The Monster in the Cellar

Frank and Viola never talked about the monster in their cellar—that just wasn’t how it was done. Certainly they knew about him. They had, in fact, put him there themselves one fine September day when the perfect autumn air left him feeling as sleepy and content as monsters ever got, and they could trick him into descending below.

Once he was there, he was trapped, and the people above never spoke of him again.

It wasn’t easy to live in a house with a monster in the cellar. Sometimes there were horrible groanings from below. Viola would say, “My! These old houses settle terribly, don’t they?”

Sometimes Frank thought wistfully about the amount of space down there. “One of these days, I’m going to turn the cellar into a wood shop,” he said. “I’ve got some great ideas for furniture I’d like to build.” But, of course, he never did. He couldn’t open the cellar without letting the monster out. It was easier to forget about building furniture.

Though they never said so out loud, both Frank and Viola had a vague hope the monster would starve to death down there. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. He found lots of tasty monster-things to eat in their cellar, and over time he grew stronger instead of weaker. Frank hesitantly suggested once that they should go downstairs and try to kill the beast before the situation got worse, but Viola gave him a look of such hatred—and burned his dinner, besides—that he never mentioned it again.

The monster groaned louder over the years, so Frank and Viola started shouting at each other instead of talking. The monster found a weak spot in their floorboards where he could stab a claw upward and try to gouge them. Frank and Viola learned to avoid that spot. They learned to avoid lots of spots.

One day, Viola’s friend Marge came over for coffee. In the middle of a conversation about their husbands and their plans for their upcoming retirements, the monster gave a particularly loud groan. Viola didn’t seem to hear it, but Marge put her coffee cup down and said, “Viola—when are you going to do something about that monster in your cellar?”

Viola gasped. “Monster? In my cellar? How dare you!”

“I used to have one. George and I finally killed it, and we’re much happier now.”

Viola stood up. She was so angry her hands shook. She snatched Marge’s coffee cup away and dumped it out in the sink. “Get out of my house. You’re no friend of mine.”

Once Marge was gone, Viola took her coffee cup outside and smashed it against the cellar door. She screamed, “Shut up! Shut up and leave me alone!”

She screamed at the memory of Marge, of course. There was certainly nothing else for her to scream at.

Viola cleaned up the shattered pottery. She went back inside and turned the television on—loud. She calmed down and regained control of herself.

A monster in her cellar. The very idea. Ridiculous. 

Still Here and Heading South

It was a useless exercise—he knew that. No one would ever see his name because no one existed. He was the last person on earth.

He didn’t understand how it had happened. There was no bomb, no apocalypse, no mass disease. He had simply woken up one morning to discover every other person had vanished. Over time—and there’d been 126 days of time so far—he’d begun to suspect it was really the other way around. Somewhere, on the real earth, he was the one who had mysteriously disappeared in his sleep. Maybe he’d slipped into a parallel universe. The police had probably quit looking long ago, and his family was probably starting to give up hope. Meanwhile, he carried on here. Alone.

It could have been worse. He was lonely, of course, and he had no electricity. But all the inanimate objects had stayed here, so he had plenty of canned goods to eat, and a bicycle to get around and bottled water to drink. He wouldn’t die unless he chose to make it happen. The jury was still out on that—so far he was okay.

Plus, he had meaningful work to do. It might have been useless, but it felt meaningful to him, so that made it important. He wrote his name everywhere he possibly could—on the sides of buildings, on sidewalks, in the sand. He always wrote the date with it, and a brief note about which direction he planned to go next. It wasn’t likely anyone else had slipped into this parallel world with him, but it was possible. If so, he wanted to make sure they wouldn’t miss each other.

Even if there was no one else, the work was important. He still existed. He wasn’t gone. His name was a way to proclaim that.

James Kincaid. 9/16/13. Still here and heading south.

It was enough. For now, at least. 

Death by Grasshopper

Jana wasn’t ordinarily prone to paranoia, but there was something about that grasshopper. It watched her. She wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel threatened by an insect, but this grasshopper was different. It was out to get her. She knew it.

There were grasshoppers everywhere—it was that time of year—and most of them didn’t bother her a bit. This one sat on the railing beside the stairs that led up to her apartment. She noticed him right away, because he sat still and watched her pass without jumping away. The first day, she thought it was interesting. The second day, she thought it was weird. By the third day, she was creeped out.

“Get out of here,” she said to him. She waved her hand over him. “Go on. Shoo. Scat.”

He just sat and watched her. Jana thought about flicking him off the railing, but she didn’t quite dare. She was afraid he might bite her hand if she got too close.

She started noticing other grasshoppers. Though the others weren’t threatening, they gave her an opportunity to study how grasshoppers jumped. It was decidedly scary. They could jump a long way—she might feel she was safely past the one on her railing, then he could jump onto the back of her neck and bite her. She’d never heard of anyone getting bitten by a grasshopper, but she felt sure this one wasn’t like the others. This one wanted to bite her. And he was poisonous.

It got so she was afraid to go home after work. She started trying to imagine other ways to get to her apartment, some sort of pulley system she could use to hoist herself in through her bedroom window. Finally, she told her friend Tyler about it.

He laughed at her. “A grasshopper? You’re afraid of a grasshopper?”

She’d expected the mockery, and it didn’t faze her. “Will you come kill it for me? Please?”

So Tyler came to her apartment with her after work. Jana stood on the sidewalk while he went up the stairs to where the grasshopper perched, waiting.

“Big, bad bug,” Tyler said, still laughing. He raised the swatter he’d brought to kill it.

The grasshopper jumped, directly at Tyler’s face. Jana screamed as Tyler stumbled back and lost his footing. He fell backward down the stairs and lay still at the bottom.

The grasshopper landed beside Tyler’s head and looked up at Jana. Before she could think, Jana brought her foot down on him and heard the crunch as he died. Her downstairs neighbor opened his door and said, “What happened?”

“Call 911,” Jana said. “My friend had an accident.”

Tyler was hurt, but he wasn’t dead. Jana was pretty sure he’d be okay. And now, thanks to him, she was pretty sure she’d be okay, too. 

A Fair Trade

Tommy was a giant, but he was a very little giant—just now four years old. As such, he was always forgetting things and doing things wrong.

Like his blocks. He knew it was important to pick them all up before he went to bed. The end of the giant day was the beginning of the human day, and if he left his blocks lying around, a human might find them. He knew that. But no matter how hard he tried, it seemed like there were always four or five that got away from him and he forgot to go looking for them.

“You’re going to lose those blocks, Tommy,” his mom would say. “Some human’s going to think they were made for him, and you’ll never get them back.”

“I know, Mommy,” he’d say. “I’ll be careful.”

But he was four years old, and it was hard to be careful. One day it happened just like his mom said it would. Tommy got up in the morning and found that some of his blocks were missing. He discovered them cemented to the ground by the unbreakable bond that happened when a human found a giant object and used it for himself. Humans had built a tiny playground beside Tommy’s blocks. They were lost to him forever.

“Don’t come crying to me,” his mother said. “If I told you once, I told you a thousand times.”

Late that night, Tommy snuck out of bed to spy on his blocks. A man and a little girl came to the playground. They were so tiny Tommy could crush them—except he couldn’t, of course. Giants couldn’t touch humans.

The man sat on one of Tommy’s blocks while the girl played on the swings. Then she came over and climbed around on the blocks while the man told her to be careful.

“They look like a little giant kid left his blocks lying around, don’t they Grandpa?”

Tommy made a fist. So give them back, he thought. But he couldn’t say anything.

The man laughed. “You’ve got quite an imagination there. I’d hate to be standing around when one of those block towers fell over.”

The little girl chewed on her lower lip. “I bet he’s sad we took his blocks.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a handful of tiny objects. “I’ll leave him some of my marbles. That way it’s fair.”

The man laughed again. “You’re a card. You sure you want to leave those?” She nodded, and he said, “Okay, then. Let’s go get some lunch.”

Once they left, Tommy snuck out and picked up the marbles she’d left. He had to pinch them between his fingernails they were so tiny, and he’d never be able to use them for anything, but having them made him happy. He went home and put them in a bowl on his display shelf.

He slept well that night. Maybe humans weren’t so bad after all. 

Solitude

Carla saw the movie version of Annie when she was seven years old. Despite all the singing, dancing and cute orphans, the part that struck her was when Daddy Warbucks took Annie to see a movie, and he bought out the whole theater so they had it to themselves.

“Why did he do that?” she asked her mom.

“Well, he’s got lots of extra money. I guess he didn’t want to deal with other people.”

Carla thought that was the best idea she’d ever heard. She decided right then that she wanted the kind of money that meant she never had to deal with other people.

Unfortunately, she discovered as she grew that earning money usually entailed dealing with other people, and she wasn’t very good at that. Carla didn’t end up with the kind of money that allowed her to buy out theaters or rent amusement parks for her own use. She did, however, have the next best thing. She discovered a picnic area that no one else knew about.

There was never anyone there.

Never. Anyone.

It was true the place was hard to find. She kind of had to hold her teeth right and squint at the perfect moment to spot the dirt track running off the main road. Carla never would have found it if she hadn’t been desperate to be somewhere secret, somewhere she could be alone.

The first time she went there, she was enchanted to see a picnic area that seemed to have been reserved just for her. She figured she’d hit it at an off time, though. Surely it wouldn’t always be deserted.

The second time, when she took a picnic out there on her lunch hour, she was thrilled to find she still had it to herself. She started taking her lunch out there every day. She always found blessed, peaceful solitude. It seemed the place really had been reserved just for her.

Eventually, Carla started packing her dinner and going to the picnic area after work, as well. She began thinking of it as her own place, something she’d bought with a currency more powerful than money. When the idea came to her that she ought to buy a tent and spend the night there, too, it seemed perfectly right. Even then, no one bothered her.

Finally, Carla stopped leaving. If the place was magic, as she half suspected, she might leave one day and not be able to find it again. She’d rather die out there than risk that. She’d gradually brought in supplies, so she had everything she needed. She could build a fire. There was water on the other side of the hill. She ate wild dandelions and native pecans and the squirrels she managed to catch.

No one ever found her. No one ever bothered her. And that was just fine with Carla.