Spectacular Moments of Wonder with Dr. Monocle: That Certain Gentleman

by John Theesfeld

  It is very rare that one bitten by a fungus vine will survive the insanity and regain composure and a level-head once the hallucination begins, although the right amount of antidote given at the right time can be integral to the healing process. At that moment I felt very lucky to be through with the worst of it, but this room was to be a bit of a nuisance. Somewhere in my mind I thought it to be advantageous to use a candle from the chandelier to burn a wall down, but upon second inspection, the ceiling was vaulted beyond reach and growing out of sight.

  The carpet began to crawl. It moved and swirled like sea foam, but on top of and within more sea foam. I feared to move. The walls began to push in towards me. Red plush began creeping up my leg. I was consumed within the swirling mess. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I tried to break free, but to no success. With movement, my predicament worsened. I was powerless, sucked into the red void. I tried shaking my head from side to side. I tried swinging my arms and legs. I couldn’t breathe. I was suffocating. Gasping for air, grasping for breath. My chest wouldn’t move. My throat held still, paralyzed. And just when I thought I could take no more, my breath hit me like a gust of wind off the Northward prairie. Cold to my lungs and fresh to the point of biting. My eyes opened wide and it all rushed back to me, like a flood of reality saturating me. This reality, not the one I was accustomed to.

  As my eyes absorbed the illumination, I found I was in the living room of a modern, upper class home. There were high-backed chairs upholstered with the finest fabric. The walls were decorated with an intricate floral pattern, black on white. A large mirror hung on every wall, each framed in gold. There was an ornate floral arrangement on the grand round table in the center of the room. The floor was hard wood, a fine finish without a scuff to be seen. A shine that reflected the lights and shadows of the world above.

  It seemed like a home one might find in upper Haverton Falls. It was grandly exquisite; an architecturally precise building, it seemed. Perfect in almost every way. I walked from the sitting area into the next room, apparently the machine room. About half the room looked as the other did, but the opposite left corner was slightly different. In a word: Gears.

  The room seemed to transform from classic elegance to mechanical elegance. These gears cut through the walls, the floor, and through the ceiling. The gears rotated, teeth interlocked. It was certainly a marvel. I stepped further into the room.

  The light began to dim. I couldn't tell for certain from where the light source came, for there weren’t any windows or lamps. It was slow, barely noticeable. I heard my name called out from behind me and I turned, instinctively, to see who was there. I found no one, just the wall. And again, I heard my name, "Arthur," called from behind me. And again I turned to find nothing, but the wall.

  "What is this trick?" I called out and waited for an answer.

  Where was the door from which I entered this room? It seemed to have disappeared. I remembered something about a goat, just then. I couldn’t figure out why at the time. And I thought of the blue man with all of the teeth. Was this his home, I wondered. At least the residence seemed free of bears. Why would there be bears, I wondered further. A realization hit me, but there was no information behind it. I was lacking answers. I was lacking understanding.

  “Arthur,” the voice called once more and I turned in its direction.

  There the gravend perched. Staring at me, perhaps through me. The odd black bird grumbled its muffled squawk of a warble and spread its wings for a good stretch. I suppose I hadn't noticed it. Was it there all along? Surely not, I would have noticed it immediately. Such a large black bird standing atop a perch on a black iron mast. I stepped closer to the bird, I came in close enough to see my reflection in its large, shiny black eyes. Its beak could tear my throat to ribbons in a moment, if it so wished. I suppose one of us would have to eat the other eventually. There seemed no way out.

  I walked over to the machinery in the wall. I marveled over how the wall seemed molded all around the various sized jutting gears and cogs. The wall wasn't just cut straight around the strange organization of metal, it zigged and zagged in all directions as if the wall was built around it. I tried to get a better look within the gear works, but it was dark, just more gears and cogs and metal.

  I turned to the gravend, “Where am I?”

  The bird looked at me and cocked its head and back.

  “Who are you? What is this?” I asked the bird as I stepped in closer to him. “How do I get out of here? Where am I? Who are you?”

  The bird squawked as if to interrupt me. He stretched his wings out far and wide and gave them a good flap. The sound of two gears slipping and coming back into place sounded from behind me. I could see a few gears rattle and wobble. An awful grinding noise sounded. I looked back to the gravend, who was now humanoidal, wearing a suit and top hat, and sitting in a high-backed chair. His suit was dark, but not as dark as his feathers. His face was wretched, a long beak and large black eyes; long talons as fingernails on each of his four long fingers. This gravend gentleman looked at me from the corner of his eyes. He looked stern and bad tempered. He reminded me of a ghost. At the time, I was confused, I thought the world was populated by these gravend bird men. I believed these were what GhostWurks agents were. Behind their masks were these bird men.

  “I’m not certain where I am,” I said to the gravend gentleman, “I think I may indeed be lost. Would you happen to know where we are, by chance?”

  “Nowhere,” the gentleman said with a squawk, “nowhere. This is nowhere and nothing is nowhere.” He squawked something awful, “Nothing, nowhere, no time. No one. Definitely not us.”

  “This has to be somewhere,” I reasoned, “for we’re here. I’m certain if someone asked where I was, they’d counter, ‘Oh, he’s got to be around somewhere,’ so this is somewhere or at least around somewhere.”

  The gentleman squawked again.

  I looked all around, again; same room, same gears, same bird man in a high-backed chair, “Looks like something. And I would argue that since this isn’t happening all at once, there must be time. Say what you will, I think you may be mistaken on all counts. What do these gears do, by the way? Would you happen to know that?” I pointed behind me to the gears jutting from the wall and floor and ceiling; the entire corner of the room, “You did noticed these, yes?”

  “Ah!” He said and squawked. He stood up quickly and gave a slight pause. He then took three giant strides across the room with his long, bony bird legs. I could see the outline of his bony, knobby knees outlined through his pants. His socks were loose and scrunched low on his ankles. His pants tailored a little high. His actual leg like the crinkly skin of a bird that had molted. He examined all around the gears, moving his body in strange jerky undulations like a confused, but curious, rooster examining something odd in the barnyard. He pecked at one of the larger gears with his long black beak. The tapping of the bone onto the metal sounded loudly within the room.

  Then, without notice and terribly abruptly, from his crouched position with his head cocked nearly upside down, he turned and sprang to, cocking his head the other direction and eying me deeply. My stomach turned and rattled as my heart worked my senses into a heightened state.

  “Are you doctor?” Mr. Gravend said in a drawn out tone eerily like the wind whistling a warning to sailors who dared venture out on choppy waters. There was a definite foreboding in his high-pitched whine. He repeated himself again as he came closer, his head slowly moving from one side to another in strange angles. “Are you doctor?” Each time his tone and manner of speech changed, each as bothersome to the ear as the last.

  I finally spoke out, “What are you doing?” I asked him not expecting any kind of rational answer.

  He asked his question again and I replied, quite frustrated, “Yes, I am a doctor; who are you, might I ask?”

  He stopped in his tracks as the room began to gently vibrate beneath our feet. The decoratively carved legs of the high-backed chair reverb
erated against the hard-wood floor. Once loosened from its spot, rapidly minute vibrations made the chair to look as if it was gliding across the floor.

  There was a sound below the floor, that of grinding metal. Long, drawn guttural growls of grinding metal. Mr. Gravend looked all around, “You brought this! You brought this!” He turned and took two strides to the wall behind him. There he began pecking at the wall.

  The vibrations turned into larger rumblings. The wall where Mr. Gravend pecked began wearing away immediately. His beak tore through the wallpaper effortlessly. The wall behind it started cracking away in no time. The more he broke away at the wall, the harder the rumbling came. Eventually the entire room was shaking violently. Mr. Gravend had pecked through a good half-arm’s length into the wall. I could barely keep from falling over. My knees felt as if they were going to buckle. The gears began to slip in and out of place which caused parts of the wall around it to crack and break away. The floor began to splinter.

  Light broke through the wall as Mr. Gravend pecked away at it endlessly. I fell to the ground, the shaking grew so violent. The plaster of the ceiling began to break away in large pieces which shattered onto the floor.

  A large piece came crashing down by my feet. Almost instinctively, as if I were being operated like an automaton, I reached for the large piece of ceiling and pulled myself up from the shaky ground. I hauled the piece of ceiling over to the gears and shoved it in. I don’t know why I did this, but I did. Then I stepped back as the gears tried forcing through the blockage.

  Mr. Gravend turned from his pecking and gave a good squawk. We both stared at the gears, now jammed, trying to push through another rotation without success. A sound emanated, from nowhere in particular, but most probably as resulting from the gears stopping. The sound was that of prolonged grinding boom. It took over everything. I could not only hear it, but I could see it, as well. It gently scratched the eyes into a tickle. I could begin to smell it. There was an odor of burnt pine with a slight aroma of licorice mixed in. Mr. Gravend seemed to be squawking miserably, but I couldn’t hear him over the never-ending tone. It seemed to be a continually grinding tone, yet never reaching anywhere particular within the musical scale. Just never ending.

  The group of gears began rattling. The sound grew to the point that it became a world of its own. I seemed to have gone deaf. This ever pervasive sound, like the constant barrage of waves crashing unto shore, filled my head until there was no sound at all. Time, perhaps events, began to decrease in speed, or so it seemed. A moment seemed to slow to that of a lifetime.

  The gears shifted back and forth. Long spindly cracks began to appear in the wall from where the gears jumped and swayed. I watched them, wondering which gear it was going to be. Which gear would crack? Or perhaps bend? Maybe a tooth would chip off. Or two larger gears might even force a smaller one out of the mix. Whichever the case, I was waiting for that moment even though I knew the resulting moments would be catastrophic. I tried telling Mr. Gravend that the gears were going to rupture something terrible. He was busy squawking and couldn’t hear me anyhow. I couldn’t hear myself. I wasn’t sure I was even making sound.

  A top piece of the wall shattered and fell away from us, outside of the room. The glow emanating from the room illuminated the outside, a plethora of gears all jammed and waiting to either collapse or burst back into rotation.

  I looked back to the wall where Mr. Gravend pecked away. There was light. There was something beyond these gears. I ran to that wall, past Mr. Gravend, and tried looking through, to no avail. The wall was too thick; the hole was too deep. It seemed to be just a thick slab of hardened plaster. It broke away like chalk. I clawed with my fingers and pulled away at the wall itself in little pieces. Sometimes a good sized piece would fall away. Other times, I could only feel grains of powdered rock gather beneath my fingernails. I ground my fingertips inwards and clawed away. I looked over my shoulder to witness more of the wall and ceiling crumble down and away. I do believe my fingertips were bleeding at some point during this horrific experience.

  The room seemed to crack in several places all at once, perhaps it was a quick succession. The walls began falling away in pieces. Soon enough I was able to get my fingers through and pull out more and more of the wall. Eventually, I was able to get four fingers of each hand through and pull a large chunk of wall away. So much came crashing down, I fell backwards. There was something there, I’m not sure what. I reached for it as I felt the floor break away beneath my bottom and I fell.

  And that, was that.

  39

  I awoke with the late morning light piercing my eyes. I was in a bed. I was warm and comfortable. I was confused. Most importantly, I was alive. Although groggy, I was now awake for the first time in, what I would come to find out was, several days. My eyes were dry and ached. I saw the figure sitting in the chair next to me, reading a book. Another figure in white moving about the room.

  “Abby? Abigail?” I barely managed to say, I’m not sure it was clear or even audible. I cleared my throat and coughed. As my vision cleared from the blurry haze of sleep, I could see it was Harold.

  “Arthur!” Harold snapped his book closed and rushed to my side, “Don’t get up. Just rest. You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”

  “Where am I?” I asked, my voice now clear and fuller, but still weak.

  “You’re in the hospital,” Harold placed the book on the side table, “how are you feeling?”

  “Hospital? What hospital?”

  “Relax, Mr. Monocle,” the figure in white, a nurse, responded, “I’ll fetch the doctor for you.”

  She put down a fresh bedpan and whatever else she was involved with and left the room. I looked around the room. I adjusted in my bed. I was achy, but in fine shape. I felt clean and figured that I must have been washed just recently. Through the window I could see several marvelous bridges and the metroscape, I recognized it as Bridgeport.

  “Royal Huntsmen found you. You were near-death,” Harold took his spectacles off and placed them in his breast pocket, “you were lucky to be found at all.”

  “The Fool?” I mumbled. “That Fool Assassin, what happened to him, did they get him? The rest of the Bedfellows?”

  “My word, you’re delirious,” Harold had himself a short chuckle.

  “Where are we? Are we in Bridgeport?”

  “Aye, Bridgeport.” Harold responded and thought a moment, “What is this now about bedfellows and assassins?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” I reached over to my nightstand and plucked the monocle from the table top and affixed it to my left eye, “just a gaggle of ne’er-do-wells looking to profit from my demise.”

  I could hear the commotion rumbling down the hallway, making its way closer to my room before erupting through the door. A medical doctor followed by Frodderick Wormfodder and Admiral Elloitt Emerald.

  “Good day, Dr. Monocle,” the doctor said, “I’m Dr. Milttan-” before being interrupted by the loud and cantankerous duo of doom booming their greetings to me loud enough to wake the dead. They were sincerely glad I was alive and in one piece, but even more so now that I could get back to work immediately. Pressing matters are pressing, to quote the Admiral.

  “Ah, Arthur!” Wormfodder greeted me, “So good to see you up and about.”

  “Well, up, anyway,” I retorted.

  “Oh, you’ll be out and about in no time, Arthur,” The Admiral boomed, “no time at all!”

  I uncovered myself and swung my legs around the edge of the bed. I was dressed in a white sleeping gown, comfortable enough. There were slippers waiting for me at the side of my bed, I slipped them onto my feet. I stood, Harold on one side, The Admiral on the other, each supporting an elbow, but I wasn’t really in need of assistance. As all were assured of my steadiness, they backed off.

  “See that, old chap?” The Admiral said, “Up and about.”

  “Not for long,” I motioned over to a rocking chair in the corner and they helped me over.<
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  That little jaunt from the bed to the chair was quite the bit of work. I looked over to my right, by the door was my top hat and umbrella. Hanging up on the back of the door was my tweed suit. It looked as if it had been cleaned and freed of Chasm dust. A silence hung in the room.

  “Well, I suppose a debriefing is in order,” I patted at my chest looking for my pocket notebook out of habit.

  “Actually, no, Arthur,” Wormfodder spoke up, “there will be due time for that. We don’t want to rush you, but we are in need of your assistance.” He stood next to the bed as The Admiral sat down upon it. Harold retook his seat in the other chair.

  The men looked to Harold, he rolled his eyes, “Arthur, it seems The University has a bit of a conundrum.”

  “Oh,” I was interested and curious, but had no idea what was going on. I was still a bit confused and just at a loss when it came to my own personal comfort. The more I looked at these familiar men in this unfamiliar setting, the more surreal it all became.

  “The three young men sent out,” Harold started, “Atticus, Devon, and Endleman, they’ve not reported back and seem to have gone missing.”

  I sat there for a moment and thought. I looked at Harold and then to The Admiral who sat there, unblinking. I looked to Wormfodder.

  “Hand me my umbrella,” I said to no one in particular, but Wormfodder reached over and handed it to me since he was closest. I used it to stand up from the chair and lean on. I took a few steps over to pick up my hat and place it on top of my head. I adjusted my monocle just so. There I stood in my bed gown with my top hat on my head and monocle upon my eye, umbrella in hand and slippers on my feet.

  “Well,” I proclaimed, “let’s go find them, then. Shall we?”