Thursday, August 09, 2007
Catch-22
GALLOWMERE - On a tall, steep hill isolated from the world is a house curving like a kitty's claw. It's the home of the elusive Mr. Todd S. Gallows. Every year, to mark his birthday, he comes out and rings his large, cracked bell in accord to how many years old he is. So according to the bell rings, he's 22. The year he doesn't come to ring the bell, we are to hoist his neatly frozen corpse out of the house and toss it into an incinerator. Then return to his house and burn his possessions. Then find his friends, family members, and anybody who he's ever associated with, and burn them too. He's not to have a single remnant left he says. Every year that he signifies that he's still with us a reporter or news crew comes up to visit him for an annual interview. It was my task to catch up with him, which was no easy feat.
The last few people granted the privilege of speaking to Mr. Gallows on his birthday, somehow never made it back, though the stories survived... temporarily. I started to ascertain why as I cautiously made my way up the steep hill, avoiding bear traps, trap doors, land mines, rolling marbles, swinging logs covered in spikes, broken glass in the floor, and frisbees with razors embedded in the edges. Save for a few nasty cuts and bruises riddling my body and an infected left eye, when I reached the top, I was in pretty good condition. Upon ringing the doorbell, an anvil was slipped out the window nearly making a pancake out of me. When the dust cleared, Mr. Gallows stood there in his black slacks and unhinged straitjacket, sipping his tea.
"You don't look so good," he said. "In fact, you look like something the cat drug in." Just then a a large cat he addresses as 'Noboru Wataya' came to the door. It was dragging in what looked like me, just as bloodied and bruised, but dead. "Come on in," he insisted.
I was given a complimentary tour. The house of Mr. Gallows is an elegant collision of grotesque art, architecture, and weaponry from old cultures blended with newfangled technologies, luminous stained glasses, taxidermied animals, and books galore on subjects of the esoteric. I told him his house was nice and he commented, "Yes, it is a beautiful train wreck isn't it?"
He gave me a slice of his birthday cake adorned in dynamite. It was carrot, with icing made from putrid lard. And then we got down to business. We sat by the fireplace on chairs shaped like open hands, in a room with a human skin rug. He sat feigning a smile, staring at me, stirring his bitter tea.
"Ready whenever you are, Chris," he said, eerily, channeling the voice of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
"Oh, right," I said, restraining my bladder from releasing urine onto the marble floor and human skin rug.
"How does it feel to be 22?"
"The same way I felt 24 hours ago when I was 21. Maybe a bit itchier, but nothing spectacular."
"And what are your thoughts on being 22?"
"Well one should always be happy to have survived another year of life. It's a worthy cause for celebration, certainly. Surviving is harder than it's cracked up to be. People get weird illnesses all the time, or get hit by cars, or fall into wood chippers. But I've made it so far, in good health, and in one piece. Let's hope I can do this next year, and many decades to follow."
"Many decades? I thought you were all Mr. Death and decay, monsieur doom and gloom. How come you want to live so long?"
"Not sure, really," He paused, staring at his reflection in a steaming black pool of tea in his skull mug. I mean, if I hated life so much, I would've climbed the tallest building and jumped off citing such appropriate lyrics as 'I know a ghost can walk through the wall, yet I am just a man still learning how to fall!' and/or 'gravity's calling I've got some falling to doooooo!' You know, something grand like that. I've found my little niche of pleasures and it makes my life enjoyable. And speaking of niches, that's all age means to me, another niche on the belt, another divider in the filing cabinet of memories however miserable or absurd they may be." A vacant smile plasters his face, "You know, I really do enjoy hating life, and don't want to go any time soon. It's weird. Even though I'm not terrified of death, I don't want to die too soon. And at the same time, I'm not exactly fond of life. It's a a grand opera of futility, isn't it? I guess you could call what I'm in a catch-22 situation. Hardy har har..." Mr. Gallows was in good spirit. Which quite frankly, disturbed me. But I continued, anyway.
"So what do you plan to do for the year?"
"Live life a bit more, enjoy the outside world, reminding myself of how mechanical, empty and impersonal it is to help tantalize my penchant for solitude. It will help me always remind myself on late nights sitting in the trees, staring at the moon that I'm not missing a thing." And I was starting to lose patience. What happened to the Todd S. Gallows rumoured to bite a man's ear off and throw it into a subwoofer as to make the man go deaf? What happened to the Todd S. Gallows who generated portals to tear the flesh off of full grown men and women? What happened to the Todd S. Gallows who played tennis with dead baby skulls? I lost my nerve.
"OK, so where is it already?" I blurted.
He paused to look at me, "What's this now?"
I let the cat out of the bag, and Noboru Wataya emerged from under the human skin rug, "Where's the hostility and chaos?"
Mr. Gallows leaped from his chair,"Oh right, so you've come here for a show, have you? You reckon me for a circus freak, ready to do your tricks at will, huh? Is that what it is." A flicker of red glowed in his eyes.
"Um, n-no! That's n-not what I meant..." I said.
"Oh, OK," he returned to his seat. It continued like this for hours. He showed me pictures, we played board games, we pinned the tail on the donkey.
I tried to find a way out of this mess. I said, "Well would you look at the time? I've got to get going."
Todd had no objections. He showed me to the door, and he said, "I hope we can do this again next year." He snickered, disappearing with his grin like the Cheshire cat. Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. I figured out exactly what it was halfway down the hill, rolling to my booby trap plagued death.
-- Chris Kettlewell, Gallowmere Gazette
