couple who’ve had great sex in Chapter One, or possibly Chapter Two. Then realization has dawned on them, ruining their plans to renovate their kitchen and install a new round eco-friendly refrigerator that pops up out of the kitchen counter.
They flee to their summer cottage, as civic order breaks down in the once-thriving town where they live and people start eating their cats and goldfish and the dried ornamental sunflowers in their dining-room floral arrangements.
Amanda, who is the optimist of the pair, tries to grow some Tiny Tim tomatoes in the pathetic little patch of ground they once used only for petunias. Chris is a realist. He looks disaster squarely in its wormless face. (Yes— it’s come to me!—the maggots have perished as well, which explains the various animal carcasses littering the cottage premises, gnawed on by crows and such, but not cleaned up neatly the way the maggots would once have done it.)
Last scene: Amanda is trying to poke holes in the flint-hard soil with a knitting needle. Chris comes out of the house. He has a cup containing their last scrapings of decaf instant coffee. “At least we’re together,” says Amanda.
Or should I have Chris yell, “Where are you, fucking worms, when we need you most?”
Maybe Amanda should yell it. That would be unexpected, and might show that her character has developed.
Now that this has happened—this cathartic, revealing, and somehow inspiriting yell—a small, still-wriggling worm might be discovered in the corner of the garden, copulating with itself. It would sound a note of plangent hope. I always like to end on those.
In this novel, a sponge located on a reef near the coast of Florida begins to grow at a very rapid rate. Soon it has reached the shore and is oozing inland, swallowing beach condos and gated communities as it goes. Nothing is able to stop it. It shows no respect for roadblocks, state police, or even bombs. A sponge on the rampage is a formidable foe. It has no central nervous system, not like us.
“It’s not like us,” says Chris, from the top of his condo, where he has gone with his binoculars to reconnoitre. Amanda clings to him fearfully. What a shame this is—they just bought the condo, in which they had great sex in Chapter One, and now look. All that decor gone to waste.
“Could we sprinkle salt on it?” Amanda asks, with appealing hesitation.
“Honey, it’s not a slug,” says Chris masterfully.
Should these be his last words? Should the sponge fall upon him with a soft but deadly glop? Or should he be allowed to defeat the monstrous bath accessory and save the day, for Florida, for America, and ultimately for humanity? The latter would be my own inclination.
But until I know the answer to this question—until I’m convinced, in my heart, that the human spirit has the wherewithal to go head to headless against this malevolent wad of cellulose—because as a writer loyal to the truth of the inner self you can’t fake these things—it might be as well not to begin.
I heard it as if in a dream. “Beetleplunge.” I often get such insights, such gifts from the Unknown, They just come to me. As this one came.
That word—if it is a word—might look quite stunning on the jacket of a book. Should it be “Beetle Plunge,” two words? Or possibly “Beetle Plummet?” Or perhaps “Beetle Descent,” which might sound more literary?
Let’s think outside the box. Scrap the title! This is now a novel without a name. Immediately I am freed from the necessity of having to do something about the beetles. I saw them so clearly when I was first thinking about this book—all the beetles in the world plunging over a cliff, like lemmings, driven by some mysterious instinct gone wrong—but they did pose a problem: that is, what was to follow as a result?
Maybe I misheard. Maybe it was “Bottle Plunge.” Maybe it was Chris and Amanda, in Chris’s green Volkswagen, being forced off the road, and perilously close to the edge of an escarpment, by a black Mercedes driven by Amanda’s drunken husband. Chris and Amanda had great sex in Chapter One, but Amanda’s husband arrived in Chapter Two, in the Mercedes, just as Chris—who is their student gardener, at the gated community— was giving Amanda a post-coital explanation of the infestation of Coleoptera (red and black, with orange mandibles) currently ravaging the herbaceous borders.
As Chris was pronouncing the word ravaging, the husband sprang in through the French doors, in an advanced state of inebriation, with murder in his heart. Chris grabbed Amanda by the hand and made a dash for his own battered vehicle, a green Ford pickup: I’ve reconfigured the Volkswagen, it wasn’t muscular enough. Cut to the chase. (Chris will drive very skilfully despite the distracting screams let out by Amanda, and he will swerve at the last moment, and the husband, whom we have never liked—he was a dishonest oil-and-gas executive and a sadistic foot fetishist—will go over the cliff instead. Chris and Amanda will end up shakily but gratefully in each other’s arms, exactly where we want them to be.)
But maybe it wasn’t “Bottle Plunge.” Now that I think of it, the phrase may have been “Brutal Purge.”
Where does that get us? Down to earth. But which brutal purge? There are so many to choose from. Those in the past, those in the present, and, unfortunately, those yet to come. Anyway, if it’s “Brutal Purge,” I can’t see a way forward. Chris and Amanda are very likeable. They have straight teeth, trim waists, clean socks, and the best of intentions. They don??instst o C do?t belong in a book like that, and if they stray into it by accident they won’t come out of it alive.
TAKE CHARGE
I)
— Sir, their cannons have blown a hole in the ship. It’s below the waterline. Water is pouring into the hold, Sir.
— Don’t just stand there, you blockhead! Cut a piece of canvas, dive down, patch it!
— Sir, I can’t swim.
— Bloody hell and damn your eyes, what wetnurse let you go to sea? No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Hold my jacket. Put out that fire. Clear away those spars.
— Sir, my leg’s been shot off.
— Well do the best you can.
II)
— Sir, their anti-tank missiles have shredded the left tread on our tank.
— Don’t just sit there, you nitwit! Take a wrench, crawl underneath the tank, fix it!
— Sir, I’m a gunner, not a mechanic. Anyway that wouldn’t work.
— Why in hell do they send me useless twits like you? No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Cover me with your machine gun. Stand by with grenades. Hand me that spanner.
— Sir, my arm’s been burnt off.
— Well do the best you can.
III)
— Sir, their diabolical worm virus has infected our missile command system. It’s eating the software like candy.
— Don’t just lounge there, you dickhead! Get going with the firewalls, or whatever you use.
— Sir, I’m a screen monitor, not a troubleshooter.
— Shit in a bucket, what do they think we’re running here, a beauty parlour? If you can’t do it, where’s the nerdy spot-faced geek who can?
— Sir, it was him wrote the virus. He was not a team player, Sir. The missiles have already launched and they’re heading straight for us.
— No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Hand me that sledgehammer.
— Sir, we’ve got sixty seconds.
