Mile Six Four Two
An Excerpt from Estella Starspeller
by Colin Gee
I went round about by the back fence so they would not catch a glimpse of me in my invisibility frock, but there they were, William Austin and Mrs. Mabel Loomis in a daytime tryst, for shame of all birds and trees, and lollipops, bodies cranked up against the picket fence like Halloween creepers heavy with melons, my brother a married man but not to Mrs. Mabel Loomis. They both turned to look at me with their mascara eyes and lips on as though I were the fool and cupcake, like I had two heads, but I ducked out of sight of them, and the last they saw of me was a slight movement through the milkweed.
Coming out on Henderson Lane, I strode the hot, black macadam right out of town, picnic basket for two under my arm. Pushing back my black bonnet, I gazed up past the horrid steeples and sweltering roofs into the cool foothills up the valley under the tall and silent foliage, somewhere where the hermit’s lair lay, where they had warned me never to set foot.
That was, though, where this hard lady was bound, for none would call me to heel, and the secret they kept there was like a giant ape to which—sooner or later—some virgin must be tossed.
I had developed a cough but, apparently, it was not the cough that had killed Aunt Ginger, Uncle Rufus Jr., Lady Binkenstoppen-Pavve, or Pastor Daniel Humphrey Jones in their sweat and shit-stained beds, crying out to the Lord for medicines beyond our ken, that had done in more than eighteen in town this summer, yea simply put ‘em into the clammy ground like greedy hands do coins that once had faces.
Sometimes, this life is surly drawn.
In my last epistle, I told you that I walked myself—by myself—through the jungly untrod paths, yea all unto the edge of the volcano and peered down into the bubbling lake of fire with no soul the wiser, but I lied, dearest Susan. See, for part of the way I hitched a ride on Death’s rickety little cart.
Let’s get one thing straight: I was not going to stop for Death. I am not accustomed to speaking to strangers in dark cowls, but He stopped for me, and out of politeness I accepted his invitation to ride with him on his creaky, loose-axled deathtrap into the forest which I had been repeatedly warned never to venture, for there were leprechauns.
“Hey there!” hallooed Death, heeling his ponies.
My eyes rolled left, and then right, and I thought, Damn them, and that I was in some way a mystic pioneer.
Gossamer my Gown, I sat prim in Death’s carriage as it shuddered and rolled down the sunken road, until Mile Three Seven Eight, where it hooks sharply to the right and picks its way into the river bottom, skirting the mawkish little crick, O Rio Grande, and scoots on over through Towsend into Bluebottom, and Eternity.
I told Death I had to get off his cart at Mile Three Seven Eight, and he told me, “No, sister,” that he could not in good conscience leave a Lady at Mile Three Seven Eight to be ett up by jagulars or droopy pythons, and I told him that I was not in that case the Lady he had expected, and I showed him my claws, and he said, “Very well,” but he had never seen me or exchanged Words and could not be expected to make an accounting of my Life in the thereafter, and I smiled my grim, little smile as his ramshackle Death cart skidded to a stop, and lept into the Grass of the Trailhead.
“Thank you, Death,” I called back over my shoulder, but Death had already whipped his horse around the bend and was gone for the time being.
Around Mile Six Four Two, the picnic basket began to grow heavy, I guess because I had insisted on packing spritzer and cake, so I found myself a nice boulder in the shade, spread out the checkered blanket on its broad, sturdy breast, set Molly Fairbanks my second-best friend up so she could get a good view of the valley, and put out table placings: silverware, cloth napkins, china plates and saucers, and glasses for the spritzering.
“The Nameless Fathoms slink away,” I told Molly Fairbanks as I poured our non-alcoholic spritzer into glasses, but Molly only glared at the trees of the clearing and the vale and a far-off balloon, purple and green, that bobbed between Mile Three Seven Eight and the very basin.
“Molly,” I said after some time, after coughing blood into a napkin, “you have hardly touched your cake.”
Molly replied that indeed she had sampled a bite and appreciated Susan’s prowess as a baker in her own kitchen, but was reposing on a diet, and watching her waistline, which had in recent months experienced a bulging, and that Doctor Daniel Humphreys had prescribed no cake against this season’s scourge, the malady that had claimed so many innocent lives.
I slapped Molly Fairbanks with a cajoling hand, playful and giddy as I was in the sun-streaked shade of the clean, quiet meadow, and rebuffed with, “Yes, my small chubby weatherbeaten friend, but you may well regret your diet, for Doctor Daniel Humphreys is at this moment pushing up daisies himself.”
For Doctor Daniel Humphreys had lost eighteen pounds from March to June, upon the street corners preached abstinence of all red meat and poultry, then one morning in church broke out in pustules and elongated sores on his face and neck (and Lord knows where else), fell into a sweaty bed, shit his union suit underwear with fulsome streaks, and died.
Some of these things we had witnessed ourselves—for the rest, we must have relied upon the truthfulness of others.
“Yes,” mused Molly Fairbanks, “may he rest in Abraham’s sweet bosom,” for she always took the Bible fucking literally, and had a generous heart that expected all that human trash to make God’s fancy curve, spit shine easy as a pack of go-lucky steeplechasers in pistoning shorts.
“Oh, Molly, you surely do have a generous outlook upon this Existence,” I decried, pouring her more spritzer and accepting her portion of cake for myself. Her sad bead eyes only blinked once upon the sight of the balloon where it had wafted high, far too high as in the story of Icharus, and tilted strangely, then burst—so lovely to see—into a huge ball of shredding fire.
“Oh my!” we both exclaimed, stuffing chilled cucumber sandwiches into our eager mouths.
The balloon fell, and crashed into the basin in ribbons of flame, though it was too far for us to hear the shrieks of the dying civilians and the stupid balloon’s doomed engineer. A man in a top hat jumped from the basket, the hat separating from his head in flight, and another gentleman, dangling from a riser, just let go because it scalded his hand, and they were as two Holy Ghosts in dove/flame form descending upon the world, except in black suits and total goners.
The light tilted from the eye of day, named Sun, and it was afternoon.
“Come now, Molly Fairbanks,” I chirped, “we must be on our way!” And Molly Fairbanks and I threw together our picnic kit, after scrubbing the plates and saucers in the wash under the rocks, and skipped on down the trail.
BIO: Colin Gee (@ColinMGee) is founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette (thegorkogazette.com), a humor daily that publishes fake news, cartoons, reviews, and poetry. Work in The Last Estate, Outcast Press Poetry, Misery Tourism, Expat Press, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Exacting Clam, and elsewhere. Short stories in The Penult with LEFTOVER Books.