<<previously… sometimes I wonder just how many people are in this city that can’t leave. not that they’re not allowed to leave, but that they are so completely sustained by the city’s energies that they would just unravel if they stepped foot outside of it.>>
written for the theme: my secret life
New Orleans, in the midst of the 1920s.
As I drifted underneath the electric lamps of Spanish Fort, 
passing by the upscale restaurants and cabaret shows and heading towards the amusement park rides, I tried not to make eye contact with the ghosts. Most of them were soldiers – French, Spanish, British and American, both Confederate and Union, all mingling quietly amongst themselves or watching the children running to and fro and the couples walking by holding hands. Each one of the soldiers had died back when this was a fort, either defending or attacking the city of New Orleans. Some of them had fought in battles long before I came to this country, some were in the battle I pretended to fight in (now deemed, quite romantically, The Battle of New Orleans), and still others fought in the Civil War, which all happened during the century when I was, for all intents and purposes, dead.
The Coney Island of New Orleans
Now this space was teeming with restaurants, rides, and vendors selling candied treats and soda pop – serving as a place where the citizens of this city could cool off during the summer, whether enjoying a picnic with a breeze from Lake Ponchartrain or enjoying swimming in the lake during the day. Too bad this place wouldn’t be around in a couple of years.
I turned to my partner, Scape, who was buzzing through the air just behind me. “Keep your eyes out for a clown sculpting balloons and wearing a blue top hat.”
His proboscis extended, then rolled back up.
There were plenty of costumed performers, but none were the one stalking me. We passed by the merry-go-round and an alligator pond, rounded a corner and there in the middle of the path was a big tent with a large, flashing lit-up sign that told me it was the place to which we were headed:
(re-creation from actual events)
Looking up at the tent, I said to Scape, “She has some strange ways of keeping secrets, doesn’t she?” I parted the curtain and followed him inside. The place seemed bigger on the inside and was lit by gas lanterns hanging dangerously close to the fabric walls. In the center of the tent stood none other than my employer next to the pedestal which held up the old, closed book. The raised words on the dark green cover I’d come to be so familiar with over the last (or next, depending on how you looked at it) century read the same as the sign outside: the episodes. I took a swig of Chartreuse from my flask. “So here we are,” I said to her.
“So here we are,” she echoed.
I reached out and ran my hand over the cover. “Do you think it’s empty?” I asked, smirking. “Or do you think the book, like us, remembers all that’s happened? Do you think the episodes are written down here, followed by the sub-entries?”
The light around my employer pulled at my vision like inverted fireworks, but I was starting to like the effect looking at her had on me – the vertigo it made me feel. “There’s only one way to find out,” she said. Her tone was a disinterested tone, like she had something else she’d rather be doing.
I pulled at the cover but it was shut tight.
“You’re not the author yet,” she said. “Only the author can open it.”
I shook my head. “But I am the author,” I said, pressing my hand down on the surface of the book. I could feel it breathing underneath my palm.
“Not here, you’re not,” she said. “Not yet.”
“What if I don’t accept it?” I asked. “What if you give it to Scape? What would happen in the future? Would I still be able to mess things up?”
She sighed. “You think screwing up the episodes will help you not screw something else up?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter – you’re thinking about everything backwards. Anyway, you have to accept. I’m your boss, remember? I’m giving you this job to do. I want you to section off your experiences into episodes and keep track of them in here.”
“Hm. ‘Kind of like a radio drama.’ That’s what I said last time.”
She looked at Scape. “And if you help him, I don’t want it interfering with your job, either. I can’t have both of you running around wasting all your time with this.” She nodded towards me. “Now hold his arms back.”
I put my arms behind my back and Scape’s legs wrapped around them. “Why?” I said to my employer. “You never told me why you chose me. You have so many employees.”
She held up in her hand a quill pen, its tip dripping with black ink. She gently flicked the pen like it was a needle. “You never asked,” she said.
“I’m asking now.”
She walked up to me. “I’m assigning you this task because you’re the only one I’ve ever found who is capable.” She unbuttoned my shirt and pushed aside the recorder that was hanging from my neck. “You still haven’t used this?” she said, almost to herself. “Interesting.” Then my chest opened up like the top of a piano and I grimaced as she placed the pen inside me, right next to my heart. It didn’t hurt, actually, but felt more like going down a large drop on a roller coaster.
Just as my chest closed back up, the wound on my arm started to itch. I stepped towards the episodes, pulling out of Scape’s grip. I had to know if they were written there or not – had to know how much they had to do with all of this. But as soon as I was out of Scape’s grasp I fell to the floor, week from my body being altered so much.
“Guess you shouldn’t have wasted time asking questions,” said my employer, who crouched down next to me.
I looked up into her eyes. “There’s a clown, following me,” I said. “You know him?”
She smirked. “I know about two dozen clowns at any given time. You of all people should know that.”
“If you don’t want me doing this,” I said, my head still spinning, “then why don’t you stop me? I do work for you.”
“Well, unfortunately for me, I like you,” she said. “But don’t let it get to your head.” She stood up, and I watched her walk out of the tent just before I vanished.
next sub-entry \/\/ previous sub-entry
story Copyright 2010 by Andy Reynolds
for more stories and a menu of the episodes, visit my website: AndyReynolds.net
I like it!
[...] next episode [...]
[...] “Systematically destroying the episodes,” she said. “I placed the pen inside you, and what you’ve done has snapped it in half, and its bleeding into you. It’s killing you.” (see sub-entry 17) [...]
[...] next episode // previous sub-entry [...]
[...] I ordered a whiskey to shake the chill away and took a table by a window, leaving my coat and hat on the rack by the door. Outside, through the thickness of the rain, was the tent with the lit-up sign above it, displaying to anyone who cared to read it what exactly the tent housed: the episodes. (for the episode tent and Spanish Fort – see sub-entry 17) [...]