Born Weird (8 page)

“Right. The language.”

“Did either of you think to bring a phrase book?”

“Is there such a thing?”

“English? Please?” Lucy said, loudly.

“Duvk my vuvk you dyupif Smericians. Rnhlidh noy yhr only boivrss,” the driver said, loudly.

“We need to go to the Royal Palace.”

“Queen Abba? Your queen? We’re family.”

“Take us to your leader!”

“Nice.”

“Sentrill bizness diskrit!” the driver said.

“Close enough,” Angie said.

The driver started the engine. The car jerked forward and they pulled away from the airport.

“I can’t imagine taking a cab to Windsor Castle and asking to see Elizabeth,” Lucy said.

“Do we even have her phone number? Can you just call the queen? Even here?” Angie asked.

“I seriously doubt that the royal standards in Upliffta and England are in any way comparable,” Richard said. He loosened his tie and undid the top button on his dress shirt. A purple flowered crop none of them could name grew on both sides of the road. And there was an inescapable smell: pungent, fishy and unwelcoming. The closer they got to downtown the stronger it became.

“What is that stink?”

“Sewage?”

“Are they having a plague?”

The driver looked in the rear-view mirror. He made exaggerated sniffs with his nose. “Yhsy dmrll?” he asked.

“What is it?”

“Slönguskinn.”

“What’s
shlongskinn
?”

“Slönguskinn?” he repeated. He took his right hand off the wheel and moved it up and down in a wave-like motion.

“Terrible,” Lucy said.

Even without the smell the back seat would have made Angie nauseous. Newspapers on the floor crunched under her feet. The windows were covered with grime. The stink of fish mixed with the smell of old cigarettes. The engine kept racing, making the car lurch forwards and then slow back down. Angie tried to focus on the hood ornament—which might have been an ox, it was hard to tell—but it didn’t help.

“Stop the car!” Angie yelled.

“Ehsy?”

“Right now!”

“Pull over!”

“She needs to get out!”

“Trlsc! Trlsc!” our driver called. He pulled to the side of the road and stopped. Richard shuffled out. Angie followed, quickly. Three steps from the taxi she bent over and puked on the lovely purple flowers. She did it again. Then Angie glanced up and saw a large sign, which read:

She looked back at the ground and puked again. It was the exclamation marks that did it. This was the first time in her life that Angie was prompted to regurgitate by punctuation. The driver turned on the radio. Richard and Lucy looked at each other and then they began to laugh.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said.

“I’m sorry too,” Richard said. Neither stopped laughing.

“We always knew you were a crybaby …”

“… and now you puke like a baby too!”

Angie looked up at them. She spit. She remained bent over, with her hands resting on her knees. She saw the billboard from the corner of her eye and she puked again.

The taxi didn’t have power steering or power windows but the driver took Visa. Angie wasn’t sure how much y576.78 was, but she was almost positive that she over-tipped. The driver helped them with their luggage and then they stood in downtown Upliffta. The tallest building was five storeys high. Most were two. There was only one stoplight in view. Their taxi drove underneath it, becoming the only vehicle on the road.

“Maybe they really are having a plague,” Richard said.

“What do we do now?”

“It’s over here,” Lucy said. She pointed to her right. Without looking back Lucy marched across the street. Richard and Angie shrugged. They looked left and then right. No cars were visible in either direction and they hurried across the road.

Every store was closed. The streets were narrow and mainly in shadow. The cars parked on them were rusty and unfamiliar. They saw no people as they walked. And then from quite far away they heard a large crowd cheering. Richard and Angie stopped. Lucy continued for half a block before she noticed that her siblings lingered behind.

“Come on!” she yelled.

“Maybe we should go that way?” Angie asked. “Towards the possibility of humanity?”

“But the palace is this way. We’re really close.”

“Are you sure?”

“Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“I’m just here to see Abba,” Richard said. He took his phone out of his pocket. He had no service. “But where is here?”

“It’s less than six blocks away. I promise you,” Lucy said. She walked away briskly. Several moments later Angie and Richard began to follow her again.

They walked past a house that leaned to the left. A large chunk of the road ahead of them was missing.

“I think these cars are Soviet,” Richard said.

“Where the hell are we?” Angie asked.

“I’m suddenly much less envious that my sister is the queen of this,” Lucy said.

“Queen of Shithole-ia!” Richard said.

Angie laughed. Then she ran into Lucy’s back. Lucy did not move. Angie stepped around her. She saw what had caused her sister to freeze.

“I just got envious again,” Lucy said.

“Is that what I think it is?” Angie asked.

“Full scale,” Richard answered.

“How the hell did she do that?”

“She is the queen …”

“She
is
the queen …”

They nodded their heads, unaware that they did this in unison. None of them could really believe it, yet there it was, right in front of them, towering seven storeys high: an exact, fully realized, life-sized version of Abba’s castle.

T
HE
R
AINYTOWN
T
OWN
C
OUNCIL
Planning Development and Construction Committee met every fourth day it rained. Proposals for new buildings were required to include sketches, approximate dimensions and notes on how the structure would improve life for the citizens of Rainytown on both an economic and social level. All five of the Weird children had a vote and for the first two summers everyone’s proposals were automatically passed and built. Then they ran out of floor space and everything changed, since every proposal for a new building meant that a pre-existing one had to be torn down.

Debates began to rage. They all wanted to see their own buildings preserved. At the same time they wanted their new proposals to be green-lit. Alliances were made and deals were struck.

Only Abba, noble of heart, hoping that their better natures would emerge, refused to participate in what she called the corruption of Rainytown. Which meant she had no allies. So they were all shocked when, with only two weeks left of
summer vacation and Kent calling for new proposals, Abba moved to the front of the room. Lucy had already agreed to support Angie’s proposal for the Purple Magic Roller Disco Palace, while Richard was putting his vote behind Kent’s Jungle Cat Galaxy, a combination zoo and planetarium. None of them had time for whatever it was that Abba was about to go on about. Her right hand was holding several pieces of lined white paper and it visibly trembled. Kent raised his wrist and pointed to a watch that wasn’t there.

“Well?” Richard asked.

“I think what Rainytown needs more than anything else …” Abba said. She looked down. She looked back up. “Is a castle!”

The rain could be heard hitting the roof. No one moved. Neither Richard nor Abba nor Lucy nor even Angie had ever thought this big before. Some kind of barrier, invisible and self-imposed, had been shattered. Abba passed around her sketches and no one said a single word and then they all spoke at once.

“Fantastic!”

“It’ll be, like, twice as high as anything we’ve made.”

“Three times.”

“We could use real frosting for the pink walls.”

“It’s like another level. It’s Rainytown squared!”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Could it have a disco roller rink?” Angie asked.

“The Purple Magic Roller Disco Palace!” Abba agreed.

“Can we put it here? Around back?”

“Sure!”

“It’s a massive undertaking.”

“Can we put it to a vote?”

“I don’t think we need to,” Kent said. Even though it necessitated the demolition of the Tragedy Strikes Bowling Alley, It’s Curtains for You Interior Design and the C.U. Soohn Funeral Home, construction commenced immediately.

T
HE QUEEN OF
U
PLIFFTA SWEPT
her waist-length red hair out of her face and tried to make eye contact with her subjects as they parted to let her through. These attempts were unsuccessful. The citizens stared at the ground. On each side of her were four guards in red uniforms. The golden tassels attached to their shoulders fluttered as they walked. When they reached the front of the crowd the guards lifted her up onto a wooden stage.

Queen Abba raised her arms. The crowd, which had been silent, began to cheer. A red velvet curtain was raised, revealing a large glass aquarium. The tank was the size of a car. Inside it a mass of slönguskinn twisted their dark, limbless bodies and snapped their sharp pointed teeth.

Abba climbed six steps and stood on a raised platform behind the aquarium. She looked down into the open water. Slönguskinn broke the surface and then dove back down again. Abba rolled up the sleeve of her purple robe. She raised her right hand. She plunged her arm into the putrid brown water.

The queen smiled; little in the world disgusted her more than slönguskinn. She loathed their slippery bodies. She feared their tooth-filled mouths. A species of saltwater eel, they were the pillar of Upliffta’s economy, but their stink turned Abba’s stomach and their shiny black eyes haunted her sleep. The queen’s smile grew in proportion to her revulsion as she thrust her arm deeper into the tank.

The first one she grasped squirmed away. The second bit her and she let it go. She plunged her other hand into the tank and, using both hands, Abba clutched one and held it firmly. Brackish water splashed onto her face as she pulled it out of the water. The eel twisted and bucked. Its mouth snapped open and closed. Its unblinking black eyes stared down. Abba tightened her grip and raised the fish over her head. The crowd cheered. She slammed the wiggling length of it onto a butcher’s block.

Putting her hand behind its neck, Abba pinned the creature down. The slönguskinn twisted its head as it tried to bite her. Abba tightened her grip. She held out her right hand. A guard rushed to place the handle of a wooden mallet in her palm. Abba raised her arm. She brought the mallet down. She hit the slönguskinn’s head and the creature stopped moving.

This is where the ceremony normally would have ended. Yet Abba raised her arm once more. She brought the mallet down with even greater force. She swung it a third time. She swung it a fourth. She swung again and again and again.
She continued striking the slönguskinn until there was very little of it left to hit.

Raising her head the queen looked over the crowd. It was smaller than last year’s. It was the smallest in memory. She thrust her arms over her head anyway. “Rrl hunyinh drsdon id slönguskinn noe oggivislly oprn!” she yelled. By uttering this phrase she had officially declared the slönguskinn fishing season open.

“May it be my last,” Abba whispered.

The mallet fell from her hand and the guards carried her down into the crowd, which had already begun to part for her.