WHO MOVED MY TV?

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
–Ray Bradbury

Once upon a time, not long ago nor far away, there lived two sewer rats whose names were Duff and Tuff. Like most ignorant rodents looking to survive, they didn’t always have names, nor were they always friends. In fact, neither of them had even so much as sampled dumpster nachos together until one day a rain surge flooded the tunnel into which they’d run, and ejected them from their dark culvert, high up onto a soggy lawn in the forbidden daylight of Overground.

At first the two were terrified, and unable to move. They just looked at each other for the first time, splayed out as they were on the wet grass, with their slick hair matted down. Then the one to be known as Duff said, “you ugly.”

Oddly, this statement got no reaction, even though it occurred somehow to Duff himself that it wasn’t a very nice (much less constructive) observation to make. Here, in the daymare realm of suburban lunacy, it had just seemed so appropriate that Duff felt no guilt at all. So he repeated himself. “Did you hear me?” Duff asked. “I said ‘you ugly.’”

Now the other rat, as yet immobile, merely stared past him at the drainage culvert from which they had both been ejected, yet seemed to feel no disgrace or outrage at Duff’s statement. And when he finally did reply, it was with another odd question. which was, “What’s ugly?”

Duff was puzzled by this response, and then felt a sense of awe overwhelming his terror as he realized that he really shouldn’t know what the word ugly meant, either. After all, with what was he making a comparison? Considering it, Duff eventually concluded that there was something about being here–on this beautiful green lawn in broad daylight–that had somehow influenced such thoughts. Perhaps the very act of noticing how beautiful it was had somehow done it, if not considering the very concept of beautiful. In any event, the next thing he said was, “You Tuff.”

“Tuff?” asked Tuff, perplexed.

Duff sighed, having noticed that Tuff had not only lifted his head, (while dodging the insults hurled at him), but had also managed to stand and swish his tail, allowing a warm breeze heated by the sun to dry out his fur. Duff tried to stand up himself, and failed.

“Tuff,” repeated Tuff, noticing how pathetic his new companion now looked by comparison. “I guess I am Tuff!” Then he frowned, which in sewer rats consisted of flashing one’s lower teeth. “But you. . . you better get up off your duff and act tuff, or we both be seen, sure enough.”

“Duff?” Duff queried.

“Well, it rhymes, doesn’t it?”

Sure enough, thought Duff. Then he looked over at the big, ominous house on whose lawn they’d been exiled, and back at the dark drainage culvert which had finally stopped gushing brown water. “Can you help me get up? You know, I haven’t competed in as many races as you have. I’ve been more. . .of a spectator. Like from the side tunnels? In the dark? With the food?”

Tuff clicked his teeth in derision, which among most mute sewer rats easily translated as laughter. Then he scuttled over to nab a flap of fat on Duff’s duff, lifting his hind legs into the air.

“Ouuuuuu!” protested Duff. Yet with his legs soon under him, instead of splayed out on either side, he did see method behind Tuff’s madness. When Tuff bit down on his neck in order to lift his front side, though, Duff had to bite his own tongue to avoid the embarrassment of crying out like a wimpy mouse.

Once upright, and facing the culvert where they hoped to escape danger, Duff felt a little better, until he had another surprising thought, which was to wonder whether any other members of their pack had even survived the flash flood, or if they were indeed the sole survivors–the only tail swishers left. “What if,” he said, “we go back down there, and. . .and they’re all dead.”

“Dead?” said Tuff.

“And what if,” added Duff, “there’s been another flash flood? What then?”

“Then we die,” Tuff concluded.

“Yeah. Think about that one.”

“Well, how can I? I’ve never thought about it before. I mean, up to now it’s just been a matter of. . . .”

“Instinct?”

“Right. Like staying out of sight. Like dodging black cats at night.”

“Or a wall of brown water?”

“We got lucky there, pal. Not so lucky if we stay here, I fear.”

Duff nodded, and looked back at the house, which was huge and bright. Whiter than any house he’d seen at night, and just like the house on the left and on the right. Then he realized that these houses were always white, even at night. He had just never realized it!

“Wow, think of that,” he said.

“What?” asked Tuff.

Duff didn’t answer, since a new thought had just come to him with startling clarity. It was, indeed, a flash of genius, this self awareness. A thing he suspected few rodents had ever been privileged to experience, being afraid of the sun, as they were.

I THINK, was his thought, THEREFORE I AM.

Then, quite inexplicably, he felt impelled that they should go in search of something he now knew was called cheese.

2

Connor Lemming woke one morning to a crashing sound. At first he wasn’t sure there had even been a sound, since he was sound asleep at the time. In the odd stillness that followed, he slid his left hand over to the other side of the bed, reaching instinctively for his wife, Carol. Then he realized that Carol wasn’t there. In fact, Carol had not been there for over two years. Carol was no longer even a Lemming, but a Fleming, having remarried her lawyer Roger. As for Roger Fleming, he was a rich and arrogant jerk who didn’t need to live in a suburban tract house made of beige stucco, but who instead lived downtown in a loft decorated with modern art, and in a building with a snooty Irish doorman, no less.

Connor sighed. Then he looked at the clock on his night stand, and sighed again. It was time to get up and go sell life insurance, sure enough, and as this thought made its neuronal connection in his brain, his clock’s alarm suddenly went off. At this surprise Conner lifted his left hand, which still lay on his ex wife’s side of the bed, and slowly guided it toward the source of the noise, now wondering about what had awakened him, if not the clock. Was the sound he’d thought to have imagined real? Had it come, not from some dream—perhaps Carol slamming the door as she left him—but in actuality, and from the direction of the kitchen, as he now suspected?

Conner let his hand drop onto the snooze button. Stopping the annoyance, he then listened for aftershocks–some hint that he wasn’t totally and irrevocably alone. What he heard, after a brief silence, was a sound that, had it occurred to him, he might have described as a scampering. In the kitchen he discovered that a plate lay shattered on the beige linoleum floor. It was the only plate he currently used from the immaculate china set Carol had mistakenly left him. The one plate he’d permitted himself to take from the stack up there behind the glass cabinet. Bits of bread crust lay mingled with the shards at his bare feet. Stepping backward to get a broom, he felt a stabbing pain in his right heel as a sliver punctured it. Yelping, he hopped awkwardly back, glancing up too late to glimpse, even peripherally, a sudden scampering movement into the living room beyond.

That evening, returning from a job he now despised, Conner slumped into his usual spot at the usual time to watch the usual news on television. News that was predominately bad, although the commercials always seemed frantically upbeat. After the news and weather, he next watched a reality show featuring a group of spoiled and scantily clad college students sharing a confined space, followed by the evening movie, featuring a scantily clad college student being chased by an axe murderer. Finally, he watched The Late Show. Nothing else unusual happened the rest of the night. No more plates fell, inexplicably or otherwise. The phone did not ring, and no one came to the door, either.

Sleep and repeat.

On Friday evening Conner noticed, returning from the bathroom, that a second plate, only recently containing crackers and cheese, now lay empty–albeit unbroken–on the textured beige carpet. “Oh my goodness,” he said, aloud. He looked around him, doing a slow 360, afraid that if he turned too quickly he might see something he shouldn’t. Like a ghost.

Carol’s ghost.

Had Carol died? It had been over a year since he’d last heard from her. Maybe Carol had slipped, or been pushed, from Fleming’s penthouse apartment balcony after one too many party cocktails! He hadn’t read a paper in months, and never watched the local news. Wouldn’t someone call and tell him, though? Her mother? No, not her mother. One of her new society friends?

No. Knowing her, she’d probably never mentioned him to them by name.

He looked down at the plate, laying there on the floor, clean. Not even a crumb left. If Carol had died, he decided, it made sense that she’d come back to nag him. She’d always complained about his not taking her out more often. Maybe now, from the afterlife, she was saying, look what you did to me, Conner! I wouldn’t have been forced to leave you if you weren’t so boring! I’d be alive today, if you weren’t such a bum!

When nothing more happened, Conner retrieved his remote control, and hit the button that adjusted the volume on the ball game, hoping a few added decibels would scare away Carol’s recriminations from his head. Then he went into the kitchen for more beer and crackers. When he picked up his cheese knife to slice more cheddar from the carving board next to the sink, though, he froze in shock instead. Not only wasn’t there any cheese on the board anymore, but his Italian salami log was missing too.

“Rats!” he said aloud, and then, “are you hungry where you are, Carol? Are you thirsty too?”

3

“Treasure chest?” guessed Tuff.

They stared up from the kitchen floor in perplexed wonder at the huge rectangular beige monolith before them. Duff shook his head for some reason, and a drop of spittle–or drool–fell from his jowls. “Nope,” he declared, “I don’t think that’s the word. Somehow, I think the word starts with an R.”

“What’s an R?” asked Tuff.

“I’m not sure, but I think it starts with an L. . .or an A.”

They shuffled closer. Tuff sniffed at the rubber sealing that ran up the near side of the mammoth metal box. “I don’t smell anything,” he said. “Are you sure we’re on the right track?”

“All I know,” declared Duff, “is that it opens up.”

“You saw it? And there’s more cheese inside?”

“Humans don’t appreciate green cheese. That’s why they keep it cold.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, really. They like it aged, but not that much.”

“How odd,” said Tuff. “The more the merrier, I would say.”

“You would?”

“Well, I guess. Although, come to think of it, I haven’t said it before.”

Duff pointed his nose upward, sniffing the air. “I’m afraid,” he concluded, “we have no choice but to crack this safe if we expect to find anything to eat befitting our new tastes.”

“Safe?” asked Tuff.

“Sealed box. What we need to find now is the right tool, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I do,” proclaimed Tuff, “although I shouldn’t.”

“Yes,” agreed Duff, “it’s odd, isn’t it? And what’s more, we seem to be adding to our vocabularies by the hour, as if by osmosis.”

“Did you just say osmosis?”

“I did, and it felt good to say, too. Do you know what this means?”

“Not a clue. You?”

“Maybe it means that I’m the brains of this outfit, and you’re the brawn.”

“Brawn,” Tuff repeated, wondering if he’d just been insulted.

“Right, brawn. Muscle. Guts. Anyway, help me find a butter knife to wedge into the crack there and lever the refrigerator door open, now. Okay?”

Tuff just stared at him, aghast, as if to say, A what to what for what?

“A tool,” Duff summarized.

“Oh,” said Tuff, apprehending. “I guess it is obvious, once you think about it.”

After gorging themselves on the deliciously creamy flavors of hydrogenated margarine and two all beef patties with special sauce, lettuce and cheese, the satiated (and saturated) duo frolicked in the sink before cleaning up after their refreshing waterfall bath with paper towels pulled from a dispenser. Finally, they sunned themselves on the sill, legs up, grinning like saints newly unpacked in paradise.

“Ya know,” said Duff, in what next felt to be a spontaneous epiphany, “we should feel guilty about all this.”

Tuff was nonplussed. “What does that mean? I mean, we’re rats, aren’t we?”

“True, but why should we enjoy so much when our fellow rats can’t?”

“Because they’re dead?”

“Good point.”

“So why bring it up?”

Duff sighed. “You’re right, of course.”

“You bet’cha.”

“Although,” said Duff, “we can’t be sure of that, because we never went to look for them.”

“Nor they for us.”

“And then there’s the matter of our host. Our meal ticket.”

“What about him?”

“Don’t you think it’s odd he lives alone in this big house?”

Tuff sniffed. “Not really. It’s stranger to me that I know what house means.”

“That too. But, I mean, come on! This guy, all he does is watch that squawk box out there. Every night, and with all those screams and flashes and explosions. What do you make of that?”

“I don’t make anything but droppings,” Tuff said.

“Yeah? Well, don’t you want to?”

Tuff shrugged, which in sewer rats consisted of lifting a tail for a second, then dropping it with a thud. “Can’t we just lay here and enjoy the moment? Do we have to try and figure it all out?”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“I’m not a cat.”

“No, and we’re lucky he doesn’t have one of those, either. Or a dog.”

“Just a TV is all,” noted Tuff.

“A what?”

“Squawk box. Television. See, you’re not as smart as you think. Even I pick up on things you don’t.”

“You do?” Duff was aghast. “Have you been watching this television?”

Tuff wiggled his whiskers, then for some reason shook his head. “You know I haven’t. I’ve been with you the whole time! Anyway, it’s too dangerous. What if Conner sees us?”

“Who, did you say?”

“Our antisocial benefactor.” Tuff paused, lifting one leg to examine the sharpness of his toenails. “That mousy, reclusive donor of ours, who’s getting dumber by the hour while we get smarter.”

Duff turned all the way around, narrowed his eyes. “Did you just make a connection between us and. . . and him?”

“I suppose I did.”

“Amazing.”

“Isn’t it? Furthermore, let me add that I think he’s becoming us, while we’re becoming what he should be.”

Duff stood up, shook himself dry, and then stared at Tuff, laying there on the sill in the sun like a fat cat on a bed of fresh bird feathers. “So, why do you think this is happening?”

“No idea,” said Tuff. “Although—and this could be the most astonishing thing either of us have said yet—I think if it ever stops, we’re in deep, deep trouble.”

Duff nodded. “I think you’re right. Although I’m still not sure how. Or even how I know what the word astonishing means. Although I do. Now.”

“Somehow,” added Tuff.

4

At 5:24 PM Conner arrived in his beige sedan, parked it in the garage, and went inside. On the kitchen table he set down the bag which contained forty chicken nuggets, french fries, and a chocolate shake, and then he walked over to the phone which hung next to the beige china cabinet. It was the fifth time that day he’d almost called Roger Fleming’s number to make sure that Carol was okay. . . and also the fifth time that he’d chickened out. No doubt, he realized once again, they’d get quite a laugh to learn the extent of his misery since she’d left him. When another wave of anguish and frustration swept over him, Conner retrieved his bag instead, went into the living room with it. Turning on the television, he slumped into his usual spot in front of it. At which point he pigged out.

Two hours later, when he returned to the kitchen to open the refrigerator, he was confronted by an enigma more puzzling than anything Carol had ever said in her sleep. An old fast food sack lay torn open on its side, empty. A butter dish formerly holding a full stick of margarine now looked like someone had crushed and melted it in a waffle iron. Jerking open the freezer compartment, he also found that one of the three half gallon cartons of ice cream had been opened, too, with two scoops missing–one on each long side.

Conner sat heavily at the kitchen table, and considered the possibilities. Either Carol really was haunting him, or she’d returned for something she’d forgotten to take with her. Glancing up at Carol’s prize china in the cabinet above, he ruled out the latter. What remained was more chilling than an ice cream headache. Until, that is, he remembered Molly. Molly, the one mutual friend whose discretion had always proved reliable.

Conner almost tripped over himself in getting to the phone. Punching the seven digits from memory, he listened to a familiar ring. Then a familiar voice said, “Hello?”

“Molly? Hi, it’s me, Conner.”

“Conner?”

“Yeah, listen. I was wondering if. . .well, if you’ve heard from Carol lately.”

“Carol? No, not since she left Roger.” A pregnant pause. “So how are you, Conner? What have you been up to?”

“I’m sorry, Molly, did you just say– I mean, how long ago was this?”

“Was wh– Oh!” Molly chuckled absent-mindedly, then stopped herself. “Oh, you’re serious. You didn’t know? That was three months ago, Conner. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re back together again by now. They’ve made up before, you know.” She paused again. “Or maybe you don’t.”

“No, I don’t, Molly. I was hoping if you knew whether she was all right. Safe and. . .sound.”

“Umm.” Molly seemed to consider it. “I suppose. I mean, why wouldn’t she be?”

“No reason.” Except that she might be haunting me. “Except there’s things. . . changed around here. It doesn’t matter what. I’m just wondering if maybe she still has a key.”

“A key,” repeated Molly. “Wish I could help you there, Conner.”

“Yeah, I wish you could too.”

“Sorry,” said Molly. Then she hung up.

Conner sat back down, but after a moment his despair seemed to lift. The black clouds over his head seemed to part along a silver lining, letting the sun peek in. Then a slight smile animated his lips, as a realization dawned: Whether Carol is alive or dead, he thought, either way. . .I’m not alone anymore.

Early the next morning, after a longer than usual sleep, he decided to leave a message for Carol on the refrigerator. Sitting at the kitchen table, he considered what to say. He remembered the smashed plate, the mashed butter, the ripped bag. What was Carol trying to tell him? He looked down at his paunch, then over at the garbage disposal switch, and then up at all the fine china, untouched in the cabinet above. Finally, he stared out into the living room at the dark television screen standing on its pedestal in one corner. A small neural connection fired in his cerebral cortex–tiny at first–as a single synapse pulsed across a gap, like a spark plug. . . Carol had never told him why she’d left, he realized, but wasn’t it obvious now? Wasn’t there a lesson to be learned here, too?

He held pen over paper, wriggling it as he considered his options. Should he promise to buy healthier food? Join a gym? Eat at sit-down restaurants instead doing take-out? Or maybe he should just get out more in general–to art showings, concerts, lectures, volunteer events. Be a part of the community.

What would it take to make Carol reappear?

He lowered the pen, and then forced his fingers to write something. Anything!

DEAR CAROL– YOU’RE RIGHT, AND I PROMISE TO CHANGE. PLEASE TELL ME IF I’M ON THE RIGHT TRACK? LOVE, CONNER.

Marching into the living room, he stood with odd determination in front of the TV. Then, displaying unprecedented resolve, he placed his hands on either side of the flat screen, and turned the thing all the way around. So that it faced the corner, like a recalcitrant child.

His smile returned, and broadened. Better. Much better. He felt smarter already.

5

Emerging first from the pantry’s empty bread basket, Duff poked his head carefully into the kitchen. When he sensed that Conner had indeed departed for work, he squinted upward, then queried his compatriot. “Can you read that?” Duff asked, pointing with his nose.

Tuff stared up at the mysterious symbols now posted on the refrigerator, whiskers twitching as their furtive meaning failed to jell. “Just a minute,” he replied.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Just taking me longer than usual, for some reason.”

“What reason?”

“Shhhhhh.”

“Tell me.”

“Shut up!” Tuff pushed Duff out of the way in frustration.

“Okay, okay. No need to get huffy, Mr. Tuffy.”

The duo moved closer, then stood beside each other, gawking up at the tall, beige monolith like cavemen in a Stanley Kubrick film.

“Well,” said Tuff, at last, “If you ask me, I think our friend Conner knows someone named Carol, and presumably he’s promising her that he’s going to stop being who he’s become.”

“You presume a lot,” said Duff. “For my part, what I presume is that the only reason we still know what the word presumably means is because Conner hasn’t used the word much, lately.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not sure. One thing’s for sure, though. He’s deluded. Because he thinks we’re Carol. Because he hasn’t seen us.”

“Yet.”

“And so it would behoove us to stay hidden, and prevent him from–”

“Wait a minute,” said Tuff. “What does behoove mean?”

“You really don’t know?”

“Not a clue.”

“There. You see? We’d better mind our p’s and q’s or we’ll–”

“Hold it,” interrupted Tuff. “Hoooold it! What do the letters P and Q have to do with anything?”

“Well, for all intents and purposes, they–”

“Huh? Speak English!”

Duff sighed. “Okay, my theory is that we can’t let Conner change, or there won’t be any cheeseburgers left to eat around here.”

“How do ya know that?”

“Not sure, I just do,” declared Duff.

“Ya know, you’re acting mighty peculiar,” Tuff noted.

“Peculiar,” Duff repeated, trying to decipher the word.

“Weird! Strange! Nutso!” Tuff paused, significantly. “Gees. Before long we’ll be talking in single syllables.”

“Chief among them huh and duh, perhaps?”

Tuff turned and scampered quickly away, toward Conner’s bedroom. Left to pursue his theory alone, Duff had another idea. It occurred to him, even as he maneuvered a wedge into the crack of the refrigerator, that he shouldn’t be having ideas at all, were it not for the fact that Conner hadn’t been having them much, up to now. So upon opening the big cold box, Duff filled his cheeks with butter, and made his way to the living room, where he expelled the now slick liquid all around the base of the television wherever it made contact with the pedestal table. Then he went to find Tuff.

Tuff was in Conner’s bedroom, trying to read a romance novel. He’d pulled the book from a short shelf of them next to the bed. As a page turned, Duff sneezed from the dust, then said, “This is Carol’s side, I think. I’ve noticed Conner sleeps on the other.”

“You have, have you,” said Tuff. “When did you notice that? And why on earth does it matter, anyway?”

“It matters,” Duff explained, “because our Conner is still in love with this woman.”

“What’s love mean?” demanded Tuff.

“I’m not sure yet, but it has something to do with not getting rid of what remains of her stuff. And pretending she’s still here.”

“Good for us, I hope?”

Duff shrugged, which in rats consisted of raising one’s head a bit and wobbling it from side to side, accompanied by a little eye rolling, all in one fluid motion. “Or bad, if he starts reading these books. Now put that book back, and follow me.”

“Where we going?”

“To prove I’m the brains of this outfit.”

Intrigued, Tuff followed, tail swishing like a fencing foil looking for a worthy opponent.

6

Conner arrived late that evening, having eaten out at Luisa’s, a charming Italian bistro described by an entertainment paper he’d browsed at the office as having “the most delightfully subtle tastes in the pasta universe.” He’d agreed, although he realized that his opinion was suspect because he hadn’t sampled anything beyond the fast food franchises on the next block in years, much less any alternate culinary universes.

Bagless, Conner entered the kitchen and immediately felt an aura of change there. What was it? he wondered. What was different? Struck by an apprehension of visitation or violation, he looked around as the peculiar sense of being watched swept him. The first thing he noticed was the refrigerator. Not because of what was there, but because of what was missing.

His note.

“Carol?” he called, his voice suddenly tremulous and weak. “Are you. . . here?”

Fearful of an answer, whatever it might be, he backed slowly into the living room, then froze again when he saw that his television no longer faced the corner, but had been turned around, as though by magic.

Or on purpose.

“Who moved my TV?” he wondered, aloud.

Obviously it was Carol, he decided, and she was trying to tell him something, whether from the spirit world or not. But what? Did this act mean she didn’t want him to change his life on her account? Was she saying she was sorry about leaving him for a rich scoundrel? What?

In bewilderment, he turned to face the couch, and there noticed that his remote control lay as though placed there, at the ready. Positioned face up, its faint, worn letters reminded him of the calculator on his work desk. He picked the thing up, experimentally, as if to calculate exactly how long he’d been living in this limbo. “What do you want to watch tonight, Carol?” he heard himself ask as he instinctively depressed the On button. When the television glowed to life, though, he felt an eerie shiver pulse through him, and so hit the button again.

No, a chiding voice inside him whispered. Get a grip.

He cast the remote back onto the couch, then quickly turned the TV around to face the corner once more. Satisfied, he then returned to the kitchen, where he next noticed that the stack of Carol’s prize china dishes–so long residing in their upper berth–was missing. For a full minute he stood there, unmoving. Just staring at the empty shelf. Then he slumped into the kitchen chair in despair as he realized that Carol had probably removed the dishes after using her key to get in through the front door, whose lock he’d never changed.

So that was it.

And that, as they said, was also. . . that.

Still, she has her key, he thought, dimly. Maybe she’ll be back. . .

Even this feeble and pathetic hope drained away when, upon opening the refrigerator for further evidence, he was confronted by vacant metal shelves. Gone was the paper sack, the mashed butter. Instead he was faced with a clean, stark and cold space that now felt as empty as his heart.

I’m a slob, he concluded. That’s what she’s really saying.

If only he didn’t feel so powerless and insignificant, compared to Roger Fleming. If only he could think clearly. . . could focus or concentrate. Fleming was as sharp as a lead pencil, but obviously not so easily erased. Not by a dull-witted fool named Lemming, whose social life consisted of watching reality TV while eating cheese doodles. The simple explanation here was as obvious as Occam’s razor: Carol had remembered the dishes, and finally returned for them. She’d seen his note, had a good laugh, and then cleaned up a bit–as she’d always done–before leaving him once more, without a word. By now she was probably back in the rat’s arms, making light of his misery over cocktails. She didn’t care if he changed his life or not. Such an idea was absurd. She’d moved on. For all she cared, he could watch TV for the rest of his life. Or not. What difference did it make to her–or, for that matter, to anyone?

When a headache started a romantic tango with his heartache, Conner lay down on his bed and tried to sleep. When that didn’t work, he switched his beige lamp back on, and scooted over to Carol’s side of the bed in order to assess her book collection. But there was nothing to assess, now.

Her books were gone too.

He fell back, arms flung out like a shell-shocked battlefield soldier in surrender. That clinches it, he decided. After all, did ghosts read? Hardly. Ghosts had their own ghost stories to tell. They didn’t need to read.

On impulse, he took Carol’s pillow, covered his head with it, and then crossed his arms around it, pulling the pillow down hard onto his face in frustration. Unfortunately, he continued to breathe, all the same. When he realized that he didn’t even have the guts to commit suicide, he felt hopelessly trapped in his misery. A failure at everything, he began to weep long, wailing sobs ashamedly muffled by goose down and beige 300 thread count pillowcase fabric. Only when the pillow became too uncomfortably moist to keep over his face did he remove it. Then he reached for the phone and dialed a long remembered number.

“I’ll have a large with everything,” he told the bored voice that answered, “and a two liter bottle of cola.”

When he hung up, his address confirmed, he thought, If only I had just one friend I could really de–

The thought was left uncompleted since he was already walking toward the couch in the other room, anticipating resolution.

7

Within weeks Duff and Tuff had expanded their waistlines while their diet extended from pizza crusts and leftover french fries to the nouveau cuisine of chicken nuggets and shredded roast beef, which they were careful to sample only a slice at a time from underneath the upper buns of Conner’s sandwiches–and only when he was out of the room. Trading off lookout duties, the duo managed to avoid detection, even as their increasingly bovine and plodding benefactor became ever more “corpulent,” as Duff put it.

“Worth it, ya think?” Tuff asked one afternoon while lazily sunned himself, waiting for Conner to return from a fast food franchise that boasted a yellow plastic clown at the take-out window.

“Up to now I would indeed have credited our little coup as residing in the column of the affirmative,” Duff responded, rubbing his left foreclaw against the fluffy fur covering his paunch.

“Huh?”

“Of course, were I you, I’d refrain from acquiring such prosaic affectations as ya or huh.”

“What’s that supposed ta mean?” Tuff demanded.

“Ta ta ta.”

“I’ll ta-ta-ta you if ya don’t explain yerself.”

“Okay. Well, it’s really rather simple to understand. To anyone with half a brain, I mean.” Duff paused, significantly. “For one thing, I’ve been reading.”

Tuff looked over at him skeptically. “The hell ya say. I thought we burned all Conner’s books, right before we exhausted ourselves carrying out all his broken china to the trash, piece by piece!”

“It wasn’t his china or his books,” Duff explained. “It was hers, remember?”

“Whose?”

“Carol, his ex wife.”

“Whatever. Get to the point, please?”

“Okay,” Duff continued, “The point is this. I’m tired of junk food. From what I’ve been reading, it’s not very healthy, either. So maybe we’ve prevented Conner from changing, as planned, but it’s time we now considered changing ourselves. Before it’s too late, I mean.”

“Huh?”

“There you go again.”

“And you too. What the hell are you saying now? Spill it!”

Duff sighed. “I’m just saying we’ve got Conner where we want him again, barely able to dress himself. But if we don’t watch it, we’ll follow his tracks right into the same dead end maze.”

Tuff huffed. “Ya sure are talking funny.”

“You want to hear funny? Conner was once both a reader and a writer. Even a poet, although never published. Which is what first attracted Carol to him in the first place. Until he got writer’s block, that is, and wasn’t becoming the bestselling author Carol imagined. Until he got a job as a life insurance salesman, and started watching TV instead.” Duff paused, again significantly. “It was while you were dozing that I found his books in the attic.”

“What books?”

“Let’s see, well, besides the diary, there was a science textbook, an old college dictionary, and books by people named John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, and T.S. Eliot. Plus a novel titled Fahrenheit 451 by someone named Ray Bradbury.”

“Really. And what did you do with these books? If ya don’t mind me asking.”

“Do? Well, I burned them, of course. After I read them.”

“And the ashes?”

“The usual place.”

“Uh huh.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Believe you? I don’t even know you. Although I’m starting to.”

“Good,” Duff said, “because you need to know this, too. Conner has been contemplating getting a pet. Meaning a dog or–worse–a cat.”

“How do ya know that? Can ya read his mind now, too?”

“No, just his phone book. But need I remind you how catastrophic it would be for us should he decide to alleviate his loneliness that way?”

“Yes, ya do. What’s catas-tropic mean?”

“Bad.”

“How bad could it be?”

“Catastrophically bad. But never fear. I have a plan.”

“You do, huh.” Tuff yawned.

“Don’t you want to hear it?”

Tuff turned back to stare at the ceiling, then closed his eyes in response. Soon he was snoring.
“Oh, and by the way,” Duff added, after Tuff seemed too groggy to understand, “I didn’t just read Conner’s books, I memorized them.”

That very night, while Conner and Tuff slept, Duff ripped out the yellow phone book pages associated with pets–both for sale and adoption. For added measure, he also ripped away the circled pages showing pizza delivery. He’d “had it” with pizza, as Tuff might have put it were he cognizant of his precarious position on Darwin’s rickety stepladder. What Duff desired now was to sample other taste sensations, and without skulking around for them. Like Lebanese, Greek, Cantonese, and German. All he had to do was convince Conner that Carol was really dead, after all.

8

Conner awoke from a recurring dream of falling endlessly through clouds that seemed to become thicker and darker until he could no longer breathe. What he discovered upon sitting up is that his comforter was missing. It had not merely slipped to the floor, either. It was gone from the room.

When he found the blanket–now covering the sofa in front of the TV–he stood motionless for a long, anxious moment, first in confusion while recalling the previous night, and then in astonishment while confirming that his habits and rituals had never changed. He was astonished again to find that two empty paper plates had been laid out on a TV tray on the kitchen table, with a yellow advertisement coupon neatly placed between them reading FODELLO’S GOURMET CHEESES. His phonebook, positioned behind it, was opened to the restaurant section, and showed obvious editing in the form of careful cutting and pasting. One of the items circled in grease pencil read CAROL’S DELI MEATS.

Conner put one hand over his mouth, and very nearly collapsed back against the stove. When he put his hand behind him to brace himself, he was startled to sense that the stove was mysteriously warm. What he noticed next was that two china cups had been placed next to the coffee maker, whose little red light also indicated that coffee was brewing. Peering into the cups, he saw that one cup held two sugar cubes, while the other held only one.

Carol had always preferred one cube, and he two.

“Carol!” he called, his voice shrill with panic. “This isn’t funny. You come out now.”

There was no response, except from the coffee maker, which burbled.

“Carol?” he almost pleaded.

Calling in sick this time, Conner felt no guilt. He was sick. Sick in the head, obviously. Hadn’t he seen a hypnotist on a talk show once demonstrating auto suggestion? Guinea pig audience volunteers had done things they later couldn’t remember doing. Maybe it was the same with him. Maybe he’d arranged all these things himself, out of the subconscious hope that Carol hadn’t left him again. Could it be possible? If so, he needed to see a shrink right away. He was losing his mind. Maybe he’d already lost it. Of course there was only one way to be sure of that.

“Coffee’s ready,” he called, trying to keep his voice from cracking.

After pouring out coffee for Carol, he took his own cup into the living room to watch Oprah. If, when he returned, Carol’s coffee was gone, that meant he wasn’t insane. The world itself was insane. If the coffee was still there, he decided, he would call for a doctor’s appointment first thing in the morning.

Appropriately enough, the topic on Oprah was the spirit world. The Billionaire host talked about how other famous people had been visited by ghosts, and how it had changed their lives. Would it change his, too? Conner wasn’t rich or famous, so he wasn’t sure. Maybe ghosts didn’t visit life insurance salesmen. Not even the ghosts of ex wives.

When the show broke for commercials, Conner got up from the couch, but then he just stood there, staring in the direction of the kitchen. In that suppressed portion of his brain where imagination slept, an alternate future flickered into visibility by his mind’s eye–one that might have been his if only he’d made different decisions. Not even better decisions, just different ones. As many choices as were possible, he suddenly realized, that many futures would never be. And when he tried to imagine one which he and Carol shared happily together, he couldn’t. Imagination was again replaced by images on TV. Images that seemed propelled under pressure in a steady stream of hypnotizing photons that made Carol’s face recede even as he tried to conjure it. Her face was repeatedly wiped or cross-dissolved away as that never-ending rush of other images replaced every attempt he made to stabilize it. The source of the images felt as relentless and as inexhaustible as the sewer drain that had flooded his yard after a historic storm, too.

In a daze, Conner stepped fatefully toward the kitchen.

Who ya gonna call? the voice in his head taunted.

He stood in the doorway now, looking toward the china cup next to the coffee maker. He inched toward it slowly, about to peer over the rim. . .

I ain’t afraid’a no ghost, his inner voice jeered.

9

Tuff looked stuffed, with his tail hanging off the edge of the table, feet in the air. “Worth it, ya think?” Tuff asked, not bothering to open his eyes this time, much less look in Duff’s direction.

Duff counted the remaining cheese cubes on the plate. There were nine left, one each of cheddar, feta, gouda, havarti, mozzarella, Roquefort, Gorgonzola, ricotta, and Swiss. Without looking up from his work, he replied, “I may have singed my palate sipping hot coffee, but yes, I would say that what few taste buds remain to sample these delicacies are surely in heaven. As to my favorite, I’m leaning towards gouda. It be good-ah.”

“Can’t ya just answer my question?” Tuff complained.

“I thought I did,” Duff said. “And your next one, too. As for the meats, now residing in our stomachs. . . albeit more in yours than mine. . . I will add that the kielbasa was particularly satisfying, given as I warmed mine on the stove sufficiently to bring out its hidden bouquet.”

“Whatever,” said Tuff.

“Perhaps next time Conner will grace us with a nice bottle of Chianti and some fava beans as a side.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind. Now help me hide these cubes in the pantry for a midnight snack before Conner gets home.”

“Yes, Carol, dear,” Tuff said, then added, “We don’t want ya ta end up on the History channel.”

Duff turned to stare at Tuff. “What?”

“Never mind.” Tuff rolled over and struggled up. “Just a channel Conner don’t watch.”

“Doesn’t.”

“Eh?”

“Doesn’t watch. And how would you know, anyway?”

“When you asleep, I get bored. Kapeech?”

“No. No kapeech. Have you ever been bored before?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Not until you started watching television?”

“How’d ya guess?”

“Because your grammar is suffering.”

“Whas gram-mar mean?”

“It means more cheese for me, once Conner gets his cat.”

“Ya don’t scare me.”

“That is scary. Listen. I’m serious. You need to quit, and I don’t mean because Conner might catch you. I mean because there’s a balance here between us and him, somehow. It’s got something to do with his relationship with that TV. Maybe ghosts are real, and there’s one in there, in that machine. Although a machine implies moving parts, and I’m fairly sure that thing is solid state. Anyway, my point is you’re spooking me out, talking like you do.”

“Me? How ’bout you?”

“Are you suggesting that my getting smarter only makes you seem dumber by comparison? No, I reject that argument. It’s empirically unsound. Your vocabulary has definitely deteriorated. Just listen to yourself.”

“Me? A month ago I had no vocabu. . . whatever. . . at all!”

“Ah, but then you did, and now you’re losing it. Giving it back to Conner by sneaking those peeks.”

“Gimme a break.”

“Okay, I will. If you promise to stop cheating, I won’t let Conner get a cat that will eat you, or a trap that will snap your neck. Deal?”

Tuff snickered. “Yer funny.”

“Am I? I thought I was being deadly serious. Do you have any idea how rare and precious intelligence is? Having a language? Being able to communicate? We’ve been gifted with this miracle by some force beyond ourselves. A higher power. We even dare to imagine we know who we are, although we don’t know why or how our consciousness came to be. Are we now going to squander it all through lazy indulgence?”

Tuff sighed. “I got no idea what yer sayin’. All I want is ta be happy. That too much ta ask?”

“No, it’s not too much,” Duff replied, smiling sadly, “it’s too little.”

Duff tried to warn Tuff several more times that his mind was going down the very drain they’d escaped, but he wouldn’t listen. Maybe he really didn’t understand, just like he said. Maybe it was too late. Duff’s complaints about having to clean up more, now that they’d taken on Carol’s role, also failed to motivate Tuff. From his berth under the couch beneath Conner, Tuff spent most evenings watching the glowing screen that Duff avoided, then spent his days eating and sleeping while Duff dealt with the mess they made. Once, not quite exhausted by his double duties, Duff ascended again through the woodwork in search of more books in the attic, but the only one he found was the collected stories of Jorge Luis Borges. One story described an infinite library filled with every possible combinations of words or letters. It was a library so vast that there was, no doubt, a book in it that would explain the meaning of existence itself. Yet the odds of anyone finding such a book was calculated at zero.

Duff was considering Borges’ idea that such a library implied a Librarian when he heard a crash downstairs.

10

While in the bathroom, Conner opened the new copy of TV Guide he’d purchased, then stared down at the image of a starlet on the red carpet of an awards show. The face looked familiar to him, but instead of reading the young woman’s name and fashion critique, he looked past the magazine he held toward the heating vent beyond his feet. In a flicker of memory Carol’s face seemed magically framed there against the dark, and he closed his eyes in an attempt to retain and focus the image. A moment later, when he opened his eyes again, they were wet with tears. The vent now seemed blurred and shifted by the watery film projected across the lens of his eyes. He wept uncontrollably as Carol’s face appeared, shimmering as though in the rain against an inner eye. At this, the TV Guide slipped from his hands to the floor.

“Carol. . .” he sobbed.

When the emotional pressure finally abated, he blinked away his tears, and was left staring emptily into the vent where, after a time, he became aware of a small piece of cloth hanging against the inside of the vent’s grill. On closer inspection he saw that it wasn’t cloth at all, but a fragment of partially burned paper. He even made out a word inside the crisped edges of the sliver.

Montag.

Montag. Montag. Where had he heard that name before, and how did he even know it was a name? And then he remembered that, too.

Befuddled by the meaning of why and how the burnt fragment of a book by Ray Bradbury appeared in his bathroom’s heating and cooling vent, Conner went in search of a flashlight in the kitchen. What he found, while kneeling down to open the compartment below the sink, was yet another fragment. This one was glass. Or rather china. A broken piece of it the size of his fingernail was lodged in one of the cabinet’s vertical decorative slats. He picked it out and studied it, turning it as if examining a relic or fossil. Then he turned on the flashlight, and ran the beam along the edge of the floor beneath all the beige cabinet drawers. And there he found another china piece, smaller but unmistakable.

Now in a frantic hunt for the truth, Conner burst into the bedroom, then the living room, the flashlight beam scanning into every vent, every dark nook and cranny until. . .

He couldn’t believe it. Transfixed in the focused radiance under his couch was an apparition. A fat, gluttonous rat whose beady red eyes now opened, squinting into the light. Conner screamed, and with an adrenaline rush gripped the underside of the couch and lifted one side of it as he rose. Looking down in disgust at the vermin huddled there in a circle of crumbs, he turned the couch sideways, and prepared to drop it.

“No!” said the rat suddenly, in a tiny yet distinct voice, eyes wide.

Conner’s eyes widened even more. Propelled backward by shock, he lost his balance, stumbled, and fell as the couch struck the television, dislodging it with a resultant explosion of glass.

Scrambling back from the thing on the floor before him, Conner then reached for the brass pole of his floor lamp. Tightening his grip around it, he swung the lamp down like a baseball bat going for a low ball. The beige Tiffany hood and bulb exploded in a shower of sparks, grinding across the floor in an arch. But when he looked again at the spot where he swung, the impossible rat was gone.

Strike two, he thought, dully.

Wagner’s Hardware had only one large wooden trap left, and Conner prayed he wouldn’t need more. He also purchased some rat poison, then used the change he was given to make two phone calls. The first call was to Dr. Shamus Lefler, a psychiatrist who investigated the causes behind both schizophrenic and pathological disorders. After setting up an appointment, he next called Roger Fleming’s downtown loft condo. His initial shock at hearing the word hello spoken affected his own voice in answering. His odd new voice cracked and felt tremulous leaving his lips.

“Carol?” he said with a desperate yet awesome relief.

11

Duff cautiously descended from the attic while unmitigated fear pitched his heart up-tempo like a snare drum. Emerging from a hole partly gnawed between the particle board panels at the back of the pantry, he listened to the house for clues to all the commotion. He heard nothing. Silence. The interminable frustration eventually forced him into the kitchen, where he sniffed the air and detected the lingering scent of sweat–and trouble. Finally, after his quick but careful check of an empty garage confirmed that Conner was gone, he scurried from room to room, calling Tuff’s name. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he added, in keeping with Tuff’s penchant for prosaic phrasing.

The chaotic living room crime scene stopped him. It was all there, too, laid out for anyone with half a brain cell still firing to interpret. Tuff had been discovered. Question now was, had Conner also disposed of his body?

Trash cans and outside bins suggested no. Either way, however, Duff concluded that the prognosis was grim. It was just a matter of time until Tuff went belly up, be he still alive or not. The balance of the house had been upset when a table had turned over, and no longer bore the mesmerizing light box whose alternate realities had served as substitution for Conner’s own. Without it, Conner now faced a real choice, and with a poignancy he hadn’t confronted since his divorce. Would he make the right decision for himself this time–finally able to reject the easier path–or would he squander his potential in another soiree of mental sacrifice? Put succinctly, as Duff was wont to do, would he call other people for help, or would he buy another wide screen HDTV to watch endless commercials for beer, fizzy diabetes water, and preachers promising financial heaven in exchange for a blank check?

Duff climbed back up to the kitchen window sill where they’d spent many a lazy afternoon, awaiting Conner to return with “din din,” as Tuff put it. He stared out at the unruly lawn while visions of Conner returning with an exterminator plagued him. He thought about all the wonderful food they’d eaten, too. Especially the cheeses, whose exquisite tastes and aromas had been almost unbearably good. Then he remembered what they’d done to maintain their new lifestyle, including the burning of Conner’s and Carol’s books in the basement, even as Conner himself worked to pay for his addiction–and theirs.

A sense of guilt came over him, which was truly odd, although it didn’t feel so. Poor Conner had wasted his life, he realized. And it had been partly his fault, at least toward the most recent end. Whatever love was, in its full meaning, Duff sensed that it had been squandered too. Gone in the hours and days and weeks and months sitting in front of a glowing screen behind pulled curtains, while even his remaining books sat untouched, collecting dust.

A tear formed in Duff’s eye, his first ever. The miracle tear fell to the sill, where it beaded, and where he looked. The reflective surface of the tiny tear framed a magical world that was his, although he didn’t know how. Would he ever know? he wondered. It didn’t seem likely, now.

When a movement outside caught his eye, Duff turned his head to track it. And then he saw his friend Tuff, crawling from the hedges below the sill, out into the lawn.

Duff clamored down, squealing as he ran into the pantry, into the wall, through the maze of turns that led to a hole, a tunnel, where he emerged once again. “Tuff!” he yelled as he ran. “Wait up!”

Tuff turned as he came up. Turned and snarled at him, hissing. Dismissing.

“Tuff!” Duff rejoined. “It’s me, you dummy! Don’t you recognize me?”

Tuff backed away, his beady eyes locked in defensive posture. There was no recognition there. No intelligence, anymore. Only instinct, now. Tuff made no more sound as moved away across the lawn, through the grass, toward the drainage culvert.

Duff watched Tuff disappear. He started to follow, started to call after him. But then he stopped himself. What was down there, anyway? he asked himself. Only darkness. Grime and dirt. It would be like going backward. Like denying what they had become. Who they had been. But there was no denying it. Not for him.

Not like this.

12

Conner arrived late to do what had to be done. He thought about spending the night at a motel, but then decided against it. He would just leave all the lights on. Over coffee, Carol had suggested that. He hadn’t told her everything, of course. Like his appointment with Dr. Lefler for the following Thursday. But he did mention the broken TV, and his decision not to replace it. “I’m joining a gym, instead, and am getting some reading done,” he’d said. “Maybe even some writing too.”

He’d started to mention the books he must have burned, and the china he must have broken, but he didn’t make that mistake, either. He would replace those instead, in case she ever visited.

“And how are you doing?” he’d asked her, casually, after relating the dramatic story about an invading rat, which had resulted in their meeting.

“Oh, you know,” Carol had confided. “Sometimes I wonder. . .”

“What?”

“If I haven’t been trapped too.” She shook her head, started to add to it, then stopped herself.

Conner didn’t press it. He knew Carol. He knew it come out, in due time. He suspected that fact was something Roger Fleming didn’t know, and so had pressed it whenever he could. Pressed all the wrong buttons, along with the ones that had kept her coming back to him. The ones Conner himself needed to learn, or had ignored.

“Call me sometime,” he’d suggested, in the end, “and I’ll return the favor.”

“What favor is that?” she’d asked.

“Listening.”

It had been the right button, he knew, because she’d smiled. Now, before donning his eye pillow, Conner went hunting for something to read. He found the TV Guide on the bathroom, but only picked it up to drop it into the trash can. Giving up, he was returning to bed when his gaze fell on something beneath the box springs.

A shadow under his bed.

He froze, his heart skipping a beat as he gasped, looking around for a weapon. But when he looked back, and closer, he saw that the thing’s shape was wrong. It was oblong, but too symmetrical. It wasn’t moving, either. Wasn’t breathing. Not in the least.

He dropped to his knees, and reached for the object.

What he pulled out was a book.

He stared down at the cover in disbelief. Why had he placed it here? And why had he chosen this particular book to save from the flames?

An hour later, when Conner finally put the book down, and after he adjusted the eye pillow’s strap behind his head, sleep came quickly in the peaceful quiet. Still, he dreamed of a rat. A big, ugly rat in a maze of books. Circular corridors connected endlessly descending hexagonal galleries where nearly identical volumes were arranged for perusal. The rat sniffed at the rows frantically, and occasionally dislodged a book, nudging its fluttering pages open. But the letters were gibberish. The words made no sense. Yet the rat continued its search, down to the next gallery of the vast labyrinth, and then to the next. Relentlessly.

When Conner woke and took off his eye pillow, it was daylight. He dressed quickly, and went into the kitchen for coffee. He was pleased to see that no coffee already brewed for him, this time, and he felt better than he had in years. After adding one sugar instead of the usual two, he sat at the kitchen table with his coffee, and looked up at the cabinets. Beige everywhere, he thought. Beige, beige, beige. How bland and boring. No wonder Carol had left him.

He decided to paint today. He would take a personal day off. Not a sick day. He would paint the cabinets first. Maybe he would call Carol and ask her advice about colors. Yellow? Hunter green? What would she suggest? He opened the decorative panel beneath the sink to search for a paint brush, before he remembered the trap he’d set.

A trap that, to his delight, had sprung in the night.   -0-

© 2009 by Jonathan Lowe

(For more, read Fame Island, Postmarked for Death, Awakening Storm, and Geezer at ereader.com.)