Ed Coonce

Deux Contes

 

Harvest Moon

 

Silvery flakes of snow drifted down, glittering in the bright light of a harvest moon. Harold the Blackbird swooped down, hungry for those delectable bits of corn that lay scattered among the stubble in the field. He flitted to a landing and promptly pulled up short, startled.

 

Tweekie the Mouse, surrounded by dying pumpkin vines, pointed an oversized Glock 88 at Harold’s head, and clicked off the safety. He spoke in a tiny, yet menacing voice.

         

“This cornfield is mine, crow, and I need you to fly your feathered ass back to your stinking pine tree, and I need you to do it now.” His gun paw shook, his red eyes didn’t blink.

 

Harold, caught up in the surprise of the moment, cawed harshly then turned and flew back to his pine tree, yelling indecipherable threats at Tweekie the entire way. Arriving at his pine tree penthouse, still hungry, he looked inside his empty refrigerator, squawked and screamed for a bit, then text messaged his friend Edgar. “gt boyz togthr 4 food run here in 30.”

 

Harold then perched himself on the balustrade and fidgeted, cursing all kinds of crow euphemisms while waiting for his flying miscreant feathered circus bros to appear.

 

Back at the pumpkin patch, Tweekie preened his whiskers, dug in the dirt for a bit, and munched some of that delicious yellow corn topped off with slightly-past-its-prime pumpkin. He kept his loaded weapon nearby.

 

“Maybe I should invest in a security camera or something,” he told himself, then dismissed the idea immediately. Had to make sure rent was paid, first. Better get ready for winter, too. Christmas would be here in no time.

 

“He’ll be back,” he thought, “with his worthless gangster buddies.”

 

Tweekie stuffed his cheeks, hamster-style, then dragged his Glock into the burrow, where his mate Matilda and the sextuplets were relaxing and watching American Idol. His phone buzzed, a text message was coming through. It was a new Facebook notification. “Harold Crow has unfriended you,” it read.

 

 

 

Pitiful Mirrors

 

The Tutu Factory, East Hell’s biggest employer, was gone now, and wasn’t coming back. The connivery that had produced this sad state of affairs had thrown hundreds out of work, savaged the tutu markets, and the result was an angry populace looking for answers and revenge.

         

In their collective retro wisdom, however, there was never any doubt that Mayor Mute Gangery, the architect of the dismantling of their workforce, was anything but a decent, hardworking fellow who could show them how to balance the city’s books, become individually successful, and turn it all around. He was silent most of the time, just pointed to signs that the minuscule crowd around him would dutifully applaud. Signs that said “This Is How We Do it!” and “We Mirror Society!”

         

When he ran for Mayor, no one really bothered to show up at the East Hell polls, so he breezed through in a landslide. Mute’s first order of business was to fire all the school janitors, just as he had silently promised, and replace them with students like Billy Welper, who in addition to being one of the smartest kids on the planet, was also one of East Hell’s poorest.

         

Billy was tired, something that never should happen to a twelve-year-old. After classes were over one rainy Tuesday afternoon, his mom took him to see the school doctor, who demanded $35 up front, then stuffed it in his wallet.

 

“Let’s have a look-see.” he said. He shone a light into Billy’s eyes, checked for scale on his tongue, felt him all over for any possible tumors, and took his temperature. Everything seemed normal.

         

“So what’s the problem, Billy?” He got an answer he hadn’t expected.

         

“I’ve been trying to postulate the inevitability of a societal meltdown given the current ethics parameters versus the knowledge base of the status quo, and I keep coming up with a big fat zero,” replied Billy.

         

His mom interjected. “Billy’s a hypergenius, y’know?”

         

“Sure. Whatever.” The doctor continued messing with his tray of shiny instruments.

         

Billy continued. “It’s been giving me nightmares. I’d rather be writing the celestial navigation protocols for a trip to NGC 2770, the supernova factory. Oh...and I hate that stupid janitor job.”

         

“Well, boy, nuthin’ we can do about that.” The doctor then addressed Billy’s mom. “Mrs. Welper, this is a common malady, it’s happening everywhere. I’m going to give you a prescription for Billy.”

         

He wrote something illegible on a scrap of paper, then dismissed them. “This will calm him down, let him focus on his job. I’ll see you in a month.”

         

“I’ll pick you up at ten, hon.” Billy’s mom gave him a kiss and left. A few minutes later, he was alone in the empty building.

         

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Billy thought. He shuffled into the broom closet, got the big floor polisher out and pushed it once down the hallway leaving a nice shiny and clean trail behind. He took a break and went into the boy’s room, staring at his face in the mirror for a long time, searching for an answer to his dilemma.

         

“Stupid pitiful mirror...” He studied his own eyes. “You and the Mayor and his buddies can’t even come close to reflecting me.”

         

Billy had explored postmodern social theory and rejected most of it, except the parts about positivism and anti-positivism. Social contract? There wasn’t any. Social conflict? Now there was a tool he could use! Might as well fire that one up now!

         

At a quarter til ten, with a full moon beaming down, Billy went back to the broom closet and retrieved the matches, then went to the empty classroom he had just cleaned. The entire floor was empty. Good. He hand-lettered several fliers that said “FIGHT THE POWER!” He lit a match, dropped it into the wastebasket under the teacher’s desk and walked calmly next door where he repeated his actions. So far so good, no alarms. There weren’t any anyway, the school couldn’t afford them. He locked the doors and went outside, scattering the fliers on the school lawn.

 

He was waiting at the curb for his mom just as the first desk was catching fire. He opened the passenger door, hugged his mom, and they drove home. Billy felt better.

         

Actually, he felt quite good. By the time he and his mom pulled into the driveway, he had already improvised the qualitative and revolutionary underpinnings for the next social paradigm, and in his mind had destroyed Mute Gangery several times over. 

         

His mom called up to his bedroom. “Billy, don’t forget to take your medicine!”

 

 

 

Ed Coonce is an Encinitas, California artist, author, screenwriter, actor, host of East Hell Writers, Phantom Poets, and Creative Director at Theatre Arts West.