluebird because his wings were kind of blue, or maybe he was a robin because his breast was reddish. But the bird would get grumpy whenever anybody tried to label him. Why wasn’t it enough just to be a bird? One reason why he liked being the only bird in the neighborhood was because you could ask, “Hey, where’s the bird?” and everybody would know you were talking about him.
So they went on: the bird fetching wood, the mouse fetching water and setting the table, the sausa
ge making the food and seasoning it with her body. A perfect system!
A few times a month, the bird, the mouse, and the sausage would venture into the town to sell their wares (and to get more DJ gigs lined up for the sausage). They knew everyone: all the scrap dealers, and farmers’ market stall keepers, and truck whisperers, and sno-cone motivational speakers. Everybody had a friendly word for their little makeshift family.
Except, as time went by, they kept hearing whispers. “Things are changing,” said this one scrap-metal dealer, who was a big roast turkey leg. “Good old High Commodore Gammon from the land of Breakfast Meats signed a treaty with Grand Marshal Ruffles from the Circus Animal country, and they’ve both entered into a confederation with the Dandelion Lady.”
“What does that mean?” the bird asked, with a toss of his wings.
“It means, be careful about traveling if you don’t have identity papers and letters of transit,” said the turkey leg, quivering with indignation. “It means, honest businesspeople like myself get to have our goods searched and seized for no reason, unless we pay bribes to the border guards. It means that they’re forming an army and preparing to go to war against the Insect Principality. I would just keep your heads down.”
“But why?” the mouse asked.
“It makes no sense,” the sausage said. “People just want to have a simple life. Gammon should stick to what he’s good at, arresting good innocent salami slices for being too Continental a breakfast item.”
A month or two after that, the sausage saw the big vermilion Blanketsaurus again, once again addressing the townsfolk of Zay!. Only this time, the Blanketsaurus had a fancy uniform with big epaulettes, and his title was Admiral Blanketsaurus. (There was no ocean anywhere nearby, even if you counted the Root Beer Sea, but the Blanketsaurus explained painstakingly that the word “admiral” meant that you had lots and lots of secret admirers.) And now, the Blanketsaurus was accompanied by a few dozen people, all of them wearing uniforms as well.
“Brothers, sisters, and others,” the Blanketsaurus told the crowd in the town square. “Our lives were empty and without purpose. Our creators were gone, and we were living in their world without them. The human race decided to endow a great many things and creatures with higher awareness, and then they were wiped out by a flu virus that had gotten a PhD in linguistics. As a result, we were left behind, possessing consciousness without context. But now, at last, we can prove ourselves worthy of our heritage. We can re-create civilization!”
The Blanketsaurus wanted everyone to swear loyalty to the Confederation and to its leaders, like High Commodore Gammon and the Dandelion Lady. And if you originally hailed from one of the member states—like, say, the land of Breakfast Meats—you would be required to travel home and register there. This was a mere bureaucratic trifle, after which you would be free to carry on as before.
The sausage heard this and nearly cooked in her skin. There was no way she was ever going home, to be subject to the cruel whims of Gammon and his sort. She slipped away while everyone else was cheering for the new, more organized government, and ran home.
“I just don’t get it,” said the mouse, making a fire and setting the table for their dinner as usual. “I mean, why should anybody care what we do with our lives? Isn’t the whole point that everybody gets to live happily ever after in our own way?”
“Well,” said the bird, “they’re just trying to do the same thing we’re doing here, man. We’ve got our perfect civilized setup, right? Each of us has our tasks. The wood gathering, the water, the cooking—we have an order to everything. They just want the same kind of thing, on a larger scale. Right?”
“It’s not the same thing,” said the mouse.
“We’re a family,” said the sausage.
“Sure, sure,” said the bird. But his feathery brow wrinkled a little bit.
A couple of weeks passed, and they all forgot about Blanketsaurus and about the conversation they’d had afterward. Until one day, the bird came home from fetching wood, and his wings were fluttering with anger. He scratched at his chair back as he glowered at his two friends. “It’s an honest disgrace,” the bird grumbled.
“What’s wrong?” asked the mouse, wide-eyed.
The bird kept just muttering and glaring, until he finally explained. When he was out in the woods, he’d met up with another bird who lived a few miles away and had come over here to flutter around and hunt for gumdrops. You know, bird stuff. And the bird—our bird—had started bragging about his situation, and how good he had it, with his friends the mouse and the sausage. They had everything locked down. Everybody had a job to do, and it all ran smooth as butter. And then they played video games and danced to EDM!
But the other bird just fluffed his bright tail feathers and said that it sounded as though the bird was being straight-up taken for a ride. After all, the bird had the toughest job of the three of them. He had to go into the forest and collect the wood, and carry it all the way back to the cottage. Meanwhile, the mouse only had to carry some water and set the table, and a few other chores, and then she could just lounge around. The sausage just had to climb into the pan for a little while and season it. Of course they were happy: they’d suckered the bird into doing all the real work! “I’m glad I don’t have to get bossed around by a rodent and a piece of meat,” said the other bird with a chortle, before flying away.
Now the bird was back at home, spitting mad at his friends. “You think I’m just a chump,” he squawked. “You think you can just treat me like your fool forever. You guys just loaf around here, putting on your fancy airs, while I’m out there dragging wood in from the forest. It’s exploitation, is what it is.”
“But I mean, you’ve never complained before,” said the mouse, her fur standing on end.
“And that’s how you knew I was a sucker!”
The mouse and the sausage tried to reason with the bird, pointing out that each of them had the task that she or he was most suited for. They weren’t trying to exploit anybody, just use their shared resources in the best possible way. And so on.
But the bird was having none of it. He kept insisting that the free lunch was over, and it was about time they shared the workload more equally.
“What do you have in mind?” the sausage asked, trembling with nervousness, but also with the fear that she had lost her friend forever.
“How about we trade jobs tomorrow?”
So it was that the sausage went out to the forest to fetch wood, in spite of all her protests. And meanwhile, the bird would get the easy job of fetching water and setting everything up, while the mouse threw herself into the hot frying pan to get it greased up. If this worked out as it should, the bird had said, maybe they could have a chore wheel from now on.
The sausage felt naked and exposed, moving through the trees with the delicate marbling under her skin visible in the sunlight filtering through the big hats above. She tried to hum a David Guetta song to steady her nerves, but every sound in the woods made her jump. The fear, the uncertainty, were like a lump of gristle in her brain. And meanwhile, she kept arguing with the bird in her head, coming up with more and more reasons why this was unfair and a dreadful mistake, and surely the bird had to see that the sausage was much too delicate to carry wood every day, or even once every three days.
The sausage got so worked up, arguing with the bird in her mind, that she didn’t hear the dog coming up behind her until its hot breath and slobbery tongue were right behind her. She tried to run, but the dog’s jaws closed around her.
“Hey,” the sausage protested weakly, “let me go.”
The dog did let go of her for a moment, just so he could talk. “You’re a mighty juicy sausage,” he whuffed. “But you’re a long way from the Breakfast Meats country. I don’t suppose you have any valid travel papers?”
“Uh—” The sausage fumbled around in her pockets. “I do, I do. I have some right here.”
And she produced the papers that the blood pudding had m
ade for her, so long ago. The dog picked them up in his front paws and inspected them. Now that she wasn’t in the dog’s mouth, she could see that he was a big brown hound, like a hunting dog, with a slobbery mouth and flat ears.
“Hmmm,” the dog said. “This is certainly most interesting. But it’s clearly a forgery. You see this smudging around the great seal of High Commodore Gammon, here? And also, even if this was real, it’s no longer valid. You would have had to return to your home and get updated papers for the Confederation. In any case, you’re carrying forged papers, and thus you are free booty.” He leaned his head in a graceful movement and scooped the sausage up again.
The shout came from behind the sausage: “Let go of my friend!”
The sausage would never know why the bird came looking for her. Maybe the bird felt guilty? Or maybe he just wanted to come and gloat. Either way, he arrived just in time to see the dog carrying her away, and try to intervene.
“Oh, hi.” The dog let the sausage go again so he could address the bird. “Unfortunately, your friend here is carrying forged letters. Which is like ten kinds of a crime. So I was about to carry her off and eat her, maybe not in that order.”
“That’s . . . that’s barbaric!” The bird’s wings shook with outrage, and his feet scraped the forest dirt. “You can’t go around eating people!”
“Civilization has certain rules,” the dog growled. “You break them, you get eaten. This isn’t up to me. I have to follow the same rules as everybody else.”
“You don’t have to eat anybody. That’s not in any rules,” the sausage said, gaining a bit of courage from having her friend there by her side.
“That’s true,” the dog said. “I mean, I could take her all the way back to the Republic of Breakfast Meats, where they would execute her. But that’s a lot of bother, and the end result is the same. And I can tell just by smelling her that she’s got bits of fennel and wild boar in her. She’s going to be delicious.”
Six Months, Three Days, Five Others Page 27
