I have many many good qualities: honesty, discretion, determination. Loyalty. Youth. Humility. The Program Director witnessed these in me during orientation. He did not say so explicitly, but the fact was evident.
He was wearing a tightly buttoned Norfolk jacket and riding breeches, his calves swelling like bursting sausages in thick wool stockings, though the late spring day was uncommonly languid. His attire was not the norm—jeans and T-shirts for the youths and even the adults chasing their youth, even there in the remote and storied retreat, where one should not be faulted for expecting a bit more formality, or decency. Indeed, outside of such context, one might conceive of the Program Director as a benign sort of madman. As it stood, his eccentricity contributed handily to the air of stately tradition in that wooded valley and within that pine-beamed lodge house. The juxtaposition of elegantly ancient and vulgar modern lent the retreat an almost otherworldly absurdness, though I was still to learn exactly how otherworldly, how absurd, and indeed how mad.
Not being a tall man, the Program Director had to look up to peer into my eyes.
“You stand out among the interns,” he said, adding with a sly smile, “We must find a special job for you.” His hands were clasped behind his back and he nodded, more to himself than to me.
A thrill coursed through my limbs. I wanted to dance on a knife’s edge. Inwardly, I did dance.
This exchange between us just at the end of the orientation period, when the other (and as I now understood—lesser) interns chattily scooped up orientation packets and made each others’ acquaintance—a process I had no interest in participating in. Some had already begun to leave the meeting lodge and seek out their shared accommodations down the camp’s tree-shadowed lane which extended in either direction, to find their own cabins and their little cots.
Having accepted the Program Director’s appraisal, which felt like sunshine upon my person, I waited for his next words. None came. Instead, he made several small noises further approval, after which he turned away.
As the others had done, I collected my orientation packet and left to seek my assigned cabin. I found it easily at the lower end of the lane, nearest to the entry point of the retreat. Inside, as my cabin-mates unpacked their loose, carelessly packed belongings (while making even looser and more careless small talk), I sat on the edge of my cot, glowing inwardly, reflecting that something special did indeed await me, and not caring the slightest that I had no one with which to share the knowledge yet. This day and its seminal incidents would one day be included in my memoir. My memoir, or my full autobiography, I had yet to decide which.
Or perhaps, I would write neither type of book, but would instead cooperate with a biographer. The first of many. There would be one or two major biographies published in my lifetime and more after my passing. Many more, as every generation would require a new one, relevant to its own time.
A little laugh of satisfaction escaped my lips and my cabin-mates ceased their chitter-chatter, looking my way. Mistakenly, they seemed to believe my expectoration indicated a wish to join their circle. When they saw it did not, they went back to their business, leaving me once more in peace.
But all this reverie of autobiography was, I must say, a bit hubristic on my part. For, at this stage of life, I reminded myself, I was but an intern at a summer retreat for writers and artists, though certainly the finest such program in the country. My own work would begin later, after cutting myself from this chrysalis, ending my pupa stage to take flight under my own power.
I took my little sheaf of extant works from the leather folder in my valise. Nearly a half dozen prose poems which I had copied and recopied onto lambskin parchment in my careful handwriting. I looked them over with satisfaction, reordering a few of them. These were but the beginning of a life’s long work, I reminded myself, with pride.
Throughout the first days, I performed the usual tasks expected of an intern. I admit that, as the first week dragged on, I began to worry that the Program Director would not make good on his promise to “find me something special.” I should not have worried.
One morning, the Program Director approached me as I was mopping the wooden floors of the main conference room in the central meeting lodge.
He was practically glowing and I imagined this glow mirrored the excellent shine I had brought forth from the polished pine of the floor. I assumed he intended to compliment me on this; however, it was not to be. I forgave this oversight as, unable to contain his excitement, the Program Director blurted out his news.
“This is an extraordinary day in the long and hallowed history of this retreat! Do you know what word has come to us? Do you know?”
I didn’t, but the Program Director’s enthusiasm infected me. “Please, tell me.”
“A very fine artist is coming. Very fine! A great man!”
He then told me the name of the artist. My knees nearly buckled. My head swam. “Is it true?”
“True, my young friend.”
The Program Director had never used this sobriquet for me before.
“Preparations have to be made, many preparations. But that is not the most important thing, right now. I need a volunteer.” He suddenly reached out, grabbing my arm. “When he arrives, the Great Man will require his meals brought to his cabin. He won’t eat with us, well, that’s disappointing, but the Great Man needs his solitude to work. Of course, he does. We must accommodate that. I need a volunteer to bring him his midday meal.” The Program Director put a hand to the side of his mouth, feigning a whisper, and said this next bit with obvious pride. “I have been informed, you know. The Great Man eats but one meal, a very small one, each day. I have been informed.”
I nodded. I too found this private insight into a peculiar and unique habit of the Great Man exciting. He must certainly be an aesthete.
“As I say, I need a volunteer. I don’t know if you recall, but upon meeting you on Orientation Day, I told you that we must find something special for you. And we have! We have! Oh, say you will do it!” He pleaded, still tightly holding my arm. “Say you will bear the task of bringing the Great Man his midday meals.”
I could scarcely contain my enthusiasm. I grasped the Program Director’s free hand with both of mine. “It would be my honor! More than an honor! A privilege.”
The eyes of the Program Director grew wet. “I knew you were a young person of like mind with me! Word can never express our gratitude, my dear…my dear sir.”
The next day’s train brought the Great Man. Of course, before then, the gossip-mongers—intern, staffer, or student, alike—had spread the news throughout the Program. A suggestion was made to make up a party to greet the train. The Program Director, when hearing of this, was aghast. Correctly. The Great Man was a private person. His work required calm, rest, solitude, the opposite of what these philistines proposed to give him as welcome!
The Program Director quashed the suggestion, rebuking those responsible. Madness. The Great Man had chosen our program, our retreat, to spend his summer working, when he could have chosen from any number of others. No. The Great Man’s privacy and person would be respected at all times. We may never even see the Great Man. Unlike the other artists-in-residence, he would teach no workshops nor lecture. He would not hold individual conferences with the paying students, let alone the interns. Rather, we should be grateful just to know he was among us.
The Program Director even went so far as to order everyone in the retreat to stay in their cabins on the day of his arrival until the Great Man was comfortably secluded in his own cabin. He had been assigned the lonely one at the extreme other end of the camp from my own, where it capped the head of our tree-shadowed lane and almost touched the woods.
I assumed this did curfew did not include myself but, to my embarrassment, the Program Director told me it did. He even appeared quite agitated when I asked what my duties were to be, in regards to seeing the Great Man into his cabin.
“None! None!” He blurted. “Stay in your cabin with the other interns! I’ve already said.”
I murmured something and turned away before letting the Program Director see the humiliation burning into a rage within me. I told myself it did not matter. The Program Director, no doubt succumbing to the overwhelming stress of making sure the Great Man’s arrival went off just right, had forgot himself. Had forgot me and my importance which had been earlier so clearly acknowledged.
I would still be the designated intern tasked with bringing the Great Man his daily meal. I had volunteered.
I did as I was told, sitting on my cot, my face turned toward a small window. Sunshine broke through the canopy of the forest, outside. I have nothing more to report of the day of the Great Man’s arrival.
The following morning, the mood in the camp was somber—respectful, but cheerless. A realization among staff and students that, exciting as the arrival of the Great Man had been—momentous—the banalities of camp life had to go on. Windows and floors still had to be washed, laundry done, syllabi copied and distributed, chairs arranged, or rearranged, lectures and classes with the various artists-in-residence had to be attended. Though these artists, each considered a luminary, lacked a bit of their luster after yesterday. One sensed these lesser lights understood it, too.
But this general malaise had no sway over me. I was elated. Though I did not go out of my way to show my happiness off. I did not need to, for the execution of my new duty would make it evident. The others, noticing the lightness radiating from my being would no doubt look upon me with an increased disdain—a mask of disgust that was merely a coping mechanism for their jealousy. Simple, pathetic, though hardly unexpected, behavior.
I arrived at the kitchen precisely at 11:54 a.m., as arranged. This would allow me one minute to collect the lunch, three minutes to walk up the lane and place the lunch on the top step of the cabin’s porch.
This would leave two minutes to walk away so that I would be at a respectable distance when the Great Man came out to collect his lunch at noon—but not so far away that I would be unable to hear the cabin door open and thereby confirm he had received it.
Seeing me, the Head Cook put aside the lesser task she was engaged in and turned to the table of brown sack lunches, prepared for the dozen or so various artists-in-residence, which had been lined up in neat rows. She pushed them aside to retrieve one dead center.
Carefully, with both hands, she unrolled the perfectly creased top of the sack and peered inside. This final check of her work done, she nodded with satisfaction. She closed the sack again and expertly re-creased the fold between her thick thumbs and index fingers. In both hands, she presented the sack to me.
Her air of respectfulness told me she understood the bond between us, the sharing of duties for the Great Man. I nodded as I took the sack. She gave it one more glance, then returned to her other work.
Precisely on the schedule I had laid out, I came to the foot of the steps of the porch of the Great Man’s cabin.
I put the brown bag down carefully on the dark wood of the top step. Hesitating a moment, I listened vainly for a hint of the artistic work going on inside—the clacking of keys or the scratching of a nib upon paper perhaps. Presently, I gathered my discipline to turn and slowly walk away, stepping as lightly as possible to avoid any unneeded disturbance. I confess to a disappointment when, by the time I had paced a good distance away from the cabin, I still did not hear the door open.
Later in the day, I contrived to manipulate the order of my other duties to pass near enough to the cabin to spy, with satisfaction, that the sack was no longer on the step.
The remainder of the week continued the same routine. I would collect the lunch sack from the Head Cook, she would check it again in my presence, I would take it to the cabin and place it in the porch’s top step. Then I would withdraw, having heard nothing.
I should not have expected more, or rather, I don’t know what I had expected—but I had expected something. Once the Great Man’s stay entered its second week, I began to linger longer each time I placed the sack on the top step. Sometimes as long as several minutes. This did not go unnoticed, and jealous interns began their gossip. I was a “shirker” who delayed in my duties as a contrivance to do less work overall. I was “arrogant” and “haughty.” I was “obsessed” with the Great Man.
The Program Director summoned me to the office. “What truth is there in these rumors?” he demanded. Not, I noted, Is there any truth in these rumors? The wretched beasts had already begun to poison minds against me.
I vociferously denied all and, I believe, my arguments coupled with the esteem in which the Program Director held me placated him—for the moment.
However, I was dismissed from the office with these ominous words: “Very well, we will make no changes concerning you on the duty roster. For the moment.”
I left, digging my nails into my palms.
This meeting had taken place immediately before I was to collect that day’s lunch sack, and perhaps it affected my state of mind to the degree that I took an unprecedented action: once I had collected the day’s lunch and walked it toward the Great Man’s cabin, I kept going. Not stopping at the steps of the porch as usual but, after taking care that I was not observed, keeping on, straight into the woods, still holding the brown sack.
I did not stay there long, but long enough. Kneeling in the damp floor of the forest, I rested the sack on my lap and opened it carefully. I peered inside. A sandwich in cellophane on a French roll. A bright red apple. I took the sandwich out and unwrapped that too. The smell of fresh bread wafted up as I opened the roll and examined the meat, which appeared to be turkey or chicken. Next, I took the apple, turning it carefully in my hand. It was fresh and without blemish. All was as one would expect.
After my investigation, I painstakingly wrapped and stored the items exactly as they were before. I rose and took the sack to the front steps of the cabin and placed it as normal, though perhaps a full minute late.
As I turned to go, I heard a bump from somewhere inside the cabin, a dull thud, as if of a wide, heavy object—a trunk possibly—falling from a low height to the floor. I turned, listened again, but heard nothing else.
That afternoon I was again summoned to the Program Director’s office.
“This is most distressing.” He was not seated, but paced behind his desk, head shaking, his breathing rapid. “The Great Man’s lunch! It was mishandled! Mishandled! The top of the sack was poorly creased. And what is more, the sandwich roll was inexpertly wrapped! The apple was not well-polished. It bore smudges!”
With shame, I was about to confess my crime, but the Program Director continued. “I have sacked Cook! What a disgrace. I have known the woman for years! I cannot believe she betrayed the program so egregiously!”
Warm golden rays of relief enveloped me.
The following week, the Assistant Cook (though he lacked the Head Cook’s hygiene or pleasing demeanor, a thoroughly greasy and unkempt man, frankly) proved himself a reasonable replacement. The meals continued without interruption. However, my attitude toward my duties had been profoundly altered by this time. It began to nag on me that, with the exception of that one bumping sound one time, I heard no activity coming from the Great Man’s cabin. What was he producing? Anything? Was he merely in residence to eat his daily sandwich and apple?
However, I did not look inside the brown sack again, as that tactic had proved too risky.
Beginning the fourth week, I noticed the sack had become somewhat heavier. Placing my hand at its base, as it was handed to me, I realized it was warmer, too. I had not been informed of any changes and my first thought was to bring this to the attention of the Program Director. However, if the Assistant Cook was doing something unsanctioned with the lunches, this was his problem, and the consequences would follow when they would. No, I continued to do my job, nobly, without complaint, to stay in favor with the Program Director.
The next noontime, as I took the day’s lunch sack from the Assistant Cook, I felt it move. Or rather, something within it moved. The Assistant Cook noticed my surprise and glared at me sharply. I shrugged and left the kitchen. Again, let him meet whatever consequences might come. The Program Director had assigned the Assistant Cook the duty after all. Let it be between them.
I placed the sack on the porch as usual, and the something inside moved, again. Just slightly. Never mind, I admonished myself. Inwardly, I was seething that changes had obviously been made without informing me—Me!—who was so crucial in the process of delivering the alleged Great Man’s meal, as if I were a mere functionary.
I turned and before I had gone more than ten paces, the unprecedented happened. I heard the cabin door open. I knew I should not turn around.
It would have not profited me to do so, in any case, because the sudden door opening was following by a sort of sliding or swooping sound and then the slamming of the door shut again. These three sounds: door opening, strangely sliding motion, door slamming, happened nearly atop each other. However, I did fail to resist turning around, but by then there was nothing to see. And the lunch was gone.
The next day, when the Assistant Cook presented me with the lunch sack, I saw that it was bulging to the point of nearly bursting. What is more, oily stains bled through.
Indignant, I upbraided the Assistant Cook. “I cannot present that to the Great Man.”
His yellow eyes narrowed. He wheezed as he spoke. “You will do as you are told, boy.” He thrust the package forward. I felt compelled to take it. I must, or my delivery would be late. Oh, what to do!
The Assistant Cook ground his jaw and glowered at me. I noticed for the first time that he had, thrust into the tie string of his blood and grease-stained apron, a dull and unclean butcher knife.
I took the lunch and—ignoring its pulsing warmness—escaped the kitchen at a double pace, resolving to speed to the office of the Program Director as soon I had accomplished my delivery.
However, having been shaken from the exchange with the rough Assistant Cook, when I came to the cabin steps, in my haste, I slipped. Tumbling forward, I lost my hold on the sack. It slid forward, resting only at the cabin’s door.
In horror, I scrambled up the steps. Seizing the bag too quickly, I inadvertently upended it. Its contents spilled.
What emerged from the sack was something my sensibilities did not at first register. It appeared to be a hair-covered mass of some kind. Slowly, I began to discern what I was seeing. It was rodents, a mass of slaughtered, headless vermin, both squirrels and rats judging by their tails. Their heads had been chopped off—recently. The bundle of bodies—bound tightly by twine—still twitched and pulsed.
I recoiled. At that same moment the door of the cabin opened. I peered into blackness. No sound came from within. I scrambled backward. I turned and ran.
I did not run to the office of the Program Director, but instead to my own cabin, where I hid myself the remainder of the afternoon. Later in the evening, my cabin mates, seeing me there, still wrapped and shivering in my soaked sheet, remarked derisively at my shirking of my afternoon duties. I mumbled something about a fever and rolled over to face the wall.
In the morning, I was summoned to the office of the Program Director. Fearing the worst, I entered and, to my surprise, found the Program Director beaming. Leaping from his chair, he came around to meet me.
“I must thank you, thank you greatly, sir,” said he, embracing me even more heartily than he had the time I had accepted the volunteer position. “We have heard very good things about you. Very good. The Great Man is so pleased. And he wants to—he has requested—” But as the Program Director’s voice faltered, his face fell. He collected himself and went on. “I confess to a bit of jealously. May I share that with you, my young friend? Yes, a humiliating episode of ego. You know, I myself once aspired to be an artist. A writer. Not of note, you understand, but,” he hesitated, “but part of it. Part of the conversation, you understand. I came here, many decades ago, a young person such as yourself. My work was mediocre, but I found I had a talent for administration. I stayed on.” He smiled. “I stayed on, and I think in my small way I have contributed to the improvement of the culture and to the world.” He repeated in an even softer tone: “In my small way… And I supposed that somewhere…somewhere in my mind, since the day the Great Man honored us by at last accepting our invitation to a short residency here, I nursed the hope that I would perhaps be asked to…” The Program Director trailed off again. Eyes tearing, but nevertheless sensing the breadth of this foolish rambling self-indulgence, he straightened. “No matter. You don’t want to hear this,” he said with astute perception. “You must want to know why I have summoned you. Only this: the Great Man wants to meet you. Wants to show his new work to you. And he insists you bring some of your own work along to read to him.”
I was stunned. This was beyond what we hoped for when we applied for our internships. We hoped to meet noted artists, we hoped to have our own work shown and recognized, yes, all of that, but—by the Great Man! By the artist of the age!
I smiled inwardly. How much more the other interns would hate me now!
Back in my cabin, I retrieve my sheaf of prose poems. Spreading the sheets out on my bunk, I painstakingly reordered them. Doing this took some time, causing me to miss my morning duties, but what of it? I was to present my work to the Great Man.
I gave no thought to the bizarre trajectory of the content of the Great Man’s meals. What did these peculiarities matter? Did not the entire world acknowledge his genius? And now I was to engage with the genius on the level of two true artists.
My prose poems at last in perfect order, I placed them back in their leather folder and left the cabin. As I paraded through the camp toward the kitchen, I felt the eyes of other interns on me. I ignored their derisive, jealous sneers. I had no pity for them, though I understood well enough their hatred. They had all come for the same reason that I had. To be recognized. They had all failed.
In the kitchen, the filthy Assistant Cook was much changed in attitude. He smiled and lowered his head submissively when I entered. He went to the table of prepared lunches and selected two bags—two—and placed them on a long silver tray. One bulging, oily one for the Great Man, and one, more conventional-appearing one, for me. I placed my sheaf of work on the tray as well. I picked the tray up and, after nodding formally at the now properly cowed Assistant Cook, I carried it from the kitchen.
I paced slowly through the camp, but this time no one would look at me. The sole exception being the Program Director, who came out of the office and, smiling a bittersweet smile, waved.
When I reached the Great Man’s cabin the door was standing open, though no light came from within. I took the steps.
Not being able to see at first, I stood near the entrance. “Hello?” I called out as I waited for my eyes to adjust.
“Welcommmme,” said an aged voice, barely above a whisper. It seemed to come from the far corner.
I stepped in. “Where shall I?” I asked, as the outline of objects slowly became visible: a writing desk, a long table in the middle of the room, perhaps a bed and wardrobe to one side.
“Anywhere,” said the voice. “Shut the doorrrrr.”
I hesitated. “Have you a lamp?” How was I to read my work to him without illumination?
“A lammmp. Yessss. On the tablllle.”
I saw it. I put the tray down, then reached and felt my way around to the lamp, feeling for the switch. Once lit, I looked around; the objects and the furnishings of the room became clear, but I did not see the Great Man. However, his work desk was piled with papers. He had not been idle, that was certain.
“The doorrrr,” came the whispering voice again. It now appeared to me to be coming from inside the wardrobe in the corner. How peculiar the eccentricities of true artists! I did as I was bid and shut the door. As soon as that was accomplished the wardrobe burst open and what I saw caused me to jump back.
A low, gelatinous thing, nearly shapeless, slid out from the wardrobe. It had eyes, black tiny eyes, asymmetrically placed, and something like a wet mouth, broad and heavy-lipped. Its limbs, an uneven number of them, resembled tentacles of a sort, and it used these to aid in its slippery, undulating movements across the floor.
I turned and, forgetting even my sheaf of prose poems for the moment, grabbed the handle of the door.
“Wait!’ cried the monstrosity. “Your work! I want to hear your worrrrk!”
I hesitated. Yes, my work. I steeled myself and let go of the handle. Avoiding looking at the monstrosity, I turned back to the table and undid the tie on the leather folder. My mind raced. What strange affliction had cursed the Great Man? Was it even a man?
I opened my folder.
“Sitttt,” whispered the thing. “First we eatttt.”
There was only one chair at the table. I took it. The thing slid nearer me. I recoiled.
The thing stopped its advance. “Ahhh. My conditionnn,” it said.
Hearing him acknowledge it, I felt a sudden—hough by no means complete—sense of relief.
“It’s of no consequence,” I murmured, or words to that effect.
Something that I supposed must have been a laugh emerged from the wet mouth next. “You are most kinnnnd,” the Great Man said. “First, pleassse, my lunnnnch.”
The wet, unshaped mouth opened wider, and the mass of the body seemed to spread out, the eyes receding backward. Understanding that the Great Man wished me to feed it, I took the greasy wet sack containing its lunch in both my shaking hands. Holding it, I started to ask, “How do I—?”
“Feed me!” the thing cried, undulating violently. In shock and panic, I dropped the sack into the maw, recoiling immediately.
The thing’s maw masticated. Despite the toothless, muscle-less jelly of its form, the thing mashed and consumed the bundle: vermin, twine, paper sack, all.
Finishing in a matter of moments, the thing sighed with satisfaction. Noticing me again, it insisted that I sit and eat my own lunch. I couldn’t imagine such a thing and demurred, giving as an excuse that I had had a large breakfast (when in fact, I had so looked forward to this meeting that I had not eaten at all, which was certainly the only thing now keeping me from retching).
The thing’s wet mouth frowned. It exhaled a noise of disappointment. Then suddenly brightening, the thing shook its bulk and cried out. “Give me!”
Understanding that the thing wanted my lunch, I readily gave it over, dropping the bag into the open drooling maw unopened.
Again came the sigh of satisfaction.
I was shaking. The creature, apparently sated, breathed a moment or two, then instructed me to go to its desk and take a page from the stacks there. There were at least a thousand sheets in all, perhaps many more than that. They teetered in stacks. I took one sheet off the closest stack and looked at the thing questioningly.
It grunted its assent, then said, “Readddd.”
I looked at the page which was filled corner to corner with narrow lines.
“Aloud!” cried the thing and I jumped at its command. Steadying myself, I leaned forward to take the most advantage of the sole lamp light and read what I saw.
The verse I read there, was singular. I had read much of the Great Man’s work, of course, but this was at such a greater level even than that, that I did not know how to describe it. The imagery was so vivid that the beauties it described seemed to leap off the page and dance before my eyes. The language, clear and precise, was yet so original that it scarcely seemed like the same banal, cliché, wracked language we use, each of us, every day. The insights into emotion, into—at once—both the pain and the wonder of our existence, even in this short excerpt, surpassed anything I had ever known in art—or had even conceived could be expressed by art.
I came to the end of the page, and only then realized I had been weeping.
“Readdd,” said the disgusting thing that had created such beauty. I reached for another page but the thing stopped me.
“No!” Now it used one of its tentacle-like half-limbs to gesture toward my leather folder.
“I—”
“Read!” it commanded.
With shaking hands, I fumbled open my folder and lifted my thin sheaf of papers. Looking at the top one, I realized the order was not right, at all. No, it would not do. The second one, perhaps. I carefully moved the top sheet to the bottom. I peered at the second one. A bead of sweat ran down my nose and landed on the paper, marring it and blurring the first word, which I had so painstakingly copied and revised, time after time. “No,” I whispered. Perhaps the third one—
“Read!” The creature hunched.
“A moment, sir,” I said. “I’m looking for the proper one—”
“Read! Read! Read!” it cried.
Or did it say, Feed! Feed! Feed?
“How dare you! How dare you mock me!” I threw my work aside. Trash, filth. I could not read my feeble work following the sublime page I had just read by the Great Man. That was it! Of course! His intent was to humiliate me.
I snatched the lamp off the table and held it close to the creature, looking at it even harder than before.
The thing recoiled from the light. Or perhaps from me. “Nothing so disgusting could have created such beauty! It is madness,” I screamed. You are madness!”
“Nooo!” cried the creature, realizing what I intended before I even did myself. “Nooo!”
My foot stomped ankle-deep into warm wet jelly. It cried out—gurgling pathetic pleas, but I did not relent. I stomped and spat and cursed the monstrosity. Disgusting, gelatinous gore spattered my trousers, my chest, my face. My shoes became caked with it. The monstrosity ceased forming words, ceased flailing its appendages about, and quivered to a pathetic, vile end. “The Great Man!” I cried. “The Great Man!”
I only realized I was shouting—howling rather, as my words devolved into mere articulations of rage and disgust—when I heard an uproar in the camp, the sounds of running footsteps, and then pounding upon the cabin door.
Through it came the voice of the Program Director. “Sirs! Sirs! Are you all right?”
Sirs. Though terrified, the Program Director remained respectful even now, and did not dare try the door. Had the lamp I realized I still gripped in my hand, been kerosene, not electric, I could have brought this disgusting episode to a more satisfactory conclusion.
Instead, I dropped it. Then I tore into the stacks of the thing’s verse, tossing the leaves across the floor and fouling them with the gore of the monstrosity’s remnants.
Then, seeing my own juvenilia where I had let it fall, I seized those wretched half-dozen sheets, so vile to me now, and tore them to pieces.
Unsatisfied, but finished, I straightened myself and breathed deeply. I ran my fingers, to clean them, through my hair. I went to the cabin door and opened it. The crowd of staff and students recoiled, stunned at the sight of me. I stepped forward, into their midst, and they could do nothing but make space for me.
The Program Director looked at me, looked past me, and back at me again. Understanding and awe overtook him. He was first to see. “But, but—but what have you done?”
I stepped from the cabin. The interns, the staff, and the lesser artists-in-residence parted as I walked down the steps. I kept walking. Straight down the broad tree-shadowed lane between the cabins. The dappled sunshine fell upon my person. I did not answer the Program Director’s question. Surely, he already knew the answer. The others would know soon enough. The wide world beyond would know. I had made my masterpiece.
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Michael Canfield has published horror, humor, and crime in Strange Horizons, Vastarien, The Mammoth Book of Kaiju, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and other places. Born in Las Vegas, he now lives in Seattle and has posted some free stories at MichaelCanfield.net. |