self-righteous coward….”
At this humiliating admission, the impossible takes place.
It happens, on rare occasion, that supernatural phenomena occur for which we’ve no ready explanation. Two hands come forward to cup the sides of my misshapen head. My mother’s soft, perfumed palms and much- bejeweled fingers lift my ravaged face until I’m looking up, into her eyes. Her arms cradle my shattered body, creating a not-unsentimental pieta, and she asks, “Maddy? Dewdrop, is that really you?” My father stoops to embrace the two of us.
I am seen. Finally, I am recognized.
My parents and I, our little family, is, in that moment, reunited.
It’s at this juncture that the impossible, inhuman doll of a girl, she raises her melting gaze to the sky. In a gurgling, liquid voice, the not-Madison croaks, “Heed my words….” Even now, sinking to become a bubbling, smoking puddle, she commands, “Honor me, my followers, with a vast, communal ‘Hail, Maddy.’”
DECEMBER 21, 2:38 P.M. HAST
Detonated!
Gentle Tweeter,
As you can imagine, a dense crowd of people expelling pent-up intestinal gas in the presence of an open flame, surrounded by ostentatious, highly flammable architecture, this is a not-happy turn of events. In a flash, the mountaintop cathedral is wildly ablaze. Toga-clad, sandal-shod Boorites run pell-mell in every direction with their extremities exuberantly on fire. The heat softens the underlying peak, and ominous bubbling landslides of molten plastic begin to ooze down the flanks of the precipice.
Smoke blots out the setting sun, plunging this once-pristine world into a darkness illuminated by only the raging orange inferno. On the plains far below jagged fissures crack open, and the ocean begins to seep upward. Even as it burns, the entire continent of Madlantis is slowly sinking. It’s the fall of Pompeii. It’s the destruction of Sodom. The searing updrafts of wind carry gobs of smoldering, spitting ash, depositing them amid distant artificial forests and combustible palaces, until the world appears to be igniting in every direction.
Blinded and terrified, the Boorites stampede over one another. They stumble and topple into pools of boiling slime. Their screams fall silent only when superheated gases sear their lungs.
Mr. K’s emaciated corpus is fully dead, fully involved in flame, and I find myself evicted. Again, I’m a me- shaped bubble of blue ectoplasm. The filthy blue chambray shirt and frayed
Observing the Ctrl+Alt+Chaos, angel Festus comes to my side. He grips the edge of my ghost ear in his golden fingers and says sarcastically, “Excellent work.”
For my part, Gentle Tweeter, I’m searching the hectic scene, trying to locate my parents. I’m terrified that my folks are going to be killed, and despite the fact that they’re nonviolent, peace-loving, Pentagon-levitating progressives, they’re going to give me a centuries-long time-out. We’ll be estranged forever.
These theoretical punishments choke my ghost mind when a familiar voice says, “Golly, Sponge Cake, ain’t this an awful pickle?”
I turn and see… my Nana Minnie. Holding a ghost cigarette in her ghost hand, she leans over to light it off the flaming pigtail of Mr. K’s burning corpse. As if this fiery Armageddon couldn’t get any worse, beside her is, ye gods, my Papadaddy Ben.
DECEMBER 21, 2:41 P.M. HAST
A Dark Episode Revisited—At Last
Gentle Tweeter,
The last time I saw Papadaddy Ben was Halloween night, the night Nana Minnie died. His scarecrow ghost walked up to our porch in tedious upstate. Now, here he stands. He and Nana Minnie. Surely my education in Swiss etiquette would dictate a casual, easygoing way to inquire about the health of his book-squished, semidetached wing-wang, but I’m uncharacteristically without words.
It’s strange how the currently conflagrating Styrofoam volcano echoes the not-happy circumstances of our last fatal encounter. The furious release of polycarbon gases suggests the reek of that long-ago upstate comfort station. The heat of this searing plastic cataclysm recalls the scorching temperature of that summer afternoon.
Speechless, I adopt the detached mien that has so oft of late served me, that of the observant supernaturalist. As the child of former-Gestaltist, former-self-actualized, former-Euthonian parents, I recognize that if anyone ought to be feeling awkward in the present situation, it’s not me. My papadaddy played the dooky- brandishing predatory degenerate. Suppressing a lifetime of social conditioning, I resolve not to comment about the weather. Instead, I elect to remain silent and simply to observe my subject for signs of discomfort.
My terrible secret is not mine alone. It is also my grand-father’s. As I once waited in the “blind” of my toilet cubicle, ready to endure the worst, now let him suffer my probing gaze. In the stealthy manner of Mr. Darwin or Mr. Audubon, I make a cold inventory of the specimen at hand. I picture the stubby boneless finger that had so menaced me. The infinite tiny wrinkles that carpeted the finger’s spongy surface, and the several short, curling hairs that clung to it. I revisit the finger’s sour, not-healthy odor.
My nana is the first to speak. “We come on the whirligig. What a ride!”
I appraise them coolly.
My nana perseveres. “Ever since the day he died, Sweet Pea, your grandpa has wanted to see you again.”
I make no effort to reply. Let them name the horror. Let them apologize.
“That was a terrible day,” Nana Minnie says, patting her heart with one heavily tattooed hand. She brings one porcelain fingernail to her brow and scratches under the edge of her blond wig. “The day he died? Let me think….” Her eyes shift from side to side. “We both guessed you was headed for the traffic island out on the highway.”
Papadaddy, the toilet lurker, interjects here. “You asked about it at breakfast.” He says, “We was afraid you’d try and cross the freeway, so I decided to drive over there and keep a lookout for you.”
I remain steadfast. To judge from the angle of my nana’s cigarette, she’s upbeat, happy even.
“That nasty place,” says Nana, and she makes a face. “Your papadaddy was headed out to collect you when he had himself the heart attack.”
I amuse myself by idly looking at my wristwatch. I pretend to warm my ghost hands over the sputtering, guttering campfire that consumes the mortal remains of Mr. Ketamine.
“Died right on my own front porch, I did,” says Papadaddy.
“Right on them steps,” adds Nana. “He grabbed his chest and keeled over.” She claps her hands together for emphasis. “He’d stopped breathing for twenty minutes before them paramedics showed up and revived him.”
Papadaddy shrugs. “What’s left to say? Not to brag, but I went straight to Heaven. I was dead.”
“You was not,” insists Nana Minnie.
Papadaddy counters, “I most certainly was.”
Undeterred, Nana says, “After they shocked Ben’s heart, the ambulance folks wanted to ride him to the hospital, but he didn’t want no part of going.”
Folding his arms, Papadaddy says, “She’s embroidering this next part. That’s not what went on.”
“I was there, you know,” says Nana.
“Well,” Papadaddy says, “I was there, too.”
“We’d been married for forty-four years,” says Minnie, “and he’d never before talked to me that way.” She
