The parcels, the blutions.

  Yea, they're, they' someplace, here. Here. Me heartpocket.

  Fill em. Fill em.

  Oh, Laong said. We need water for that. Mineral mechanisms're part spent.

  Wha? Spent? Why'n fuck didn't ye say this morn? Fuck. She studied the treeline before them. I seent common road again, a while back. There were some thatch.

  Kin we risk it?

  We've no fuckin choice, Aoipher said. Won't never make it with spent balms.

  You said not tay panic.

  Come on ta fuck, who sez I am? Step quickly, we kin repluck our way, unfuck oursels, find their well, or a stream maybe.

  They came up through a cut in the backwoods and could see the thatch roof huge among the maples.

  The trough, Aoipher said. Mark it? Near covered over, see the smooth stone of it?

  Kin we risk it?

  No choice now. Get tay it.

  Laong hurried from the brush and stooped to rewater with the nozzle in his hand. Aoipher kept watch of the inn door. Two mules were tied to a sunked post. Voices from an upper room, drunken giggling. When Aoipher looked back Laong was drinking ravenously from cupped hands, leering at his own grimy face as he swallowed in huge, sucking gulps.

  Wharra fuck are ye doing, Aoipher hissed. Fill yer balmcups.

  Whattad ye know bout it? Laong filled his dipper cups and struggled with them back into the shelter of the timber.

  Willit take long?

  Laong shook his head. Leave me mix what needs mixin.

  Aoipher stood on a rock and watched the door of an inn.

  She saw the door open and a man emerge at a run, grabbing at the hitches of his trousers as he waddled toward them.

  Gucka fuggin pishh, the man gasped. Fugg.

  Aoipher crouched down.

  What is it?

  Be still, she said. Say naught, locals.

  The man came into the copse, pissing as he walked, laughing at the steam havoc he created upon the dead leaves, his eyes like nacre. His stream dried to a trickle that stained his filthy pants as he saw them crouched like upended hatchlings.

  The man grinned down at them. Maken pudden?

  Aoipher stood, wiping her hand along herself and nodding at the man.

  Together, srrange. Dressed for paegent? Assa good getup. Assa gud wan. Shrink?

  Laong looked at Aoipher. Whars he say?

  Aoipher raised a hand behind her back. Shrink'd be kindly, she said and she made a shape in the air with her other hand.

  The man looked down at Laong and rubbed his head. That ya goslin?

  Aye, aye.

  The man shrugged again and pushed his penis back into his pants. Mon that shrink so, he said and turned back for the inn.

  Wharre yah doin?

  Say naught, Aoipher said and she walked after the man toward the inn. Foller me lead.

  Just fuckin drop im.

  Say fucking naught. He'd have a posse on us, we refuse. C'mon.

  They stepped through the doorway and into the greasy light of the inn.

  Ese're bound a'paegent. Coming a con a shrink from me, the man said and he laughed.

  Two forms in rags at a huge hearth nodded and then turned away the newcomers. The man led them to a bench and waved them to sit. He pushed two crudely hollowed pieces of wood toward them. From the floor he lifted a flagon and unstoppered it and filled their wooden mugs.

  Shrink, shrink, shrink, the man said. He watched them regard the liquid. Then Aoipher took the cup and drank quickly. She looked at Laong.

  Gettit over weh, Aoipher said.

  Laong took it and sipped quickly and then he sat back in the chair shaking.

  What is it you mudsliders are come about?

  Come about? Hear this cur bark?

  It's nay from the like of ye I'll low such talk.

  Step to with steel so, Aoipher shouted and she had her own drawn and red in the firelight.

  Laong pressed his arm across Aoipher's shoulder. Not in here. Y'see him but ye don't see the others behind'm, watchin ye. He pulled Aoiphe backwards to the bench. Sit. Take s'more. Puttat fuckin steel ‘way. He lifted a mug to the other table. Sit or they'll stamp the wind from yeh.

  They came staggering from the hedge in the slow grey light of dawn.

  Aoipher pushed the other. Y'stink, she said. Ye need dunking.

  Get on pissbody.

  Foul, Aoipher said. Even for a roadgoer. Get a dunk or lop off me nose.

  I'll lop it easy, the other said and he tripped and fell flat in the mud.

  We should nort have drunk ‘at water.

  Nor stayed inna keepers bed.

  I slept in nay bed.

  Pah. A skeet of spittle shot from between Laong's bucked teeth. I'd do that twice agin for half of naught. Dirty aul cunt, all I wanted was something to rub up against.

  Y'blistered bastard. Have ye, well have ye yer edged edge about ye at least?

  Awluss. Awluss. Man says theys a fair up these roads someplace.

  Wha man? Station man?

  Whar? Naw, Laong said. Naw. Inn feller. So he says as I were lacing mysel up. Him lying pink and raw. Only talk truth whenat they's leeched raw.

  Aoipher stopped suddenly and turned to look at the empty road behind them. She heard a voice call her name over her shoulder, birdsong in a twisting tunnel, roaring silent through the black void far from any soil and the voice calling remember remember remember from the twisting darkness.

  See sommat? Deer?

  I thought, she said. A name? Maybe? Naw, she said and she hiccupped and fell laughing to her knees. I'm hearing voices. She began to laugh and then she began to weep. I'm hearing fucking voices.

  Laong pulled her by the arm. It's the grog. Brainrot. Gerrup. Mon. S'more'll see ye right, he said and then he staggered away from the road and into the briars to piss.

  Laong, staggering back to the mud, wiping mud upon himself. Feller said watch out for ‘em ditchsnakes.

  Feller?

  Taverner fella. He'll be a few coin short.

  Aoipher took up step beside Laong. Ye loosened his load?

  Never in a dell. He shook his finger solemnly. He'll only be walking gammy a time. Won't be no poorer.

  He might be met yet.

  He might. The roads are wild things, filled with madmen, Loang said and he began to cough. Who's to say the misfortunes as a man might meet?

  They stumbled on, down toward the carnivalgrounds. Through the trees they could see the bonfire, huge and roaring, now vesper green, now a crackling blue. Aoipher tottered at the edge of the treeline and stood watching. She saw the ones who were gathered, saw their faces were as the faces of lizards and their feet were shod as the feet of bulls and all around the flames they murmured together in low whispers like the whispered workings of maggots and now they had all turned to watch her and she knew it was her name they were whispering.

  Wasn't there somethin we was, Aoipher hissed, clutching wildly at Laong. A boat?

  About? A bout whar? Boot fer a foot? Or a shoe fer a pony? Laong giggled. Wasn't naught we had to do but get on to yon fairground. Theys all waiting on us.

  The Continuing (Superpositional) Adventures of Schrödinger's Cat

  ~ David Hewitt

  Erwin Schrödinger's famous feline thought experiment on quantum uncertainty should require no introduction. As a quick refresher, Schrödinger himself expounded it thus:

  . . . A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device . . . in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube . . . releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. [Until an observer opens the chamber] the psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

  Recent theoreticians, however, consider Schrödinger's formulation over-simplistic. Before the box is opened, the cat cannot be said to exist "smeared out" over only the two states—alive and dead. Rather, this daring hypothetical adventurer simultaneously exists, with varying statistical likelihood, in every conceivable state of its own wave function. What follows is a by-no-means-exhaustive summary of possible outcomes, and hence co-existing states of being, revealed by continuing analyses of "the cat problem":

  • An atom decays; the hammer strikes the flask of hydrocyanic acid; the cat dies of cyanide-induced histotoxic hypoxia.

  • An atom does not decay; the hammer does not strike the flask of hydrocyanic acid; the cat does not die of cyanide-induced histotoxic hypoxia and lives happily and healthily to a ripe old age.

  • An atom does not decay during the one hour; but in the name of thoroughness and replicability, the scientist repeats the experiment the next day. This time, an atom does decay and—hammer, cyanide—the cat dies.

  • An atom does not decay on the first day, nor when the experiment is repeated on the second, nor even on the third; but on the fourth day, though the clear and present odds are still a simple 50/50 coin toss, the cumulative 15-to-1 odds against surviving four such coin tosses in sequence finally catch up with the cat and . . . hammer, cyanide—dead.

  • The cat survives the first, the second, the third, and even the fourth day. On the fifth day, the scientist, who originally intended an even five experimental trials, has a change of heart. Just as the atom is decaying, she hurls open the door of the steel chamber and, as the hammer is falling, yanks the subject out and tumbles to the floor with cat cradled in her arms, saved in the nick of time from the grim clutches of cyanide-induced histotoxic hypoxia. The scientist takes the cat home, names her Princess Purrsnickitty, and the two live happily ever after.

  • The scientist experiences no change of heart, but just as the cat is being placed in the steel chamber, a joint PETA/Animal Liberation Front strike team armed with crowbars bursts into the laboratory, and liberates the cat into the uncertainties and vast open spaces of the suburban wilds.

  • Just as the cat is being placed in the steel chamber, not animal-rights commandos but an ASPCA lawyer sporting a stodgy suit, a questionable comb-over, and a restraining order bursts into the laboratory, and liberates the cat into the uncertain and vastly time-consuming and expensive vagaries of the United States judicial system.

  • Just as the cat is being placed in the steel chamber, neither PETA/ALF commandos nor ASPCA advocate but rather two blue-tufty-haired, red-jumpsuited individuals burst into the laboratory. Running full tilt and wreaking general havoc by toppling sensitive equipment, a coffee maker, and even a fish bowl, they free the cat through happenstance from the steel chamber and flee. Because of the suspects' breakneck speed, blurry security footage provides only one lead: a single frame in which the cryptic letters -ing 1 and -ing 2 can be discerned on the backs of the jumpsuits.

  • Just as an atom is about to decay, the cat reaches into a magic fourth-dimensional pocket on his belly and extracts an "Anywhere Door"; he transports himself out of the steel chamber and into the bedroom of a young Japanese boy who, though receptive to the cat's aid and tutelage, never masters the important life lessons the cat endlessly strives to impart.

  • The atom does not decay; the cat will live another day, it seems—but wait! Just as the chamber is opened, a gleeful-looking Maya-blue mouse rushes into the laboratory, carrying a giant drill and a hose with a suction cup at one end. The mouse drills his way into the steel chamber, slaps the suction cup onto the cat's muzzle, squeezes cartoonishly through a hole into the perforated box where the flask of cyanide sits, screws the other end of the hose to the mouth of the cyanide flask, and flips the hammer's trigger with a white-gloved hand. The hammer smushes the flask, squeezing all the cyanide out as a visible bulge which travels up the hose, through the suction cup, and into the cat. The cat turns a grotesque shade of green and its eyes a jaundiced yellow, then its fur and skin melt from its bones, and the bones themselves dissolve into a steaming puddle of acid with a pair of yellow eyes lolling on top. The mouse kicks one then the other eye, shot-on-goal style, and scampers off in the height of good cheer.

  • An atom decays; somebody erred, however, and, in place of hydrocyanic acid, filled the flask with rye whiskey. When the hammer strikes the flask, the cat, goaded by the stress of its captivity, laps up the rye. Outside the sealed steel chamber, the scientist, who can know nothing of all this, takes a glass flask from his pocket and sips. He could swear he'd filled it with rye this morning, but the mouthful he sips has a distinctly non-whiskey, almond-like flavor.

  • An atom decays, but rather than triggering the hammer, the ionizing radiation flies in another direction and collides with a spider which, unbeknownst to anyone, crept into the steel chamber before the experiment began. Bitten by this spider, said cat gains the spider's proportional strength and agility (the latter resulting—since arachnid agility rates much lower than that of family felidae—in a net agility loss). The cat uses this super-strength to break free from its captivity, and goes on to fight for cat-truth, cat-justice, and the Siamese way.

  • An atom decays; the cat is poisoned and dies, and is buried unceremoniously under a rock. On the third day, though, the rock is miraculously rolled aside—the cat, licking itself, rises from the grave as savior to all catkind, having paid with its suffering for the original sin of the first cat-ancestors, Muffin and Max, who selfishly tasted of the catnip of the Tree of Sloth and Hyperactivity.

  • An atom does not decay, but neither does the cat live to a ripe old age. Instead, loose in the neighborhood, it is run over by a car the very next day—but the bereft scientist inters it in an ancient Native American burial ground. Two days later, the scientist hears a scratching at his door, and either does or does not open it; in either case, his own story ends in a manner that may with 93.2% probability be described as "bloodcurdling."

  • Just as the cat is being placed in the steel chamber, not PETA/ALF commandos, not ASPCA advocates, not red-jumpsuited hooligans, but rather a wealthy private benefactor arrives at the laboratory to rescue the feline, offering a generous research stipend in compensation. This benefactor, an older gentleman in tweed jacket and wrinkled trousers, brings the cat home. Soon after, a meeting is arranged with an editor from a major publishing house. The result is Eight More Lives: My Journey Through the Steel Chamber (ghostwritten). The hardcover release hits #6 on The New York Times Best Seller list and paves the way to the cat's starring on the popular but horribly ill-conceived reality show Pussies and Pitbulls. Against all odds, our hypothetical feline hero emerges victorious, leaving a trail of savaged canine bodies in her wake. But she is a changed cat—hardened, unstoppable, eyes blazing with plutonium potency and heart hell-bent on revenge. Against all her benefactor's protestations, the cat gives herself over once again to science, this time volunteering for a ludicrously improbable time-travel experiment. The experiment succeeds, transporting the cat a century into the past. Through hard-won cunning and craft, this survivor among survivors, this titanium-willed tiger among tabbies, makes her way to her target. The next morning, a young Erwin Schrödinger is found dead in his bed—of histotoxic hypoxia. No evidence of forced entry or a struggle is found. In fact, Schrödinger's demise, mere days before he formulated his famous paradox, renders the existence of the thought experiment, the cat, and this story alike—

  (With a 99.967% probability, very likely) The End

  A Pamphlet Found Among Broken Glass Near the East Wing Entrance

  ~Jonathan Raab

  The Orford Parish Historical Society welcomes you to the Marvel Whiteside Parsons Memorial Mall and Food Court! This pamphlet's production and printing costs are generously funded by a partnership between the Historical Society, the Orford Parish Downtown Improvement District, and mall property owner, Malthus Retail and Correctional Services, Inc.

  Since being built in 1972 by local labor—just like Revenant's Finger Middle School slogan says: "Orford Parish Breeds for the Labor Pits!"—and designed by an architect and suspected occultist whose name was struck from the blueprints, the Parsons Memorial Mall has been a center of commerce, culture, and alternative aerospace research for almost 50 years.

  Upon first glance, Parsons Memorial Mall may seem like it has seen better days—what with the majority of its storefront units rendered abandoned by the predations of global capital, the rats, the imminent structural failure of a large portion of its roof system, the ever-present blood in the central fountain, the rats that crawl and squeak like human babies, the theft of the Moroni the Angel mannequin from the tableau depicting various secret and nefarious Masonic rituals brought out every Lenten season, the strange and malignant whispers that only cancer survivors working the closing shift can hear, the rats that think and talk and parlay with the goat-legged sorcerer who appears nightly at the edge of the wood, and the ominous radiological phenomena around the second floor men's bathroom (mentioned in FOIA-acquired and heavily redacted Air Force documents from Project WILL-O-WISP)—despite all this and more, we can assure you that the mall's best days are yet to come!

  That's why we have authored this one-of-a-kind pamphlet and tour guide to this historic and beloved community institution. As part of a mysterious and generous state grant offered by a bureaucrat from Away whose face and voice none could recall save through their inexplicable and invasive presence in traumatic memories of car accidents that never occurred, this pamphlet and guide was commissioned to bring a little of the Mall's history to life for shoppers, local history buffs, and wayward tourists who pulled off the highway for gas and have found themselves unable to navigate the labyrinthine roads to find an escape. No matter how many maps they consult or how loud they scream and beg with the invisible, indifferent idiot-god that has made their lives a living hell, they will not be permitted to leave until the Proper Time.

 

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