VICISSITUDE
A Comedy
Of Terrors
by
Z. Inda Turner
Copyright © 2012 Zachariah Inda Turner
First Smashwords Edition
ISBN 978-1-4659-7676-5
Also by Z. Inda Turner
The Shadow on the Stream
(Currently exclusive to Kindle;
Smashwords Edition due in April)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
— Bonus MS! —
by Crispin Crunch
A Comedy
Of Terrors
Cap’n Crispin Crunch was perfect. There was nothing wrong with Cap’n Crunch. His average was a sweet Four Point O, and you just knew, as did he, that below that number it never would drop. His professors loved him. He was eager in class. Other students seemed somehow to fade around him so great was the luminosity of his intellectual wick. Seminars in which he enrolled invariably transformed by the second or third week into exclusive sesquipedalian conversations between him and the professor, with perhaps an occasional stilted aside thrown in by a student desperate for class participation credit, which aside the professor might reward with a nod of recognition and an indulgent smile, producing in all who witnessed it a smirking sense that the student had been a somewhat tolerable pet which had performed some neat trick like balancing a bone on its nose but now it was time to turn back to the serious cognoscitively challenging perusal of that thick Tome in which he or she had been engrossed when the damnable dog started yipping in the first place. Mostly however the other students sat in silent awe, hardly daring to interfere. They too understood that Cap’n Crunch was perfect. Who brazen would fain interrupt perfection? It would be like applying neon green lipstick to the Mona Lisa’s smile, like taking a chisel to the David’s genitals, like inserting scenes of homo-/cyber-/disco-erotic orgies aboard the spaceship in 2001. Only a madman would do it, and there were no madmen to be found here in this place to think. No true madmen. His collegiate papers were minor masterpieces. Several had been published already, in prestigious journals. The Paris Review had issued him a standing invitation to “come aboard” after he graduated. He said he’d think about it. The president of the college kept on his desk a signed photograph of Cap’n Crunch and himself shaking hands, both grinning broadly: it read, “Best Wishes Darrell,” followed by that lovably illegible scrawl which served as Cap’n’s signature. He slept exactly six hours every night, going to bed pleasantly replete with the day’s activities and content to relinquish his consciousness unregretfully to rest, waking early the next morning refreshed and in no way groggy or desirous of continued sleep. He did calisthenics. He jogged. His chest was broad and smooth, his nipples pink pegs on which keys could be reliably hung, his belly rippled with muscle. Women desired him, beautiful women. His penis was large, really solid. In its tumescent state it could properly be called godlike. Ask Betsy Ross, she knew—to the envy of girls everywhere. For Cap’n Crunch was strictly monogamous. He was an attentive lover, a compassionate listener, a really fun guy to be around. He was sensitive to Betsy’s moods, and knew just when a bouquet of flowers was in order as a pick-me-up, or in special cases a big bag of Oreos which they could share together entwined in front of a rented copy of that eternal classic Lilies of the Field (her favorite movie in the whole wide world). He dearly loved Betsy Ross, and his love was a nonjudgmental one. He did not place unreasonable expectations on her, or demand perfection commensurate to his, but understood what she was, and took her for that. When she failed he was there to comfort her, and when she succeeded he was the first to enthusiastically congratulate her and heft her swiftly in the air above him so that her body could feel momentarily as light and free as her spirit did. Then he would allow her to slide gently and erotically slowly down into his arms where lingering kisses were to be discovered. Out of the blue he would say things to her like, “I really admire your tongue.” He was affectionate, but never cloying. He was careful to maintain a certain amount of space in their relationship, to allow them both their own private domains of identity, so that one did not obsessively consume the other, but rather so that both fed mutually on the love which in that space grew healthily between them, its roots deep in both, its flowers nourished equally from each, and these uniquely beautiful because combining the beautifully unique qualities of the two young lovers. Other campus couples envied the easy intimacy and free-spirited spontaneity of their relationship, and attempted to emulate it, with somewhat inferior success. What these couples often failed to discern (and consequently to emulate) was the profound commitment between the two, the genuine regard and inviolable respect they felt for each other. They did not bicker. There was always sympathy between them for each other. Cap’n Crunch was never in a bad mood, but he understood that Betsy could be, and when she was he did not aggravate her, but gently steered her into happier climates, via, perhaps, a certain aforementioned bag of crèmewich chocolate manna and a trip to Jell-O Sea Video (not to mention he was thoroughly proficient in thirty-nine techniques of making love (and that number was constantly being revised upward, Cap’n Crunch in no way the kind of man to rely on a static repertoire, for he knew well that pleasure derives from excitement and excitement derives from the unexpected)). Cap’n Crunch had the ability to develop an instant rapport with anybody he met. A person meeting Cap’n for the first time felt an immediate keenly experienced longing for this affable yet uncommonly earnest young man, an aching need to get to know him better, a deep-seated sensation of trust, an uncanny willingness to be vulnerable in his strong presence and to honestly reveal aspects of personality usually kept well hidden from others, that is to say, from Others. Perhaps this was because you felt in his presence already known. He seemed to understand you. He seemed to sympathize. And he did truly. At least twenty people (two of whom had never met him (having only seen him from afar)) considered Cap’n Crunch to be their very best friend in the world. That number was constantly being revised upward. His tread was silent, but a blind man could follow him easily, simply listening for the call of his name which rang like church bells across the campus wherever he went: “Cap’n!”—“Hey Cap’n!”—“How’s it goin’ Cap’n?”—“Lookin’ good, my man, Cap’n my captain!” Betsy called him Crispy. Only she called him that, and only in private. He loved her for it. Among friends she called him Cap’n, but the manner in which she said it, he thought, implied Crispy all the way. “I love you,” he said to her sometimes, quietly, and they would both be quiet for a while. He was one-hundred percent disease-free. He always washed his hands before and after using the toilet facilities. He was careful not to keep insect-attracting rottables in his trash. He recycled assiduously. He looked both ways before crossing the street. He kept his hair trimmed, and shaved daily. He brushed his teeth conscientiously, and flossed every evening. Well-groomed does not even begin to describe him. His chiseled features, his prototypically manly voice of drums and bassoons, his virile yet inoffensive odor, his captivating because inscrutable green eyes, his perpetually easygoing expressions behind which resided an inner peace that was easy to see but baffling to comprehend: all of these attributes contributed to an overall impression of perfection. He might have been the product of secret government desert research. He might have been sired on his mother by a deity. He might have appeared readymade out of the vacuum, the architecture and alignment of his structural body and pure soul, of all that he was and all that he excluded, formed in concert with some cosmic harmony. These theories had all been propounded at one time or another by one acolyte or another. He loved his fellow wo/man. He did not discriminate, not even unconsciously. To him, women and minorities were not “women and minorities,” but merely epithets representative of common aggregates of people who shared basic gender and/or racial traits, collections of individuals, and he judged people based only on their individual characteristics. He was appalled by ignorance and prejudice, but he empathized with people who were ignorant and prejudiced, and did not blame them personally, for he understood that these were difficult to overcome when they were as per their nature deeply and nearly ineradicably ingrained through social and familial conditioning: “it ain’t him to blame, he is only a pawn in their game.” He knew that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and he felt this was woeful. He meditated daily, after the calisthenics, but before he jogged. He felt that inner tranquility was a good goal to have. Also, one should attempt to promote the inner tranquility of others. There were many wrongs in the world, but they could be righted. It was his belief that humanity was just embarking on a great adventure. This was Spaceship Earth, and we were all in it together. It required only cooperation and sharing to achieve global unity, so what was the problem? He considered himself a secular humanist, but he maintained a deep sense of his own spirituality, and he believed his soul was immortal. He agreed with Christ that one should love one’s neighbor. Buddha had spoken of the Eightfold Path. What the world, needed now, was love, sweet love, and that was the only thing that there was just, too little of. Betsy sometimes thought he was just a bit too corny. Maybe he wasn’t so perfect after all . . . They laughed because they both knew better. Not that he was prideful. He was anything but prideful. He didn’t think that he was fundamentally any better than anyone else. Perhaps in certain particulars—his intellect, his emotional health, his physical magnificence, his inner tranquility, the unbelievable regularity of his bowels—yes, perhaps in some ways he was more adequately equipped than most other people, and perhaps he was a polymath to outshine all polymaths, and perhaps he would someday go on to win Nobel prizes in more than three categories, but he was humble. Just because he was perfect, after all, didn’t mean he was perfect. Someday he was determined to marry Betsy. His most fervent wish was to be worthy of her. She thought this was cute. Imagine, the most perfect hunk in the world, worried that he might not be worthy! For her the worry was reversed—maybe she wasn’t worthy of him? He thought this was cute. It sharpened his desire to be worthy of her. He cried at the end of Benjamin Button. He considered Inception to be profound. He liked intense authors, Americans. Faulkner was a favorite. Melville. Gaddis. Chandler and Nabokov (qua American). He was active in campus life. “Crispin Crunch” was a household name, although not nearly so universal as “Cap’n Crunch.” He was Class Treasurer, and he took his post seriously. Funds under his aegis were disbursed responsibly and efficiently, not to mention promptly. He was the best basketball player on the team, occasionally even leading it to victory. He was the Peer Counseler of his dorm, and he sloughed no responsibility in that respect. If a student under his wing had a problem, be it personal, interpersonal, academic, administrative, financial, drug-related, lack-of-drug-related, whatever, that student knew he or she could come to Cap’n Crunch for a sympathetic ear and some sound advice, perhaps even action on his or her behalf, where appropriate. And you could always count on Cap’n Crunch to behave appropriately, in all situations. He took advantage of no one, manipulated no one, urged his overpowering charisma forcibly on no one. His overpowering charisma, in fact, was entirely involuntary. He didn’t mean to make pretty girls swoon on the path, or homophobes momentarily regret their phobia, or dogs depart from their masters to trot hopefully at his heels, or masters depart from their dogs to trot hopefully at his heels. These things just happened. Because he was perfect. Don’t worry, this was all going to change.
On this fine day, things seemed as they should be, and the world was beautiful. Birds twittered in the trees, lovers kissed and fondled in the grass, the breeze came in cool across the quad, mitigating the sun’s wrath yet not a cause of shivering, dogs suffered micturatory crisis as all trees were currently occupied by students with books propped on their knees and concentration propped in their brows. The blossoms were blooming in the bushes, and their scent sweetly pervaded the air. It was a glorious day in early May . . . and so forth. One knows such a day, it is a legendary kind of college day, a day on which brochure photographers capture the quintessence of campus life for the benefit of the prospective student, who when the decision comes down to the nitty-gritty finds him- or herself choosing between species of campus tree, although surely the administration of this small Upstate New York Liberal Arts College must have realized that as trees went it couldn’t hope to compete with the lush overabundant year-long flora of the South. Fortunately, Ritz College had other attractions to offer, academic ones in point of fact. Cap’n Crunch, for example, chose to come here for the slambang Literature Department. He didn’t take into consideration things like how luxurious were the scholastic accommodations of trees. He was enthusiastic about all trees. There wasn’t a tree in a quad in the entire country that he wouldn’t have been willing and eager to study under on a day such as today.
Of course, what he was doing now was not studying, but eating, and that in the company of Betsy Ross, as well as several of his acolytes (although if you pressed them, some might have objected to the term “acolytes,” preferring instead to be called “individual human beings with their own individual merits and dreams,” which perhaps to a limited extent they were). Cap’n Crunch chewed his food slowly and assiduously, ensuring a maximal surface area for smooth, efficient digestion. Betsy too was a careful chewer, and Cap’n counted this among her uncountably many endearing qualities. She had once referred to the process as “mastication masturbation,” and he had laughed merrily in response, the phrase so exquisitely evocative of the solitary sensuality of the chewing experience. Really, he thought, they ought to post it up in gastroenterologists’ offices across the land, and perhaps then the nation would see a sharp increase in smooth, efficient digestion.
“The shrimp creole is tasty today,” said Cap’n.
(“Absolutely,” said Mark, an acolyte. “Mmmm-mmm. You ain’t kiddin. I never had nothin so”)
“Apparently tasty is a relative term,” said Betsy.
(“deeeeelicious, so”)
“You don’t like it?”
(“deeeeelectible.”)
“Not especially.”
“Well, then hand it over, woman!” He said this with clear tomfoolery in his expression, and there was no way anybody could mistake his tone for anything other than good-humoured waggishness.
(“I can’t believe she doesn’t like the shrimp creole!” whispered Virgin Mary, an acolyte, who fluttered her eyelids excessively whenever Cap’n Crunch so much as glanced in her direction. “It’s so . . . so tasty!”)
“Your roguish manners and outlandish ways will not succeed in wresting the shrimp creole from my possession!”
“Wench!” Grinning roguishly, and outlandishly, he set his plate down, as did she, and tackled her playfully tumbling her backward, and as they wrassled in the turf the acolytes looked on and laughed delightedly.
—Go Cap’n!
—Pummel her, Cap’n!
—Take her seafood!
—Come on Betsy! Validate your feminine power! Show these males a thing or two about assertiveness!
—Scratch his eyes out sister!
“Ouch!”
The wrestling match stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Cap’n was kneeling anxiously beside Betsy, who was holding her palm against her temple. The raillery of the acolytes died down into silence. They watched.
“Are you alright, darling?”
She nodded, but she was clearly in pain.
“I’m so sorry! I—I don’t know how it happened.”
Betsy opened her mouth, closed it again, then cleared her throat and found her voice. “You knocked me with your elbow.”
“My God! I—I—How?”
“Just an accident.”
He gazed into the distance, where in the milling area atop the Hill students milled. His eyelids narrowed for a brief moment as he murmured to himself, “An accident?” How could that be? Someone under a tree on the far side of the field began to scream hysterically, then stopped. He looked through squinting eyes for the source of the disturbance, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. For a moment, that screaming had sounded to him like nothing so much as laughter, like some kind of feral cachinnating hyena, and he had shivered a single shiver.
“It’ll be alright,” Betsy said, noticing his overwrought concern and raising a smile against the pain.
“Are you sure? Maybe we should take you to the nurse . . .”
“No, not necessary. I’m perfectly alright.” She grinned evilly. “But I’ll have my revenge!”
He hesitated for a moment, then relaxed visibly, his taut muscles slackening beneath his immaculate, only slightly ruffled, clothes. A reciprocal smile alighted in the greens of his eyes and crawled down through his cheeks to possess his lips. Betsy couldn’t resist his lopsided grin, and he knew it well, and she to her own mock chagrin knew he knew it.
Nevertheless, a certain uneasiness remained in him as he resumed his shrimp creole. An accident had happened. He had been the cause of an accident. He. He thought back, tried to recall the last time an accident had occurred by his action. He could not remember ever once having done anything in the least bit accidental. His movements were the working definition of grace. His motor control was the envy of ballerinas and microsurgeons. He was in total command of every aspect of his body, and he never had accidents. Until today. He felt confused, and perhaps even a bit helpless. Dare we say there was the germ of fear in him?
He decided that tonight he would do a meditation before he went to bed. To reacquire some of the inner tranquility he seemed to have lost today.
“I feel that inner tranquility is a good goal to have,” he said.
(“Wha?” said Scooter, a part-time acolyte. Scooter had a shrimp on his shirt. His lips were juicy. His thick glasses were besmeared with something pink.)
“Oh, I—” He hadn’t realized that he had said anything aloud. Unease crept in.
“Me too,” said Betsy. She meditated with him sometimes.
(Virgin Mary said, “I always seek inner tranquility. All the time. Every day.” She looked meaningfully at Cap’n Crunch. He smiled dazzlingly back, even the blandest of his smiles (which this was) utterly dazzling. Mary was consequently provided with an inexhaustible fund of self-stimulatory material. She would remember this smile for the rest of her life. She would compare the smiles of all her future suitors to this one, and none would measure up. This smile indeed could be said to be the last smile Virgin Mary ever truly received. She would dignify no other configuration of muscles in no other face with the sacred name of Smile after having witnessed this one. In this one moment, she was transcendently happy, but doomed forever hence to equally transcendent unhappiness. For it wouldn’t be ruining things to say that Cap’n Crunch never happened to smile in her particular direction again.)
“Boy, this shrimp creole sure is good,” said Betsy, breathlessly consuming shrimp creole. The care quotient of her chewing had plummeted drastically. She seemed now more concerned with mass quantity of intake than with the subtle pleasures of mastication masturbation.
“I thought you didn’t like it.”
Betsy frowned slightly, pausing in her breathless consumption of shrimp creole. “I don’t know.” She absently touched her injured temple with two fingers. “I like it now. I think it’s delicious in fact. Deeeelectible.”
“Oh.” Cap’n turned his attention to his rapidly congealing creole and attempted to focus solely on that. Creole wasn’t confusing. Creole was soothingly simple. He scarfed some rice too. Rice was even simpler. Perhaps a swig of cranberry-pineapple-papaya juice would help. Ahhh, refreshing. He was feeling better already.
Betsy was licking her plate zealously, swabbing every square centimeter with her sedulous tongue, lingering in certain spots to dislodge recalcitrant creole with rapid concentrated flicking. Her entire attention was engaged in this process, and she seemed unaware of the world around her. Cap’n watched fascinated as she gave the plate one last meticulous licking over. Finally she belched and lowered her sparkling white plate to the ground, leaned stretching back on her elbows, appeared eminently satisfied, like a cat in repose on a queen’s sofa. Her breasts in this position defined firm high hillocks (topped by nipple bunkers), like crucial strategic zones in war provocative of besiegement, and Cap’n saw (that Scooter with his lenscrafted gaze was busy besieging. Scooter’s tongue was visible.)
(It is to be noted that all through this meal, acolytes were bantering amongst each other, ingesting food, imbibing liquids, and jockeying for proximity to Cap’n Crunch. What they said is on the whole unimportant to us, as are their names, not to mention their individual merits and dreams. That their activities, oral and otherwise, constituted a consistent background to the activities of our main protagonists is all we need know of them.)
(“Aloha, Cap’n,” someone said in passing. Cap’n Crunch nodded back, but he was preoccupied and did not take note of who had greeted him. This was uncharacteristic of him, but today was shaping up to be a most uncharacteristic day.)
Cap’n Crunch reclined beside Betsy and with his arms folded loosely over his chest contemplated clouds. “Do you ever wonder why they float so serene up there?” he murmured. “Why they don’t come tumbling down when you least expect it?”
Betsy snorted. “They’re just collections of condensation particulates and specks of ice suspended in the air. They do come down, when it rains.”
Cap’n shook his head. “No, that’s not what I mean.”
(“That’s not what he means,” said Mary.)
(Scooter continued to stare openly at Betsy’s breasts. His tongue was still quite visible. It literally protruded from his mouth. Not to mention his respiration was unpleasantly audible.)
“What I mean is, why should there be rules like that? Why should there be designs and structures and plots? Where is it written?”
(“Whoa!” Mark said. “That’s sooo profound! Like totally,”)
Betsy’s shrugging shoulders in the grass made the blades sound as if to breathe. “Otherwise it would be all random, wouldn’t it? That’s why.”
(“utterly”)
“But that’s my point. Doesn’t it seem like it should require less effort for things to be random? But instead it requires more. Things move out of randomness and into order. They don’t even need to be guided, they just do. Things are always falling into patterns, and they’re always falling into the same patterns. Like the clouds. Like the stars and the galaxies. Like us.”
(“profound.”)
“So what is this, Hokey Philosophy Day?”
Cap’n felt hurt by this, and somewhat shocked, maybe even a tad peeved, but beneath these emotions he was just plain baffled, for Betsy Ross was not usually so callous, nor insensitive. But he said nothing, for he did not wish to show her that he was wounded (and it did not occur to him that his usual SOP was to share his feelings honestly with his girlfriend). He still felt enormously guilty about the accident (accident?), and puzzled at her odd behavior, and the last thing he wanted was to aggravate her.
(Scooter was trembling now. Flecks of viscid foam danced from his visible tongue. That lone shrimp was migrating swiftly down his shirt, leaving behind it a wide pink swathe. Only one aspect of Scooter did not currently tremble, and that was his gaze. His gaze was Betsily bosomly fixed, as by screws. There was a low gargling in his throat.)
“Is the . . .? How is the . . .?”
“The bruise? It still hurts. Not as much though. Really, Crispy, you don’t need to worry about it. Accidents will happen.”
(“Crispy?” said Virgin Mary, shocked and titillated at the same time.)
Now he knew something had to be wrong, for here Betsy was in the midst of acolytes and listeners calling him by a sobriquet which was tacitly agreed between them to be private, and never to be used in public. The only explanation he could surmise was that she must be angry with him. But she didn’t seem angry, just mellow and sardonic. And why should she be angry with him anyway? He never did anything wrong (unless you counted the accident).
Cap’n rolled over and leaned in to whisper in Betsy’s ear. She tilted her neck to improve his access, causing her breasts to jiggle slightly.
(Scooter groaned.)
He poured into her porches a sultry smooth liquefaction of voice that was just breath articulated. “What say we buy a bag of Oreos tonight, etcetera, etcetera?”
She grew still.
“We’ll leave crumbs in the sheets . . .”
She swallowed. Her head drew closer to him, bringing her ear into direct contact with his lips. He touched his tongue to her helix, teased its rim back and forth.
“We’ll lick out the creamy centers . . .”
Her breath grew ragged. Her breasts began to bob. Her nipples seemed prepared to rip through the cloth of her shirt.
(“Gargle gargle gack,” said Scooter.)
“Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.”
“Oh yes,” she whispered. “Yes, that sounds . . . good.”
(“Gulp gargle gargle.”)
“And then peristalsis will kick in and nudge those saliva-clotted chocolatey gobs ever so rhythmically, spasmodically, Down—Your—Trachea . . .”
“Oh . . . my.”
(“Ack!” screamed Scooter, leaping up. His glasses flew to the ground with a thud. “I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” He hurled himself on top of) Betsy, clamping his mouth to the erumpent tip of her right breast. “Cocoa Puffs!” he shrieked, his voice muffled by mammary. Betsy writhed and gibbered squeakily, her arms shoving ineffectually at this teat-suckling cereal fanatic. “Cocoa Puffs!”
(“That’s not a Cocoa Puff,” said Mark. “What a freak! That is so clearly”)
“Mmmph. Cocoa Puffs! Mmmph mmmph.”
(“not”)
“Cocoa Puffs!”
(“a Cocoa Puff.”)
Cap’n Crunch sprung immediately into action. His muscles rippled sleekly
(“Oooh,” moaned Virgin Mary.)
as he wrested Scooter from that hideous clutch. Scooter scrabbled for purchase, but found none as Betsy wriggled out from under him, and he was left squinting and drooling pink taffy down his chin, wobbly-kneed kneeling before the indomitable Cap’n Crunch. Cap’n swam in fury. It blotted his vision, roared through his ear canals, seared his skin and set his blood boiling, burrowed straight up stiffening into every individual hair, and thrust dull pins through his pores from the inside out. He realized at this moment that he just might be capable of murder.
And then that trilling laughter came screaming in across the quad. Instantly his fury ejaculated out of him like a line of Ivory soap from a firmly squeezed bottle of feminine shape, and he was left feeling empty, distraught, spent, nauseously weak in his muscles. This laughter of jackals: it was shrill, it was convulsive, it was the world’s repletion. Cap’n peered frantically into every distance, searching it out, but it came from no source, or all sources, there was no way of discerning its directionality, it seemed almost to emanate from the ground and rain down from the sky simultaneously, to vibrate out of all solid things and outrace the wind. And it was gone as soon as it started, and none of the acolytes seemed to have noticed at all (they were all babbling and pointing excitedly at Scooter, who was now shamefully hanging his head, hands dangling almost to the knees on which he feebly balanced), and neither had Betsy, who was still chokingly trying to decide whether to weep or rage. Cap’n staggered, then righted himself, placed one palm flat atop his head, the other on his belly, tried to locate some last vestige of that famous inner tranquility. Amazingly, there was some left, and with it he becalmed himself. Some.
His gaze fell down on Scooter. Scooter was supplicating, making obsequies, kowtowing, eating dirt, licking boot, bowing and scraping, proffering free rear access, in three words prostrating himself ridiculously. Pink filaments of drool glistened thickly pendent from his quivering lower lip. His eyes looked tiny, like shriveled seeds, without those everpresent lenses perched across the bridge of his nose.
Cap’n Crunch regarded this scene wearily. “Get out of here,” he muttered. Then louder, when Scooter did not respond, “Just get away from here.”
Scooter responded this time. He shambled back a few feet on his knees, then toppled over and twisted frantically around at the same time, falling pronely and facing the Hill. He squirmed around on his belly for a few seconds like some writhing orgasmic snake before pushing himself up on his hands and knees and on them bounding as fast as he could away, as per Cap’n’s instructions. He did not appear overly concerned with his undoubted inability to see more than an inch in front of his face. No one moved to pick up his glasses, to preserve them for him. (Scooter would later have to find his way back here and search squintingly for what he had lost. Perhaps someone would help him. Perhaps not.) Scooter was halfway up the Hill now, where milling students were watching him with amazement and amusement. Some of them clapped. Some cheered. A rent appeared in the fabric of the crowd, into which Scooter scuttled, then seamlessly stitched itself back together.
(“What a nerd,” said Virgin Mary. Her expression said, I am an uncharitable bitch. I sure hope Cap’n Crunch smiles at me again.)
(Jake, a heretofore unmentioned acolyte, was staring at the congealed pink slobber which framed Betsy’s now diamond-hard right nipple. His expression said, Silly Scooter, Trix are for kids!)
Cap’n Crunch bent over Betsy, wiped at the mess on her shirt. She pushed his hand away. She looked ready to cry. She was controlling herself, but Cap’n saw that care was in order on his part, for it wouldn’t take much to set her off.
“Are you alright, China doll?”
“No.”
“Is there anything I—”
“No. Just—Just—I’ll be fine. I’ve got class. I better go change my shirt first. I’ll see you later.”
“Would you like my shirt? That way you wouldn’t have to go all the way back to Tucks.”
“No. I want to go back.” Her voice was so mechanical. Cap’n didn’t like its tone. She was rubbing absently at her injured temple. He didn’t much like that either. It spawned numerous guilty twinges in him, all over his body. The mere shadow of the substance of the memory of his elbow smashing pain-inducingly into her fleshly substance made him queasy. He found himself panting. He thought he could actually feel his blood rushing through his arteries and veins right now. It was a light feeling, a dreamy floating feeling. He had never been faint in his life, his emotional and physical health both always in the tip-toppest shape, and so he did not realize that this was the term which most accurately described his current condition. Having a term to describe how he felt probably would have comforted him immensely. He would have known that this was not something that would last forever, that it was common and mostly harmless. Instead, he was disoriented, confused, and even a bit frightened. In the last few minutes he had lost control of his world, and did not know how to get it back.
“Okay,” he said, caressing Betsy’s shoulder. “You’ll come by later then, after class?”
“Of course.” She sounded like a robot. Cap’n told himself she would be better later, when she came by. She was still suffering from the shock of that boy’s attack was all.
She trundled off, slinging her bookbag over her left shoulder in that special way she had, as if her payload were Santa’s toys rather than a bunch of books on anthropology, which was the class she would probably now be late for.
(Jake’s gaze, filled with fruity colors, followed her closely.)
Cap’n sighed, something he hadn’t done in a long, long time. His hands rested heavily on his hips as he watched his girlfriend’s rolling gait convey her away from him. This day did not seem nearly so fine anymore. The sky was still blue, the birds were still twittering merrily, by all rights this should be the finest of fine days, but no matter what he did, things went wrong. This dinner had been a mess! Well, it was behind him now. Whew! Boy, now he knew the true meaning of that swift minimally articulated exhalation, it meant Thank God that’s over. And it was, wasn’t it? Whew! Just a short interlude of discord in an otherwise totally fine day. This he resolved, that from here on forth, the day would be finer than ever. You can’t after all put a good man down. A slow grin grew on his lips, taking root in his cheeks and blossoming out of his eyes, and he held his arms out wide as if to embrace all that surrounded him. His sinews stretched and his thews bulged and truly he looked like a god. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but in that moment there appeared around his body a shimmering nimbus, as if the beams of the sun were diverted from their straight earthward paths into circumCap’n barberpole orbits, each spiralling magnificently down around him and then back again up in endless circuit. This nimbus served to accentuate and to highlight the contours and meticulously sculpted proportions of his undeniably classical form.
(“Gulp,” said Virgin Mary. If you were to look closely into her eyes at this moment, you might find the nimbus theory spectacularly confirmed, for in each appeared the gleaming image of Cap’n Crunch. That pair of images, undisturbed by even one blink, seemed to say, This is definitely not a trick of the light.)
Feeling almost himself again, for the first time in the twenty minutes which had elapsed since his elbow had made injurious contact with Betsy Ross’s temple, Cap’n Crunch turned and waved a sweeping goodbye to the acolytes, including them all in a single gesture. All intraacolyte activity halted immediately as a collective gaze adjusted the foci of its numberless eyes to see Cap’n off.
—Sionara Cap’n!
—So long, see y’t’morra!
—Reverse greetings, Cap’n! Bad luck to your bad luck!
—We salute you, mon capitaine!
—Goodbye Crispy!
There was a subversive titter among the acolytes, and Cap’n, already walking away when Virgin Mary’s high voice called that cognomen after him, felt a bit unsettled, perhaps even embarrassed, and once again chagrined that Betsy had so publicly aired such a private intimacy. Well, he shrugged his shoulders, that was that, nothing he could do about it now, why worry about it. He was perfect, he could stand a little teasing from the acolytes. Ha ha, he laughed, it was rather funny after all. Ha ha.
He looked both ways before crossing the street. Once on the path, his stride was neither hurried nor too slow. He strolled was what Cap’n did. On his face was an expression of self-ease and untroubled contemplation. Surprisingly, for the dinner hour, there was no one on the path at this moment. He had it all to himself and that was a rare pleasure. He took a deep breath and held it, cherishing the fresh air of a truly fine day. No cars. A slackened breeze. All around there was silence, and he could almost hear the smack and peel of his rubber-padded footfalls. He could almost hear the whish and whoosh of his atomic-clock respiration. He could almost hear the screams of fear and struggle deep in the woods beside the path.
He stopped. Cocked his head. Yes, there was no mistake. Any normal ears could not have detected these cries for help, but Cap’n Crunch possessed no normal ears. He could hear the crawl of an ant, the overhead passage of a low-altitude satellite, the breath of the dead. And he could hear the feminine screams in the woods, which became to him louder and shriller the closer his unhesitant running through the brambles and obstructing branches took him to their source. His body exerted itself to its limit, utilizing its resources in the most efficient possible capacity. He was alert, his focus sharp, his heart pumping massive quantities of well-oxygenated blood throughout his vascular system. He crashed tantivy through the brambles and branches to create the maximum amount of noise, hoping to scare away the male assailant whose grunts and growls he now could hear alongside the female screams.
“Oh! Stop!” wailed the female voice. “Please! Stop! Oh! Oh!”
“Uhh! Uhhnnhh! Grrrrnnn! Gruff!” grumbled the male assailant.
“Ah-ha!” yelled Cap’n Crunch as he burst into the clearing where a large beefy-shouldered jock with quivering pale buttocks was just in the process of mounting into a petite girl from the ankle of one of whose sprawled kicking legs dangled a white pair of panties. Her skirt was bunched at her waist and her blouse was in tatters, having been ripped ferociously from its entuckment and several of its buttons popped; indeed, Cap’n caught a brief orangish-pink glimpse of nipple. With one hand the jock had the girl’s arms pinned together at the wrists and planted firmly against the ground above her, while with the other he seemed to be preparing to guide himself into her. It was a difficult proposition since her wriggling and squirming hips provided no steady target, besides which she was a tiny girl with an undoubtedly commensurate port of entry. It was apparent that for all his crashing through the woods Cap’n had not been heard, either by girl or by galoot.
“No! Stop!” said the girl.
“Ooommpphh! Urrr!” said the galoot.
“Ah-haaa!” said our hero.
Cap’n leapt into the fray, pulling the would-be rapist from his prize with the ease of cheese from a pre-sliced block. Astonished at this interruption, the jock fell awkwardly backward, unable to gain his balance because both his pants and underwear were gathered at his ankles. He cried out in pain and reached to pull up his pants simultaneously. Cap’n could see that the jock had not even managed a full erection yet, just a semi, and even that was fading fast. Cap’n himself was nearly busting out of his pants, but this was not the erection of sexual arousal, but of adrenaline-rushed excitement. Cap’n advanced on the cock-bobbing jock, who was scrambling fearfully backward, still ineffectually tugging at his pants. The jock was bigger than Cap’n physically, but Cap’n emanated an aura of invincibility and masterful muscular control, which is to say, he looked like he could really mess you up if he wanted to—and throw your best punch cause he’ll take it right in the gut and then laugh in your face as he rearranges it like Michelangelo. The jock had reason to fear.
The girl lay still sprawled on the ground, arms still held above her head, loins disconcertingly exposed between legs spread wide. Her panties still dangled from her ankle. Her expression was one of horror and perplexity. She stared at the rapist, who by now had almost managed to pull his pants fully up around his hips. Then her stare moved to Cap’n, then back again to the rapist.
“Don’t worry,” Cap’n said out of the side of his mouth to the girl, “It’s over now. I’ll take care of this bastard.”
The jock blubbered, backed up some more, stumbled to his feet, ran off clutching at his yet unbuttoned, yet unzippered pants.
“I know your face,” Cap’n shouted after him. He didn’t bother to pursue. That would have been pointless. What was important was helping the girl.
“Come back!” she shouted, finally finding her voice. “Hey! You weren’t finished! Get back here right now!”
The rapist ignored her pleas and continued his flight into the forest. Bristling, the girl bore her focus on Cap’n, and he felt distinctly uncomfortable in it. Especially considering the fact that she was still lying on the ground, her dress still hiked up around her hips, her loins still most disconcertingly exposed.
“You asshole! That man was about to rape me!” Her voice was filled with shock and disbelief. Her round eyes were dark. Her close-clipped hair made her small head seem even smaller.
“Well, yes, no need to thank me, just a lucky thing I happened to hear—”
“You asshole!” she repeated, shock and disbelief giving way quickly to anger and malice. “That man was about to rape me, and you interfered!”
“I—I—” He didn’t know what to say. Of course that man was about to rape her. That was why Cap’n had leapt into the fray. That was why he had vigorously shouted “Ah-ha!” That was why he had . . . interfered.
The girl’s eyes slitted and her lips rippled around her teeth. She hissed. This is not hyperbole. She hissed. “If you hadn’t a showed up, he’d a been pounding the hairy hammer right now.”
“I—I’m sorry?”
“Sorry ain’t good enough buster! That guy’s been stalking me for months, biding his time, memorizing my habits, analyzing my schedules. Do you realize the amount of effort that’s gone into this? He’s put his whole life into it. He’s been planning this and orchestrating it and finetuning it until he had it all just perfect, so that he could jump me and drag me here to this isolated spot where nobody could hear me scream—”
“But I could hear you scream,” Cap’n interjected. She gave him the evil eye but otherwise continued as if he had said nothing:
“Where nobody could hear me scream and rape me till it hurt and then rape me some more, and some more after that, and then leave my limp used just-barely-breathing body out here in the middle of nowhere either for somebody to find or for me to drag weakly back myself to civilization. That was what was supposed to happen anyway, Mis-Ter Hero.”
“Well, I, I’m sorry. I thought, I thought it was involuntary. I didn’t realize . . .”
“Well of course it was involuntary. It was rape! Didn’t you hear me just a second ago?”
“But—But—” The razor-edge of a delirium caressed the folds of Cap’n’s brain. What had he missed? Wasn’t this the part where the girl whom he had just saved from being brutally raped thanked him repeatedly, and wept copiously into his shirt, and pressed her sob-wracked body into his arms for him to carry back to campus as she tremblingly clung to him until such time as he could deliver her into the sanctity of some sort of medical attention?
“You stopped that man from raping me, and now you’re the only one left to do the job! Rape me! Continue where he left off! Hurt me bad, you shithead!”
“What?! No!”
The girl pistoned her hips lasciviously, her buttocks striking the ground in a rhythmic series of hollow thumps. The lips of her loins glistened, the lean tight flesh of her thighs jiggled, and Cap’n felt panicky. How did one handle a situation such as this?
“I’m sorry, I’m not going to . . . to rape you.”
She stopped pistoning. She glared at him. She leapt to her feet, panties flying, skirt finally cascading down into proper loin-veiling position, but now he could see her breasts through the rips in her blouse, flattened mounds of firm-packed fat on a smooth-skinned field of bone. They bobbled and jounced as she advanced on him.
“How dare you!” she shrieked. “How dare you!” She slapped him hard. His neck snapped, his head flung, his cheek stung. His nutating skull rolled slowly back into home position. He gasped, reeled, stumbled backward. She spoke through clenched teeth, spitting each word methodically into his face, “You’re going to rape me and you’re going to rape me now!”
“No!”
He turned and ran, crashing through the brambles and branches, seeking the path and an end to this insanity. He could hear her behind him plowing through the undergrowth like a juggernaut, keeping up with him amazingly well considering her tiny size, shouting, “Come on! Please?! Rape me!” He increased his speed. “Come back! I’m sorry I hit you!” Her shouts grew fainter as he outdistanced her. Relief swept over him tidally, but nevertheless he continued to run, just to be sure. By the time he reached the path he was huffing and puffing. Leaning forward on his knees, he cocked his head and listened. He could hear her shouting deep in the woods, and he decided perhaps it would be a good idea to jog the rest of the way to the dorm. He did not feel totally at ease until he slipped the key into the lock and twisted, and the door swung inward, and he was in his room with the door again closed behind him. Freedom was upon him, ironically by means of a locked room.
He sighed, the second time that day. Everything so hectic, so harrowing, so strange. What he desired right now above all other things was normalcy. Well, there was the whole evening ahead of him, and he would stick to his room, ensure a quiet night. Betsy would be showing up in about an hour and a half, and he looked forward to that immensely. After the incident in the woods, he wanted nothing more than comfort and the warmth of Betsy’s body close against his. An hour and a half, a long wait perhaps, but Cap’n knew how to make it pass with unbelievable speed. He’d start that novel he’d been mulling the past few weeks. That’s right, Cap’n Crunch was a writer. Deemed himself so anyway. We shall see.
Another sigh escaped him. Today was a day for sighs. He should write that down. That would sound good in a story. Maybe a title? A Day for Sighs, by Crispin Crunch. Maybe just Day for Sighs. It was his policy always to question the necessity of articles. He often went through stories he had written and searched specifically for articles that might be better off truncated. There was something about articles that discomfited him, a sense of their delimiting the world, reducing possibility. Articles were the opposite of magic, of Creation. Articles were the agents of entropy. In the beginning there was Nothing, but then came the First Article and there was The Universe. Then there were The Laws of Physics, and then A particle here, An other particle there. All was defined, All was contained, which is to say, Nothing became All, and Creation was over. In his writing, Cap’n sought Creation. He was not successful (that was, he suspected, ontologically impossible), and his search took a variety of paths, both stylistically and thematically, but that was the joy of writing, was it not? Finding these paths and embracing the beautiful ones, and not worrying in the least if the goal was ever attained. What mattered was the journey, and the dignity along the way of its hermeneutic captain.
He wiggled his mouse and the large, wide screen snapped to light. His word processor stared blankly out at him, one huge white eye waiting to see what he had to show it wordwise. It would not judge, but only watch, and reflect back at him what it saw. Often this true reflection he found differed somewhat from the vision he’d had in his brain to begin with, the vision which had prompted him to duplicate it in words, in the world, more precisely in that special place where word and world are the same, where the fantastic meets the durable, he the writer ever scheming to craft the one into the other. And that was what it was, writing, a craft. Just as the sculptor found the beautiful form inherent in the block, the writer found that beautiful shape inherent in his own soul. The writer was the sculptor of the soul, and he ought to jot that one down as well. He took his notebook from its drawer and did so. Then it was time to begin that novel.
He sat down and immediately sprang up, clutching his right buttock. There had been a sharp pain, as if some small stone had been pressed between the wood of the chair and the bone of his butt. He swiped the chair, but there was nothing on it. He rubbed his buttock, and there was nothing there either. Puzzling. He sat down again, and again the pain. He slipped his fingers down along his back, beneath his underwear, felt around, and lo! there was a pimple on his butt! A rather large one. Probably pretty inflamed. He had never in his life had a pimple on his butt, or anywhere else for that matter. His complexion was immaculate, smooth. Unblemished. Except, here was the pimple . . . undeniably here. Well, he refused to be put off his stride by a simple pimple. He retrieved a pillow and placed it on the chair. That would do it. He sank into it, and it was quite comfortable. See? No problem. Inner tranquility was a good goal to have.
He sat in contemplation for a while, thinking how to begin his novel, when something from deep in his bowels rose up, this not an elimination of fecal matter, but a redigestion of it, a recombination of its molecular matrices into something new and exciting. It was . . . a story. Abruptly he leaned forward, held his breath and exhaled, then slowly, thoughtfully, typed a paragraph:
Folded it is paper, but unfolded a note: "Dear Bitch, I am Your Death-Man. You will Hurt. Tonight I will. PS----I will Fuck you first cause your Pretty."
He leaned back, read this over . . . and now there was in him an explosion. It felt like a million hands had swarmed in from another dimension and pinched all his organs into individual states of sexual arousal. His body was suddenly alive. Without once pausing to think or even to glance aside from the keyboard, Cap’n Crunch feverishly finished the story:
The woman who receives the note contemplates its many implications. She realizes the man who wrote it is not a man of words, but of actions, and that while the words of the note are perfunctory and without emotion, the actions it implies are violent and passionate. She is overwhelmed by the possibilities inherent in the words, for the fact is the note was written and addressed to her, and if its anonymous author will be true to what he wrote (and why shouldn’t he be?), tonight will be a terrifying night indeed. The note looms larger and larger in her imagination until she falls into a trance in which the note takes on the proportions of her own living room. She emerges from the trance in a kind of zen state of peaceful acceptance. She enters her boudoir and attends to her cosmetics:
With her extended perfumed finger she touches the mirror where her red moist lips are, and leaves there a wavy print. Her eyes in that bastion of truth sparkle, their color enhanced by preternatural mascara black. She feels pretty. To each pulse point she applies a single drop of perfume.
Himself giddy, Cap’n picked up a red felt marker and scrawled “THE END” in big letters on a sheet of the scrap paper he always kept handy in case he had an idea he needed to write down quick. He gazed at the screen in wonder and ecstasy, there sitting whole in the computer’s memory a product of his imagination, a self-contained narrative universe, all of his own creation. He had made this thing. The woman in the story would never have come into being were it not for him. She would never have received that note. She would never have experienced the strange events of the narrative had he not written it. Had he not conceived it. And how had he conceived it? He didn’t know. It had come from nothing, or seemed to, from some nothing within him. There were superficial aspects the origin of which he could easily trace, the rape idea, to name the largest and most obvious example. Probably most or all of the individual ideas and sentiments in the story could be traced to some source or another in his life. But he felt strongly that the way they were combined and assimilated into the story was elementally unique, that all these known things like vegetables had been gathered together in his own personalized Blender of Nothing and whirred and pureed into a uniform substance new and unknown, then poured back out into the Serving Bowl of Something, which he guessed was his word processor—that eye which saw words so perfectly it reflected them back without warp or distortion. He supposed he was mixing his metaphors, and bad ones too, but what did that matter? They weren’t in the story, they were just his feeble attempt at justifying—no, not even that, the story justified itself—at explaining to himself the story’s creation. Its Creation. His Creation of It. And perhaps in some small way, Its Creation of Him.