The Rat Lady

Yew street residents thought Mabel Olson, the lady who owned 83 cats, was bad. The neighborhood association created a new ordinance ruling out all cats in the area and the Cat Lady packed her 83 cats and moved.

Zelda Kinkley, the Rat Lady moved in with 2 rats and an unusual sense of house design . Before long the neighborhood association received sightings of hundreds of large rats with an uncanny degree of intelligence. Each week the number of reports grew though no one could precisely pin the infestation on the Rat Lady. That is until the Rat King began prowling the neighborhood spreading garbage, gnawing tires, and devouring pets. Its substantial tracks led right into Zelda's cellar. What was worse than having a Rat King residing in the neighborhood was that anyone who complained found their houses gnawed or simply found they had vanished. The neighborhood association called the Cat Lady and begged her to come back. She listed several demands including the removal of the feline prevention ordinance and 900 gallons of milk delivered to her door each year. With these understandings in place the Cat Lady purchased the house across the street from the Rat Lady. She and her 83 cats were moved in within a few hours.

The battle was loud and messy and when the sun rose over Yew street the following morning there were thousands of dead rats and dozens of cat bodies littering the street. The Rat Lady had gone and all that was left of her house was a gnawed pile of scrap and a deep hole that was covered up with metal and locks.

several dozen scarred cats live quite happily in the vacant lot where the Rat Lady's house used to be. Once in a while a cat will vanish but cats are prone to wander. It is, however, strange that the metal and locks in that same lot must be replaced ocassionaly.

The Passenger on the Fog Bus

The family Bible held 6 generations of flattened heirlooms. Pressed flowers, pieces of ledgers, and photographs fairly erupted from the browned pages. Ella spent most Sunday afternoons after church combing these pages discovering both scriptural and family stories that were hidden among the pressed heirlooms. She had pieced together the tale of her great great grandparents' courtship from a love letter, a marriage certificate, and a note written on an old Confederate bill. She had grown close to a long dead cousin who had carried the old Bible on a mission trip through South America all the while using the margins as a compendium of local curatives. She had found great Aunt Letty's best loved (and most delectable) recipes by following a scavenger hunt of sorts through the writings of Paul. All in all, the book had served both her spiritual and genealogical appetites. It was about to serve her more than she had ever imagined.

One Sunday the Bible seemed to fall open of its own accord to Isaiah 45. There, lodged in the crevice next to the first few verses lay a weathered bus ticket. In faded letters were the words "Fog Bus-Lifetime Pass." Thinking little of it she put it in her coat pocket (as with most libraries in old houses this library was best used when wrapped snugly) to ask her grandmother about later.

One evening, several months later, Ella was walking home from the university library. As was typical of November evenings in her town a thick envelope of fog had descended limiting vision to a few yards. The mist swirled and dampened each of her footfalls as Ella passed through the dusk. The world belonged to her and seemed only as big as her next step and so she was startled to see lights and feel the rumble of an engine on the usually deserted gravel drive between her house and the campus. As she stepped aside to let the motorist pass her heart suddenly leapt. The vehicle had come to a stop not far behind her. All manner of worst case scenarios flashed through her mind as she willed herself to turn toward the vehicle. Instead of her would be assailant all that she saw were 6 headlights and a glowing destination sign reading "Elsewhere." As Ella stepped closer she discovered that the lights belonged to an oddly shaped double decker bus. The engine shifted keys as the bus continued to wait. Cautiously she climbed the small steps at the front of the bus and pushed open the ornate door leading inside. As she stepped in she was startled by a figure seated in a gloomy cabin to her side. He slowly held out his gloved hand. Ella was at a loss for she had no change for fare and no... ticket. She quickly fished around in her pocket and produced the strange pass she had found. The figure held it up to where his face must have been hidden in shadow and then handed it back to Ella. She put the ticket into her pocket and asked the bus driver where she should sit. In response he slowly flicked his hand at a small sign that read "Occupants must stay seated while bus is in motion." Ella nodded and flashed a slight, nervous smile at the shadowed figure of the driver and hurried up the steps to the second level and slid into the first seat she found.

The bus shook and the motor growled. Outside the windows the fog swirled and the landscape crawled backwards. As the minutes passed Ella watched through breaks in the fog as the familiar shapes of her city give way to vast expanses of strange land. Sometimes the mist would part to reveal what looked like the caps of mountains far below or what looked like an Austrian castle or, more often than not, a sprawling plain with tendrils of fog reaching out toward a moonlit horizon. Ella turned her attention away from the window and sized up the interior of the bus. It was mostly gold and red, well lit, and buffed nicely. There were what looked like advertisements along the ceiling but the further back they went the more they seemed to be offering discontinued products from eras long past. And then she noticed the other passenger. It was a tapir, of all things, and it was staring at her from the back seat. Ella quickly turned and stared forward with her hands clenched. The absurdity of the entire situation suddenly descended upon her and she felt panic grasping at the edge of her consciousness. After a tense minute of reasoning with herself she turned slowly back to see if the creature was still there. Indeed, it was and still staring. Ella turned to face the front again. She weighed her options and decided it would stand to reason that on a ride of this sort she probably ought to go and sit next to the only other passenger on the bus. Ella stood, walked to the rear of the bus, and sat down in the seat beside the tapir. It turned to stare over its dangling proboscus and asked "Are we there yet?"

Straw Reaper

Some farmers work so hard and so long that they forget they are farmers. They stop being straw reapers and become Straw Reapers... or Corn Reapers...or Gourd Reapers...

The Wraith of Leaves

"Where do leaves go when they die?"
Every scruff covered face at Tony's Cafe turned and cast incredulous grimaces upon Hunter Jackley. It was the kind of question that NO one asked men frequenting greasy spoon diners at 5:38 AM on a work day. Flannel rustled and worn caps on worn heads slowly shook as 15 men turned their attention back to biscuits and gravy, coffee, and the morning paper. Hunter was slightly younger and more introspective than the rest of the morning crowd at Tony's. He always sat by himself in the corner by the window and stared at the park across the street where he was caretaker. When talk of football standings rolled about the cafe Hunter would posit some conversation stopper about lacrosse. If a discussion about cattle sales stirred then Hunter would undoubtedly muster a remark about his favorite calf, whom he had named Delilah. If men spoke of the early freeze, Hunter would ask "Where do leaves go when they die?"
No one could quite get used to his remarks and Hunter never could manage to speak his mind at a socially sound time or place. He was the sort of man that knew things reserved for the very young, the very old, or the deepest kind of dreamers, none of which Hunter could be described as. Hunter possessed, however, the surprising wherewithal to contain, or at least partially conceal, the things he knew. Typically, his remarks were rooted in one of these odd fragments of cognition. Like when he asked "Where do leaves go when they die?"
Hunter had been staring fixedly at a spot in the deepest part of the forested park. Perhaps, had they looked in the right direction with the right sort of empty mind, some of the older men at the cafe might have seen a dark, blurry shape hovering in the shadows of the bare fall elms. Hunter saw it because he was Hunter. A shape, mostly leaves, shadow, and rag was drifting in and out of focus. It seemed to inhabit several spots at once and never quite caught the light like it should have. It was a ghost and Hunter knew it, though he had never seen one. The strange thing to Hunter wasn't that he was looking at a ghost but that it seemed perfectly natural. Looking at the specter made him feel that he had discovered an answer to a question that he had never asked but desperately wanted to know. "Where do leaves go when they die?"
Hunter finished his hash browns and cold buttery toast, crossed the street, and waded into the leaves carrying his rake. All that grey morning as he raked leaves he felt as if he stood on sacred ground and the ghost watched. As he raked Hunter thought, as often manual labor will force one to do, of strange stories. Perhaps in each leaf husk was a fleeting tale of good and evil, of joy and sadness, of fear and peace to tell. As Hunter raked and piled the leaves it seemed to him that each rustle and mutter was the last telling of these tales. By the end of the morning, Hunter had raked all the multitude of leaves from the damp, cool grass of the park. As he leaned his rake against a tree and removed his cap the specter seemed to waiver and fade. It raised a hand like a gnarled branch and held a small leaf. The leaf seemed to linger, bright green and alive, for a moment longer than the rest of the apparition and then, was gone.

The sunlight broke through the heavy morning fog and Hunter caught a faint whiff of crocuses and melting snow and then the fog swallowed up the morning.

Nooks and Crannies

Archibald liked used books...