The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island (5 page)

The pancake giggled and shrugged as if I had said something very silly. “In my potato. Where else?”

I raised a tired arm and pointed at the sky. “Lead the way and I’ll inspect your door with twice as many knocks as I gave this one.”

“You’re so kind, Mr. Door Inspector.”

I put on a fake smile and hoped to end this soon.

The pancake took my hand and led me away from Fanny Fod's castle. I turned and looked behind me, hurting inside because I felt Fanny's blueberry eyes watching me. I probably looked like the biggest jerk, allowing this other pancake to take me away under the guise of being a door inspector only moments after trying to break down her door and say I loved her, even though we had just met.

"How do you feel, Mr. Door Inspector?" the pancake said.

"Um . . ."

"Um is a good way to feel. I am happy you feel um. Do you want to know how I feel?"

"I guess so."

"I feel happy. I feel liberated. I feel . . . excited."

"Do you feel that way all the time?"

"Of course. I am always glad. Are you glad?"

"I am glad."

"You don't sound glad."

"I am glad."

"It's funny that I should find a door inspector today. I was staring at my door for a long time yesterday and it was so fascinating. I thought a door inspector must inspect my door. Any door inspector who inspects my door will love it. I can't wait for you to love my door. It's a fascinating door. I sometimes miss the Ultra Yummy Happiness Parade because I can't pull myself away from the door. Sometimes I miss many parades in a row. I stare at my door for days, basking in the good door vibes. I think my door is a bunch of pancakes that fell so in love they became one pancake and they're always making love, having one constant stream of orgasms. When I'm not around my door, I like to think my door misses me. I like to think my door has orgasms in my absence."

I blocked out the pancake's door babble. I could stand no more. What was I doing here? This pancake only cared about finding happiness in her door. I only cared about finding happiness in Fanny Fod.

We walked through a field of pancake flowers that'd sprung up out of nowhere. The flowers turned green and pickled in my wake. The flowers frowned like ugly mirrors. I hated myself for killing them. Holding hands with this strange pancake, I calculated that I would hate myself for approximately forever. It was my duty as a sufferer of the Eternal Plight to hate myself. I mouthed the motto of Captain Pickle.
Unchain yourself from this briny fate, oh pickled prisoner!
But Captain Pickle wasn't real. He was make-believe. I did not share the privilege of being imaginary. None of us did, no matter how hard we tried.

"The flowers love you," the pancake said. "They are remaking themselves in your image."

Okay, maybe this pancake could teach me something about happiness. Maybe all pancakes were obsessed and in love with one thing and that one thing was the wellspring of all their happiness and maple syrup was what enabled them to love. Without maple syrup, they would be as sad as I was. Now the syrup had worked through me and I was in love and almost happy, but love had turned me crazy as a door creep. Now that I had experienced a little taste of happiness, I could remain neither happy nor sad.

Unchain yourself from this briny fate, oh pickled prisoner!

I walked behind her, up some steps carved into a giant potato. I was about to say something negative, out of habit, but I resisted. I had to act like a door inspector. Father was a door inspector. I just had to act like Father. We stopped on a stoop outside a brown and knotted potato door. The stoop was small. We pressed together. I considered stepping down to the stair beneath to put some distance between us, but the pancake wrapped her arms around me. She stared at me with unmoving maple eyes. "Do you like my door?" she said, her mouth unmoving. Stiff.

"I love it," I said. I couldn't look at her any longer. I couldn't look at the door either. I envisioned pushing her down the stairs and shouting, "Your door is boring! I hate your door!" I could rip the door from its weak root hinges and toss it down on top of her and kill her. I would not do that. That would be inappropriate.

"Kiss me," the pancake said.

I kissed her. I didn't know what else to do.

"Come on. The inside of the door is more interesting than the outside."

I kissed her again. Her lips were like a maple lollipop that happened to be attached to a living creature. It mattered little whether I cared for this pancake, or whether she cared for me. We'd made a silent agreement not to care about each other. Tasting her, I decided that I might enjoy her company in spite of my best intentions.

"Come on," she pleaded. "I want you to see the inside."

She turned away from me and opened the door and walked inside. "This will end badly," I mumbled.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing," I said, and followed her into the potato house to learn the wonders of her crappy door, and maybe suck on her lips a little.

Oh Fanny Fod, I thought, I'm sorry.

I entered her potato and closed the door behind me.

*

Beyond the potato door, the beloved object of this pancake whom I shortly expected to screw in exchange for information, a mountain of doors greeted me. Each potato door squirmed against the other doors.

Red gravy bled from the doors.

The house was wet and smelled like bleach.

"Don't you love my door?" the pancake said.

"Well . . . it's not just one door. It's many doors, and none of them are connected to the door that leads outside."

The pancake laughed at me. "Oh, you're silly. All doors are connected."

"Maybe, perhaps." I had to act like a door inspector, like I knew what I was doing. "But what are potato doors doing on Pancake Island? What do potatoes have to do with pancakes and doors?" I had failed to find the right moment to ask these questions until now.

The pancake did not question why I was unaware of facts that must have been common knowledge to all pancakes. She was that oblivious. She told me a pretty good story the pancakes told each other about their castles. The story went that once upon a time, a long time ago, there lived a race of pancakes who were made out of potatoes. They decided to evolve for some reason or another and died in their potato forms to reincarnate as hip, happy, modern day pancakes. That is why so many potato castles sprouted up in the syrup-rich soil of Pancake Island. According to the story, there was an even older race of pancakes: the zucchini race. Zucchini pancakes did not exist for very long. Some believed that the zucchini pancakes migrated from Pancake Island for one reason or another. Fanny Fod lived in the only zucchini castle left alive.

"So how about it?" the pancake said.

"How about what?"

"Are you going to inspect my door or what?"

"I said I loved it."

"That's not your full inspection, is it?"

"Let me see."

I circled the mountain of doors, occasionally leaning over and making a ticking noise with my tongue, pretending to be deep in thought. I ran my fingers along the edge of several doors and everywhere my fingers touched, turned green. That really impressed the pancake. "Yes," she said. "It needed that extra flair."

"Leave it to a door expert," I said.

I walked around the door mountain three times in all, stroking it here and there, gesticulating ambivalently at times to suggest that I had not yet made up my mind about her door.

"What is it?" she said.

"I'm not sure. Something's missing. Do you think . . . let me rephrase that. Do you know what a Cuddlywumpus is?"

Her body swayed back and forth horizontally, indicating a negative. "A Cuddlywumpus? I've never heard of such a thing."

"Do you think
Cuddlywumpus
might be the name of a door?"

"It could be, but it has never occurred to me to name my door."

I was relieved to hear that. It would be a huge letdown if the mysterious Cuddlywumpus turned out to be nothing more than a talking door. I might even lose all interest in Fanny Fod if I discovered that she obsessed herself over a door. "Do you think you could inspect me now?" the pancake said.

I knew it. I knew she wanted something else from me. No matter how much she loved her door, she had insisted on my visitation for a different reason right from the start. The mountain of doors was only a pretext. Everything boiled down to a lot of door nonsense.

"Well can you?" She twitched like a squashed insect.

"What can you offer me in return?"

"There are no returns on happiness," she said.

She stepped toward me. I raised my arms to defend myself but she was not trying to attack. She fell at my feet. Her flat round body heaved. "Please inspect me, Mr. Door Inspector," she said.

"Get off the floor."

"Join me on the floor."

"Fine." I got down beside her on the floor.

She threw her arms around me. She pressed her maple lips to mine and said, "There are no returns on happiness."

"I don't know what you mean," I said.

"All I mean is what I say."

I licked her lips as she dragged her palms down my green belly, under the elastic band of my yellow spacesuit pants.

I thereafter came aroused.

The pancake cooed softly as she stroked my little pickle. I sucked on her lips. No matter how many mouthfuls of her sweet face I sucked away, she remained whole. She existed in a perpetual cycle of pleasure and replenishment. Her happiness reserves ran deep, extending far beyond her physical body. I considered the possibility that love had fostered in her a psychic connection with the doors, the heaving mountain a stockpile of happy feelings.

I laughed to myself. I was quick to figure out others, and quick to fault them for being so easy to figure out.

Now I had to follow through with the act, to have sex with the pancake, to inspect her, as it were.

While these thoughts distracted me, pulling me farther inside myself and numbing me to the outside world, she removed my spacesuit. My little pickle was stiff. I had never seen it fully erected, being too depressed for that and never meeting any pickles I was attracted to, but erect, my little pickle was longer than me. It was much skinnier, though. In fact, my little pickle looked a lot like Father.

The pancake pulled away from me. She ran her mouth up the shaft of my little pickle. She grabbed hold of it, swung herself around, and wound up on top of me, straddling my chest. We were completely naked.

"How is this going to work?" I said.

"Be patient," she said. "You have to inspect other parts of me before you inspect the inside."

"Yes, but it is going to be very difficult to inspect your insides when the time comes if I am not sure how to apply my inspection rod."

"No need to worry. The door will help us."

The front door trembled on its hinges, opened into a mouth, and burst into spasms of laughter.

"The door senses that you will inspect me soon. That is why we must go slow. The door will help us when the time comes, and the longer it takes to set off our pleasure buttons, the happier the door will be."