by Aimee Bender
Near the summit, he noticed a sign posted in front of a thorn bush. A SLIGHT LEFT FOR UNDERSTANDING, it said. Ralph turned in the direction indicated, entering a path that traveled between parallel lines of oaks, each tree equidistant from the others. Overhead, branches tangled in an organic canopy.
He walked this path until he noticed space where a tree was missing. In its place was another sign: GO HERE.
Ralph found himself in a clearing. Looking up, he beheld a towering dildo-shaped building looming a field’s length ahead. Its chimney—jutting from the penis tip—was actually a smokestack, belching out puffs of steam.
He ran to the building, stopping when he saw another sign, this one posted at the door.
THIS IS THE PLACE; KNOCK FOR ANSWERS.
When he did, the door did not swing open, but slid away so quickly that it seemed to disappear. Before him stood the robot, then the old, smoking woman, then the exploded man and a hundred and then a thousand different other faces, all he’d seen before, though most he had forgotten.
Finally, his eyes settled on a beautiful tow-haired woman. She wore a simple white dress that sparkled. A disk of wan light surrounded her head.
“Are you God?” Ralph asked her.
“Yes, I am.”
“I thought you might be scary.” He looked down at his feet as he spoke, humbled in her presence.
“Please, look me in the eyes.” She touched his cheek, her hands warm. “There’s no need for fear.”
Ralph glanced up reluctantly. Her irises were electric blue islands in white seas, and, as he looked into them, nervousness fled.
“So,” she said. “You are finally here.”
He forced himself to look past God’s eyes, and behind her, saw a huge metal room, filled with machines on which thousands of old women in hairnets toiled. “Yes,” he said, “but where am I?”
“This is Heaven, the factory in which all your dildos were made.”
“Really?” Ralph craned his neck to see farther. He noticed a group of old women gathered on a bench by the adjacent wall, painting a line of floppy sex toys. To the right, additional old ladies sat in chairs, hands behind their backs as younger-seeming people in black clothes and helmets stood over them, shoving dildos into their mouths and moving them back and forth, testing for proper circumference, perhaps. To the left, others stuffed finished products into suitcases identical to the one Ralph carried.
She placed a hand on his shoulder. “If you want, we can tour the factory later, but we should be outside now. The eye in the sky must bear witness to this event.”
God stepped across the threshold and Ralph followed. She sat down in a lotus position on the grass. He took this as his cue to take a seat as well, though he couldn’t manage the lotus.
“Tell me, Ralph,” she said, “what is it you want to know most?”
“So, my name is Ralph.”
“Yes, but do tell…”
“I want to know the answer.”
She nodded. “After coming so far, you deserve it. Many dildo salesmen never sell even a single dildo. You sold yours in your first two weeks, though years passed before you sold another.” A smile. “Despite the odds, you remained steadfast, diligently picking up and piecing together clues. Now, it’s time to reward your efforts.”
His nerves felt positively alive, his spine, electric. “Oh thank you!” he effused. “Thank you so much!”
“No need to thank me. Thank yourself for what is to be.” She looked down at his mangled thumb. “But first, let me take care of that. Please, extend your hand.”
Ralph did, and God touched the stump where his nail had once been. Warmth branched through his fingers and down his arm as, like a mushroom, the missing tip grew. “My god,” he said, surveying the digit, looking for seams but seeing none.
“Now, I must prepare...” God closed her eyes, tilted her head towards the sky, linked her forearms and lifted them so that her unfolded hands were bunched near her sternum. It looked as though she might be holding an orb Ralph could not see.
She maintained this position, and total silence, for what seemed to be a very, very long time. Ralph wished she’d hurry up, but said nothing, imagining it wasn’t wise to rush God.
Finally, she arose. “I am ready, so stand, Ralph. Present unto me the final dildo in your case.”
“And then I can be free?”
God said nothing, just smiled, so Ralph handed her the dildo. The passing felt like a sacrament.
She outstretched her other hand, opened it. “And here’s your penny.”
Ralph looked at his ticket out. He saw the usual walrus-face-wearing-a-monocle, but there was now a single word below it, rendered in bas-relief: CONGRATS. He took the coin from her, flipped it over. NOW BEGIN AGAIN said the reverse.
Suddenly, the case by his feet started shaking, and then was enveloped in white light. When the light faded, Ralph beheld at least a hundred violent, angry dildos, flopping on the ground, gnashing their teeth.
“Now go on,” said God, “continue your endless journey.”
Ralph held up his hands. “No, wait … this … this is supposed to be the end! This is supposed to be—”
“There is no end, Ralph. Not here, but that’s okay. It’s the quest that’s noble, not the outcome.”
He shook his head back and forth. “I can’t do this anymore!” A dildo crept up to his foot, and he stomped it. “I just can’t!”
“Don’t worry. Tomorrow, you won’t remember a thing.”
“But I know now, and that’s the problem!”
“There’s no problem.”
He felt on the verge of crying, screaming and breaking things. “Come on, God! Isn’t there something you can do?”
“We could tour the factory,” she said.
“I don’t want to tour the fucking factory!”
God drummed her fingers on her hips. “Okay, Ralph, I’ll lay it on the line. Freedom just doesn’t work for you. You’ll always swirl back to the center, and that’s exactly where you’re going when we’re done here.”
“I don’t understand.”
She laughed. “You sound like someone who hasn’t had this conversation with me a hundred times before, but that’s to be expected.”
Ralph could only look at her.
“You may be mad now, you may even want to kill me, but you’ll come back with that same awe-struck expression you wore earlier, overjoyed to see me and wanting what you think you desire, but ultimately getting what you need.”
He lashed out. “I’ll never come back to you! And this isn’t what I need!”
Her tone was palliative again. “Without dildos and the unfurling road to nowhere, you have no direction, no purpose. You’re not strong enough to assign meaning to life in any other way.”
“No, this isn’t—”
“You’re concerned and agitated, but don’t be. Many have the same problem, and, when the time is right, they’ll return to the center, too. It’s the way it must be, now and forevermore.”
“Maybe they’ll return, but I refuse!”
“But you’ve returned every time before.” She twirled an index finger in the air. “Swirl, swirl, swirl...”
Ralph smacked her hand down. “Not this time! Now is different!”
God laughed. “Now is never different. If it was, do you think this factory would be here, churning out all the dildos for all the traveling dildo salesman of the world? Business is booming.”
Ralph tried to get a word in edge-wise, but God wouldn’t let him.
“You remember that woman on the phone? It wasn’t your mother. It was a voice actor.” She grinned. “Your mother works for us now, in the advanced product testing department with all the other old, dead mothers who have traveling dildo salesmen for sons.”
“No, that’s not true! There’s not a shred of truth in you!”
“The only truth lies in your case, so pick it up.”
“I will not!”
God reached out,
caressed his face. Her hands felt cold now. “You know this is a mistake,” she said, “but you have time to correct it. Just do as I say. We can pretend that this never happened.”
Ralph repeated his declaration.
God shook her head. “I don’t always give traveling dildo salesmen this chance, believe me.” A small flipbook appeared in her hand. “I’ve got pictures. Want to see?”
Ralph didn’t, but she opened the flipbook, showed him a few of its pages.
“This is a mere sampling. I’ve got a bigger book in my office.”
His stomach twisted; he wanted to gag. His legs tried to fold and carry him to the ground, after which they would surely arise from it and carry him back to his case and to his life as a traveling dildo salesman, ad infinitum.
No, he wouldn’t allow it. Maybe terrible things had happened to those poor guys, but that didn’t mean they had to happen to him … and so what if they did?
“My mind hasn’t changed,” he said. “You can do nothing to me. I’m not someone in your book. I am Ralph.” Suddenly, it seemed that there was more to his name than simply that.
Then it dawned on him. “Ralph Stevens,” he added, and couldn’t help but grin.
God’s ears bled at the sound of that name. “Pick up your case!” she shrieked. “Someone must take it, and you’re the only one here that can!”
“No, I’m not the only one!” He dumped the dildos from the case. “I’ll give these to the ground!”
The ground took the dildos not into its mouth—that was a place for pennies—but into its womb. Exiting the resting state, dildos germinated, entangling beneath the surface, becoming a network of helices as the earth spewed a mound of pennies from its bowels.
Ralph smiled. “The transaction is complete.”
The world felt the new growth, started shrieking. God threw herself atop the copper mound, shrieking the loudest of all the shrieking things. She looked up at him, her mouth filled with ivory tusks. “You can’t do this!” she screamed. Her words were muffled and slurred.
“I already did!” He pointed at the pennies. “They are mine, and there’s nothing you can do!”
The bottom half of God’s body became that of a walrus. Ralph almost laughed at the sight. Seconds later, her top half followed suit. She even had the monocle, though it was hard to think of God as female now.
The God-thing barked and belched as its flesh started to flake, then crack and peel. It tried to clutch at Ralph’s pant leg with a flipper. That flipper fell off, followed by tusks, the other flipper and even more vital parts. Something white and foamy shot from God’s mouth before the remains of its brown, flabby body went rigid and rolled to the left of the penny mound.
Ignoring God, Ralph took handfuls of pennies and dumped them into both coat pockets, then into his pants.
Up ahead, he heard a sudden commotion. A mob clamored up the hill, approaching him from the west.
Ralph recognized some of the people, though he did not see his last customer. The man who had beaten him prior to exploding headed the line. To his left was the once-motionless smoking woman, now running as fast as the newly reconstituted man. Behind them, in an unbroken and seemingly eternal line, fanning out from left to right, were potential customers from days and months and years past. Some carried impromptu torches, fashioned from sticks or broken furniture legs wrapped in kerosene-dipped cloth. Others carried pitchforks.
From the opposite direction, orb passers sprinted from the woods. They shook their fists and hurtled their balls at him. One impacted against a tree, leaving a hole big enough for Ralph to see through.
The closest thrower hurtled a second orb. There was no avoiding it. Ralph stopped, took a deep breath, knowing that, if he died, at the very least, he wouldn’t die as a traveling dildo salesman, but the thing passed through him, leaving only an electrical sensation in its wake.
The first pitchfork-wielder reached him. Like the orb, his weapon had no effect.
“Die already!” screamed the man who had exploded. His body swelled as he tried to stab again.
The old smoking woman said nothing, but attempted without success to brain him with her torch.
The robot bleeped, and then caught fire. But it wasn’t just the robot that had malfunctioned. Everything started to burn as dildos completed the germination cycle.
He turned away from it all then, away from the rows of houses, the endless streets, the orb passers, killing machines and the factory and its god. As he walked, the world peeled slightly at its edges. The bright tip of something different shined through. Ralph could barely see whatever it was, but, somehow, it seemed like stuff from memory.
In his pocket, the phone started ringing. It was his faux-mother. Fuck her. She was probably on fire, too.
EPILOGUE
Ralph took the path back down the hill, surrounded by burning trees and sky, but didn’t get far before he noticed that the footpath ahead of him had changed into a road. About twenty yards farther, Ralph saw a bus stop.
He only had to wait a minute for the bus to arrive. Its door opened and the same driver—it was always the same driver—regarded him, seemingly not fazed by the conflagration going on all around him. “Hello, Ralph,” he said.
Ralph nodded, but did not move. He’d been rebuffed so many times before, and, worse yet, flames had broken out on the street between him and the bus.
“Why are you just staring at me? Get on.”
“I can’t. Too much fire.”
“Just walk through it.”
Figuring he had little to lose, Ralph did. He was impervious to the flames. Still, he paused just before reaching the bus. Crossing its threshold seemed more challenging than a walk through fire. “I can get on now? Really and truly?”
“Really and truly.”
“It’s … as easy as that?”
The man smiled. “Sure is, but hurry. I’ve got other salesmen to pick up down the line.”
“But I don’t have a ticket.”
“That’s alright.” The driver pointed to his case, lying in the middle of the road; Ralph didn’t remember dropping it. “Leaving that behind is better than a ticket.”
Ralph put his left foot on the step, then his right foot. Past the steps, he looked around at his fellow passengers. The bus was packed. He noticed that no one carried cases or luggage of any kind, and all were dressed in suits identical to Ralph’s.
Finally, he found a seat. The passenger across from him, a scrawny-looking middle-aged fellow, turned his way. “Hello, there,” he said as the bus took flight.
“Hey,” replied Ralph. “You’re a salesman, too?”
He grinned. “Was.”
“Oh, sorry.” Ralph tried to smooth over his faux pas with pleasantry. “So, how long were you selling?”
“87.3 years.”
The man didn’t look a day over forty. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“But how do you know? And how were you able to keep track of time?”
“I didn’t know, and I couldn’t keep track.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
The man shrugged. “It just came to me a few minutes ago, and, if you wait, I bet the same will happen to you.”
It was all coming back to him now. “You’re right,” Ralph said.
“So, how many years has it been?”
“11.6.”
A toothless old man in front of them turned, said, “Hell, you’re both youngins! I’ve been doin’ this for 121 years!”
A look of amazement spread across the other man’s face. Ralph was amazed, too. He almost wished he could bow, but couldn’t, as he was sitting down. Instead, he stared out his window, watching people burn from on high until they flamed out. Then larger things crumbled: trees, the factory and the ground beneath it, falling away and becoming nothing, or maybe something else entirely.
When he was too far up to see anymore, Ralph turned back to the front of the bus. The eye in the sky was
so big that it filled the driver’s window.
“You were watching it burn, weren’t you?” the man across from him said.
“Yeah,” replied Ralph, still staring at the eye. “But couldn’t you see it, too?”
“No, buddy. That was your stop. But I watched it burn at mine and loved every minute of it.”
He turned to him then. “Wait… You saw God and the factory and got the coin, right?”
The man nodded.
“But if it burned for you, then it couldn’t have burned for me.”
He shrugged. “I guess we all have our own versions of this place.”
“I wish every version would burn,” Ralph said. “And I almost wish I could stay to help burn them.”
“Nah, that’s too much responsibility for one man. We can’t help other salesmen, you know. We can only help ourselves.”
With that, the man picked up a magazine wedged between the seats in front of him, and Ralph sat back to enjoy the rest of the ride, the eye so prevalent now that only the big blue iris and pupil were visible. When he glanced back out his own window, Ralph saw a billboard, hanging in the middle of nothing in the sky. YOU ARE NOW RE-ENTERING, it said.
It seemed as though the sign was incomplete. You are now re-entering what? But then he thought about it, and decided it really did make sense.
Turning around, Ralph saw what was on the back of the sign through the bus’s rear windows:
YOU HAVE RE-ENTERED.
The bus traveled into the pupil of the eye, and the eye blinked.
WE WITNESSED THE ADVENT OF A NEW APOCALYPSE DURING AN EPISODE OF FRIENDS
BLAKE BUTLER
1.
The complications of the coming death of Earth or some part of it became apparent as 59.6% of all television-owning American households were watching Friends. Families sat huddled around their flat-screen LCDs with take-out containers and microwave-safe plates, eating in silence under the blaze of weird color as Ross and Rachel and Chandler and Joey and Monica and Phoebe moved about the screen. The viewers viewed without blink or comment as the handsome actors delivered their lines with a timed precision and jocular wit many at home had tried to replicate in their own lives—employing small approximations of the ease and subtle exit strategies demonstrated by these now all-too-familiar characters in their amusing manifestations of minor duress—and yet most had yet to find such triumph. Despite buying the products by the same designers as provided in the actors’ wardrobes, having their hair quaffed by professionals into some approximation of what they’d seen on screen, most of the viewers’ days went on the same as they always had, one after another. Many sat alone in their cars on the way home from work thinking of who they’d been and what they might be, sick for the simple arbitrary direction of a popular television sitcom. Still they smiled wryly to themselves at the jokes not funny enough to laugh aloud at despite the bright intonation of the canned studio response, intended to make their brain more rapidly produce serotonin and other similar chemicals that would leave them with a feeling of productiveness and goodwill. At night they’d sleep that much more soundly. They would hold the tickle in their heads.
