Duck Boy (19 page)

Chapter 16

Steve stood in another place.

“It worked,” he whispered, while exhaling. Then inhaled.

Breathing is good.

The sky radiated a subdued gray light, like an early morning sky an hour before
the sun rises. Steve stood on some kind of surface; he was still holding his
plaque and the dictionary inside of his backpack. He let go of both items,
allowing them to fall to the bottom of the pack, and slipped it onto his back.
His arms still felt odd, as if they had lost circulation. Darts of feeling shot
up his arms as he regained control of his hands.

This place was neither warm nor cold. The sun was just coming up or going
down, so it was neither light nor dark. It wasn’t snowing. In fact, it hadn’t
snowed.

Is this another time zone?

Steve had left night behind at the school. He left winter as well, it
seemed. He didn’t feel as if he were outdoors anymore: this place was too warm.
Though it didn’t feel like indoors either: it wasn’t quite warm enough. No
sound—no birds, no traffic, no planes. No breeze, though the air carried an
earthy, primal smell, like the smell of freshly turned soil in the spring.

He scanned the horizon, looking for a recognizable object that might clue
him as to where he was, but he could see nothing familiar. No buildings. He
couldn’t even really see what he was standing on. He bent down to feel the
surface. His fingers slid over a completely smooth surface—like linoleum or a
marble floor, perfectly smooth and dark.

The weak lighting prevented Steve from putting a name to the color of the
ground. Perhaps black. The land looked flat, as though it stretched on for
miles, like some great plain.

This place feels empty.

He took a step, carefully, setting down a foot in front of him.

Maybe this is all mud, or water.

But it held. He took another step. And another. His feet clicked on the
ground as on a hard floor. So he began to walk.

Am I the only human here?

He fought the urge to yell a “hello,” to see if anyone would answer.

But that might bring on more trouble than I can handle.

Each step he took tick-tacked loudly in this place.

“Hello, Whole One,” said a voice behind him.

Steve whirled around to find a sort of a mask, depicting a hollow human
face, floating in front of him. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female, old
or young, beautiful or ugly.

Steve shivered at the sight of this hovering mask of a face. “Um… hello.”

I’m dreaming. Maybe I did die.

“What is it you seek?”

“Where am I?”

“There are many names for this place. There are too many names for this
place, I couldn’t begin to tell you, nor could you begin to understand.” The
mask paused. “You are a Whole One,” said the mask as if the words “whole one”
somehow explained Steve’s lack of ability to comprehend. Steve decided to
change the subject.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am the face of this world. I am the only thing permitted to share
recognizable wholeness to communicate with visitors to our world.”

“Am I dead?” Steve asked, genuinely concerned.

“No, you are not, which is why I am here.”

“What world is this?”

“I cannot say. It is a world of so much. I cannot begin to describe it. I
suppose you could call it a world of pieces.”

“The World of Pieces? What do you mean? Where is this?”

“It is here, Whole One,” replied the mask.

This isn’t planet Earth any more.

“When you say `whole one,’ do you mean human?” Steve asked.

“I mean whatever you are, if you are anything at all.”

“I see. Do you have any other whole ones here?”

“Yes. I should think so. We have everything here.”

“What do you mean you have everything? I haven’t seen a single thing here.”

“Oh, you haven’t? Speak the name of something out loud,” the mask commanded.

Steve glared at the mask and said, “Car.”

With a whoosh a ghostly image of a car appeared in front of him. Steve could
tell it was a car, but not what kind of car. It was just some vague kind of a
car.

“Whole one,” Steve said. A picture of Steve appeared. Steve stood staring at
a ghostly image of himself.

“I’d like you to follow me,” said the mask. “You look tired, so we would
like to offer you some hospitality—perhaps a meal.”

“I’m looking for my mother and my Great Aunt Shannon. I’m not sure I have
time for hospitality.”

“You must refresh yourself. You look tired and hungry,” said the mask,
sweetly.

Steve felt his tiredness hit him suddenly, like a tsunami. He wanted to
sleep. The thought of a meal caused him to salivate.

“Why don’t we make you a meal—a feast for a Whole One,” the mask said. Steve
nodded timidly to hide his enthusiasm. He balanced his thoughts between a meal
and his quest to find Aunt Shannon and his mom. The meal felt more important at
this particular moment.

“Where is my mother?” Steve asked suddenly.

“What is a mother?” questioned the mask.

Steve struggled to frame the question so the mask might understand. “I guess
you would say that a mother is a whole one who gives birth to other whole
ones.”

“Ah, we do have a mother here,” said the mask. A ghostly image of a motherly
figure appeared. It wasn’t Steve’s mom. It just somehow seemed like everyone’s
mom, and no one’s mom.

“Is my mom here?” Steve asked emphatically.

“We have fingers and toes, lips, fingernails, tissue and lipstick. Your
mother couldn’t be here.”

“But you said you have everything. You must have my mom here, too,” Steve
asserted. “She came here a couple of years ago. My great aunt is here, too.”

The face seemed to grimace. “We have teeth, nostrils, earlobes, and ankles.
Bits and bytes, baskets and gaskets, atoms and molecules—glorious, perfect
pieces.” As it spoke a lump seemed to rise out of the ground just ahead of
them.

“What are you talking about?” Steve asked.

“I’m not talking about anything—we’re just using words, stringing letters
together—one letter, then another one, and then another one.”

The mask turned towards an opening in what looked like an elaborate, lavish
tent. Steve followed. Inside the opening was a palatial dining room with a very
long wooden table. The table was covered with food. Steve walked over to the
food and grabbed at a grape he saw before him. His hand reached the grape and
closed around it. But his fingers passed right through it. His fingers were
grasping at the air; the grapes wouldn’t feed him—they were ghosts of real
grapes.

“You cannot eat this food yet,” said the mask. “We must perfect you first.”

“It’s not real food.”

“It’s not real food, because you aren’t a part of this world yet. You are an
imperfect collection of imprints—a Whole One. This world contains the seeds of
what might be, pieces that can be put together, arranged in any way that might
suit us. We have found our perfection, not by embracing generalizations, nor by
finding universal truths, but by breaking things apart.”

“Sorry. Don’t follow,” Steve snipped, testing to see how this entity handled
his tone.

“Whole Ones, like you,” continued the mask, “are the only things that
struggle with what is right and wrong. You are the only things that suffer the
pain of whole existence. Your smaller parts do not suffer as your whole self
does. Your skin cannot feel disappointment. Your eyeball doesn’t want a mother.
Your foot doesn’t ask why it exists.” The mask paused. “You see, your molecules
can’t be right or wrong. They just are. And perfectly so.”

“But you can’t do anything if you’re in pieces,” Steve argued, his hunger
flavoring his words.

“Your talent is perfect until you use it, as a glass of water is most
perfect before it’s sipped. Perfection exists only as we are about to use our
pieces to do something. If we actually succeed, we lose the perfection in the
trying.”

The mask’s smooth silver voice brought out Steve’s tiredness. He stared
impatiently at the food.

“You can be perfect if you come and live with us.”

“What will happen to me if I live with you?”

“You will be perfect. Your mother’s disappearance won’t bother you anymore.
You won’t have to face the police if you stay here. You won’t have to go to
school any more.”

Steve felt sleepy. “How do you know about my mother?”

“I know everything about you, Steve,” the mask replied, tenderly. “I can see
everything that you ought to be. And I can see what’s left over. Do you want to
eat? What you see before you is the perfect food. Look at it. Do you see
anything wrong with it?” Steve moved closer and tried to grab some bread. His
fingers cut through the loaf and came out the other side. Ghost bread. Ghost
food. The whole spread shimmered just as ghostly illusion should. His stomach
growled audibly.

It figures. I’m haunted by food.

Steve moved over to a couch sitting against the wall and tried to sit on it
but fell right through it and onto the ground.

The ghosts of furniture and food.

“Perfection has no truck with the imperfect. It will not let you touch it
until you are clean. It is everything that a couch ought to be. If you were as
perfect as that couch, you could sit on it, and likewise you could eat the food
set before you.” Steve’s mind felt as numb as it had when he’d been lost in the
snowstorm. He nodded as the face continued its hypnotic conversation.

“You shall be perfect. You shall always be about to be, and no part of you
shall be capable of failure. Only Whole Ones fail. You shall live with us in
the World of Pieces.”

“I see,” Steve said with blank eyes and a monotone voice.

“Do you want to join us? Do you want to eat? Do you want to sleep?”

Steve smiled a deep, sleepy smile and nodded.

“You only need let us help you attain perfection and you shall have it all.
What you know can be stored in perfection—zeros and ones—clean, brittle, and
bright. What you are can break down into primary pieces and then secondary
ones, and so on and so on, until you achieve perfection—no more pain, no fear,
nothing.” The mask smiled. “If you join us, you shall know everything in its
perfection. And you won’t need to go to school to learn it.”

Steve looked up with glazed eyes. “I’m tired of fighting,” he admitted. “I
work so hard to keep everything together. My world is already shattered in
pieces. I might as well look like what I am. I don’t think I can make it.”
Steve’s speech slurred as his mind and body grew heavy. He felt as though he
could never get up off the floor, and he didn’t care. “I have nothing to live
for. My life is already gone to pieces.” A new thought slowly curled into his
thinking: “I know my mother’s here. You said she isn’t, but I know she is.” He
stared at the mask and waited until his eyes focused. “Can I live with my
mother?”

“Yes,” said the mask softly.

“Then, I will live here with my mom,” Steve said carelessly. His head
slumped down towards his chest. He fell asleep.

He woke up slightly as he felt himself being lifted from the floor. His body
floated out of the room and out the door of the tent. A few yards in front of
the tent curved the shore of some kind of big lake or ocean. The force carried
him right to the edge of the ocean and stood him up on his feet.

He heard the mask’s gentle voice say, “Raise your arms.” Without doing
anything himself, Steve’s arms went up automatically. Skinny arms dangling in
the huge sleeves of a coat that wasn’t his.

“Now, we will perfect your little finger.”

His sleepy eyes looked around. He watched his own hand. A force of some
kind, not visible, pulled the pinky finger off his left hand. He didn’t feel
anything.

Chapter 17

As the little finger on Steve’s left hand separated from the rest of his
body, it didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt rather soothing. The finger floated in
front of him, and then it separated at the two finger joints into smaller
pieces. The fingertip split into the fingernail and surrounding flesh. And so
it went until the pieces of his finger became so small they were no more than a
fog of bits hanging in the air.