The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014 (11 page)

“Oh yes, I do,” she says. “Don’t you think I tried to hide from the world, too? Don’t you think I wanted to run away and never come back—never remember what happened to Henry? Don’t you think I loved him, too?”

Her words settle around me like comic strip snow. Should I remind her, again, that I was trimming hedges in the back yard when it happened, and she was the one who was supposed to be watching him when he wandered into traffic? That she was the one who turned her back to talk to a neighbor when she should have had her eyes glued to Henry at all times?

Only if rubbing salt in the wound is my goal. “Leave me alone,” I tell her. “Go back to reality.”

“I’m not leaving without you. That’s final.” Just as she says it, she’s lifted away, leaving me uncovered on the plate.

Fritz makes a grab, but I dive out of the realm of the Schnitzeljammer Brats before his pudgy hand can touch me. I’ve got to keep moving, keep running, keep drawing her along in my wake.

Until it’s too late to stop what I’ve got planned.

It wouldn’t be enough to tell her the story straight up, to tell her The Idea I’ve set in motion. I can’t take the chance she won’t believe it’s possible, that she won’t cooperate.

Not to mention that it breaks every tenet of the Panelnaut protocols. Protocols that I helped create.

Diving through the foamy black-and-white tides toward my next destination, I remember the early days of exploration. I wasn’t the first to discover the Underfunnies, but I found the first doorway and made the first trip inside.

It was so thrilling back then, such a novelty—plying the byways of this vast psychic substrata. Jumping into manifestations of comic strips from various eras, existing side-by-side with beloved characters as well as obscure ones. Before long, I discovered I hadn’t accessed the primary reality of those strips, but a flip-side echo where nothing works the way it should—a negative space where expectations can’t be trusted. The place where Potpie’s spinach can won’t burst on cue, where Ixnay the mouse can’t toss a brick on target, where the Schnitzeljammer Brats’ dynamite sticks won’t stay lit.

Did I understand the full implications back then? Hell, no. The best I thought we Panelnauts could do was influence the collective unconscious—plant messages that guide humanity toward a state of peace and harmony. We wrote protocols forbidding extreme intervention, anything that disrupted the essential integrity of the panelography.

And now I’m throwing them all away. The ultimate disruption is in motion; every moment brings it closer to final fruition.

And I’m the one who engineered it. I’m the one who knows how close we are to the grand finale.

Very close, now. It’s time to pick up the pace.

I need to move her along quickly, not give her time to think or catch her breath. I need to flash like a skipping stone from world to world to world until we reach the last one.

The one I’ve prepared.

So I fling myself out of the current and surface in another place. This time, I’m a cigar in the mouth of Moo Mullet, rascally gambler and ne’er-do-well. Seconds later, I hear Molly’s voice coming from the black derby hat on Moo’s little brother, Kozy.

“Please, Everett,” says the derby hat. “No more running.”

“Say! What gives?” Moo snatches the hat from Kozy’s head and gives it a smack with the back of his hand. “Now I gotta take
lip
from a
li
d
?”

“We can get through this together,” says Molly, “if you’ll just come home.”

“That topper’s positively
brimmin
’ with yap, ain’t it?” says Kozy.

“Leave me alone!” I shout, just as I dive out of the scene.

“Now my
cigar’s
runnin’ at the mouth?” I hear Moo say as I leave. “What’s next? My
racin’ form
tellin’ me which
horse
to bet?”

Once again, the currents bear me onward. I’m closer still to our final destination and the consummation of all my efforts.

Leaping from the flow, I become a club in the hands of Allie Hoop the caveman. Molly becomes the collar around the neck of his pet dinosaur, Finny.

“Please give me a chance!” The sound of her voice makes Finny grunt and run into a tree.

“What the heck?” says Allie. “How come you sound like a
girl
all of a sudden, Finny?”

I leap away without a word, and she follows.

Next, I become the fireman’s hat on Smokin’ Stovepipe, and Molly’s the bell on his kooky one-man fire truck. I linger there for less time than it takes Smokin’ to utter his catchphrase, “Fwoooo.”

We’re closer now, almost there. I speed up even more.

At our next stop, I’m the clodhopper boots on Li’l Asner the hillbilly. Molly’s the pipe in his old Maw’s mouth.

Then, I’m the giant sandwich in Ragwood Rumstead’s hands, and she’s the polka-dotted bow tie at his throat.

Another hop, and I’m the TV wristwatch on Rick Tracer’s arm. She’s his lemon yellow trench coat.

Then, I’m the bald head on Daddy Bigbucks, and she’s Orphan Agnes’ curly orange hair.

“Please stop!” says Molly, giving Agnes quite a start. “Just stop running!”

“Bleepin’ blizzards!” yelps Orphan Agnes.

In spite of Molly’s pleas, I leap again just the same. Because finally, we’ve reached the end. My whole purpose in leading her on this chase through the Underfunnies.

I swoop through the currents and burst free at our last stop. This time, I appear as myself, not disguised as some comic strip prop. She does the same, returning to her familiar form in the silver spacesuit and bubble helmet.

Finally. Here we are. In a child’s darkened bedroom.

“What is this?” She stares at the black-haired boy on the bed between us. “Who is this?”

“His name is Little Nino,” I tell her. “And he’s a dreamer.”

Even as I say it, Little Nino stirs and sits up in bed. He rubs his eyes, and then he looks at me, and smiles.

“Oh!” he says. “You are here!”

Grinning, I tousle his hair. “Just like we talked about, Nino. Are you ready?”

He smiles and nods.

“What’s happening here?” Molly scowls. “What are you talking about, Everett?”

“Little Nino’s been having a crazy dream,” I tell her. “Haven’t you, Nino?”

“Why yes, I have.” Little Nino crawls down off the bed and pads across the room in his fuzzy white footie pajamas. “I have been dreaming about the music in my closet.”

As we watch, he opens the door of his closet. Beams of rainbow light stream out around him.

At the same time, a sweet piping song skirls forth—the sound of flutes and chimes and strings weaving in delicate harmony.

Little Nino smiles back at us. “Do you hear it?”

“Yes, we do,” I tell him. “Let’s have a closer listen, shall we?”

“That will be fine.” Without hesitation, Little Nino shuffles through the closet doorway, disappearing into the rainbow light.

“Come on.” I take Molly’s elbow. “I want to show you something.”

She frowns at me. “That song. I know it, don’t I?”

I just shrug and pull her toward the closet.

As soon as we cross the threshold, the doorway disappears behind us. Suddenly, we’re standing on a beach at night, facing a bonfire that burns in rainbow colors.

At first, we’re alone there with Little Nino. “I remember what comes next,” he says. “Would you like to see the rest of the dream?”

“Yes, we would.” I let go of Molly’s elbow and take her hand. “We would like that very much.”

Little Nino waves his arms, and figures descend from above, floating down one at a time from the starry sky. They are comic strip women, all of them, descending like wingless angels to land lightly on the wet sand around the rainbow bonfire.

There’s Potpie’s girlfriend, Olives … Ragwood’s wife, Blonder … Li’l Asner’s gal Dandelion Meg … Rick Tracer’s true love Bess Bluehart … Allie Hoop’s cavegirl Moolah … and so many more. Every woman you can think of from the funny pages, every one of them from the sublimely beautiful to the utterly ridiculous. Dozens of them, hundreds of them.

This is it. This is what I’ve been working for; this is why I summoned Molly.

Because this is where the impossible can happen. Here in a child’s dream in a flip-side place where things don’t happen the way they should.

Only here could I do what had to be done.

Hand in hand, Molly and I walk to the fire. We stand before the women, their faces and forms flickering in the dancing rainbow light.

“Oh!” Suddenly, Little Nino runs forward and gazes into the flames. “There is something inside!” Without hesitation, he plunges his arms into the fire.

When he pulls them back out again, unburned, there’s a bundle in his hands. Something wrapped in a comic strip blanket, all black ink and wooly cross-hatched texture.

Grinning, Little Nino turns and offers the bundle to Molly. “Please take this,” he says. “It is for you.”

“From all of us,” says Olives in her nasally voice. “Every last one of us.”

That’s exactly what it took—the combined power of several hundred female icons projected together. Merged with my own hopes and memories in one supreme act of will.

Not sex, but creation nonetheless. The ultimate surrogate motherhood.

Molly peels back the blanket, and a tiny face looks out at her. The face of a comic strip baby boy, eyes big and dark and shining.

This, then, is my secret son, a child conceived in the panelography. A child of pure hope and imagination—an homage to the son we lost.

And perhaps much more than that.

“Think of Henry,” I tell her. “Remember everything you can about him. Every detail.”

She looks at me with tears rolling down her face. “But that won’t … this isn’t …”

“Trust me.” I lift the helmet from her head and kiss her wet cheek. “Think of Henry.”

She casts her eyes up at me with a look of anguished disbelief. I brush the dark hair back behind her ears and shake my head.

“I can’t do it myself,” I say. “I need you. Your half of the memories. Your half of who he is.” I kiss her cheek again. “Please try.”

I watch as she cradles the squirming bundle in her arms. As she closes her eyes and frowns, reaching deep to dredge up those memories.

The comic strip women huddle close, caught up in the moment. I can practically see the pen-and-ink waves of hope ripple out from their exaggerated forms.

Maybe it’s the force of their collective willpower. Maybe it’s the power of the dream we’re in, a dream within a dreamlike realm where human disbelief is suspended. Where comic-strip life works in reverse, so harsh human reality can change direction, too.

Or maybe it’s just her memories and love for him.
Our
memories and love pouring into a vessel of India ink. Pulling him back from the vanishing point—pulling all three of us back.

Whatever the reason, a new strip debuts tonight, a full-color single-panel above the fold in the Sunday pull-out section. Here’s how we kick off the run:

A mob of famous comic strip women stands around a rainbow bonfire. At panel center, classic child character Little Nino stands on tiptoe, gazing at a swaddled babe in the arms of a woman in a skintight silver spacesuit.

Little Nino says, “Oh my! Look at his eyes! They’re not black anymore!”

The woman in the spacesuit weeps with joy. The square-jawed man beside her bends down to kiss the infant’s forehead.

We can see, in the firelight, that the baby’s eyes are the brightest blue that the four-color printing process will allow.

The caption at the bottom of the panel reads as follows:
“Welcome back, Henry!”

Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 1
Copyright
©
2013 by Robert T. Jeschonek. All rights reserved.

P
eople in uniform extract me from a warped carcass of steel. They speak to me but I just hear wobbling noises.

The image of a woman’s face fills my mind. Blue-grey eyes. A full mouth. Lovely. I know her well. I also know that I love her. She’s my wife.

But she loves Lester.

The idiot was driving, and he didn’t stop at the intersection. My wife was in the car with us.

There she is, standing near the ambulance. She seems okay.

Lester is out cold. It’s a blessing, because I don’t hear his blabbering. He talks all the time. All he can do is talk.

Maybe he’s dead. If not, I must help him to die.

Now the world becomes dark and peaceful.

* * *

I’m reclining on a bed. Tubes stick out of my nostrils and another tickles my nether regions. Nothing down the throat. A monitor winks green.

I try to get out of bed but I can’t. I do a roll call of my limbs: Nothing stirs. A tear rolls out of my left eye.

I’m not giving up.

It takes some time before my left hand obeys and moves up to my head, finding bandages. I must look like the Invisible Man. This thought makes me chuckle.

A stab of pain in my chest cuts my laughter short.

The image of my wife comes back to soothe me, but my thoughts remain troubled.

Why does she love Lester and not me?

I hate Lester almost as much as I love my wife.

It’s him or me.

* * *

I can walk around a bit.

All I do is brood over this thing—that Lester believes he’s better than me, and that’s why he must be in charge.

I don’t see why he should be in charge. I think Lester simply speaks better than I ever will.

Speaking is overrated. A man can be silent, and loving, too. Lester is only interested in being the one who decides.

Lester knows nothing about the little things that make a life worth living. Or the big things. Take the music of the stars. All right. Nobody can hear the music of the stars, but I’m sure that, if he could hear it, he would
not
feel it in his bones as I would. Music doesn’t move him. At a gig, when the bass plays the rhythm of the heart through the amplifiers, the only thing that vibrates in Lester is the bottom of his trousers legs.

He’s not better than me. After he was born, Mother Nature had to give it a second try and that’s why she made me—because the first time everything went wrong.

* * *

Instead of hearing jumbled words, I understand what people say.

Lester has finally come to, and my wife’s here to visit. He doesn’t recognize her until she writes something in a notebook and shows it to him. Lester mumbles: “Lee-ah.”

She has a newspaper, too.

“G-give,” he manages.

I catch sight of the page. There’s a shot of the accident. And a photo of my wife and me in the sidebar.

He points to my face in the picture: “Wh-o?” and starts yelling.

Damn! He thinks that my wife is cheating on him. With
me
.

I don’t get it.
I’m
her husband, and she’s cheating on me with
him
. I know she likes him more than me.

Now he’s raising a hand to hit her.

I can’t let it happen and I grab his hand and push it down, but it shoots up to punch my eye.

The nurse walks in with an ice bag and Leah takes it and puts it on my eye and consoles me and kisses me, and I almost want that cretinous ape to hit me again.

* * *

Today is the day I kill Lester.

We’re home from the hospital. Lester can speak, but not well. Otherwise he’d be numbing me with words.

Now he keeps spreading his newspaper like a bedsheet, opening his arms so wide I can’t see my favorite TV series. He’s reading to show off, because I still can’t. All I can see are wiggles on the paper.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll be dead soon, and dead people don’t read newspapers.

Leah is at work so we have a nurse to look after us. She has nice legs and a sweet smile. She’s actually brought roses and I help putting them in a vase. I sniff the scent, but it’s like my left nostril is stuffed up.

As soon as the nurse goes to the bathroom, I drag Lester toward the window. He doesn’t want to move, but I’m stronger.

I push him against the windowsill until he’s half out.

The nurse comes a-running. “Mr. Brown! What are you doing?”

I’m winning the war.

“Stop me!” Lester cries. “I can’t help it.”

Hold on. What is he talking about? He can’t help doing
what
? I’m the one trying to push him.

The nurse pulls us back and makes us sit on the couch.

I’ll find a way to off him. I will.

“What’s wrong with me?” he asks.

“You had a mini stroke and your car jumped lanes.”

“A stroke …”

“A
mini
stroke. The symptoms last less than a day.”

“But I still don’t recognize my wife, and my own face! Is it another stroke?”

“It’s something else.” She pats Lester on the shoulder.

She tells him about some bundle of nerves, called
corpus callosum
. This thing’s like a bridge connecting the two hemispheres of the brain. And it was sectioned in the accident. “Your right hemisphere is out of control.”

This throws me for a loop. I’m lost. Lost. What is going on? What is she talking about? I refuse to believe her medical gibberish.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Brown,” she says. “It will take time, but, with some training, you’ll learn to control your right brain.”

What is she saying? That he’s going to keep
me
under? I have an arm, a leg, a nostril in enemy territory, and our best eye. I’m awake now, and I’m
not
going to sleep ever again.

Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 6
Copyright
©
2013 by Gio Clairval. All rights reserved.