I just got a call from my agent and he says somebody’s willing to publish my story if I add a few pictures. So I’m trying something here that I’ve never tried before: it’s called re-writing. I’ve heard that people do it, but I’ve never done it. Jack Kerouac didn’t do it either – he would just put a piece of paper a mile long into a typewriter and type till he got another pot craving and that’s when he knew the story was done. I’m kind of that way except I like chocolate like Kerouac liked pot, so I stop the story when I get another craving for Cocoa Puffs. Cocoa Puffs, for all the readers in other dimensions out there who don’t have them, are little chocolate peas extruded from tire pumps so that they are at least eighty percent air. It’s chocolate air. It’s delicious.
The second chapter of my story about a guy named Mason seems an especially good place to begin the treacherous task of revision because soon after I began it, I ended it. Cocoa Puffs. I think I’ll add a major secondary character. Her name will be Viktoria. Like Mason, she is a reaction against the City, a litmus test for the City’s weirdness.
Let’s start the experiment.
Chapter 2: Parkland and Vegetables
Mason was not the only one scared of the City. Viktoria from China was scared of it, too. She had a different mechanism for coping with unexpected change, a habit which was not as messy as Mason’s frequent bladder relaxations. Viktoria from China always carried a camera with her and placed it as a shield in front of her eyes at the least indication of danger. Danger included things like vegetables and large open spaces.
Here is a picture of Viktoria’s fear of vegetables, a fear that reached levels of near hysteria at the hors d’oeuvres table at Susie Rodriguez’s apartment in Chapter 1. Notice, hovering in the background, Phillip with two l’s and Christina from Port Rich, a tiny island the United States stole because they loved money. The island was not rich. It was just an island. Now the United States was stuck with it. The picture:
Both Viktoria and Mason were scared of the City. Many more were scared but would not say it. In reality, Winka Skyscraper was the only one not scared of the City.
The first day of class, Winka informed her students that they would be studying two things this semester: skyscrapers and parks. Mason peed his pants. Viktoria took a picture. This is the picture Viktoria took:
Which was the face Mason made when he peed his pants.
The class made trips to several parks. The first one terrified Viktoria the most. This was the record of her terror:
Naturally, Winka thought the park was very beautiful. To her, this picture was not about fear but about family: her many cousins smiling at her from the background.
The class rode the subway between Park One and Park Two. It was the middle of the day and the subway was less crowded than it had been when Mason took it in the morning. He therefore did not feel the weight of impending death so much and managed to stave off another bout of bladder relaxation. Viktoria was not so lucky. Her friend Soomin Tiny Voice took a bite out of a muffin she had purchased from a streetside vendor and managed to find in it what looked to be a vegetable. Soomin was wrong. It was not a vegetable. She did not reach this conclusion in time to stop Viktoria from snapping another photo:
At Park Two, Winka disappeared into the forest of skyscrapers and wasn’t seen again that day. Her associate, Thomas, who was only half skyscraper, stayed with the class and listened to a man from the City (I use the word here in the municipal sense) explain how they were painting bridges purple and adding three feet of sidewalk onto the waterfront so that people could use the space more. This was a process the man called Beautification. Mason hated the color purple and didn’t think three feet of sidewalk would make much a difference to the waterfront in the end. Mason concluded this was a waste of taxpayer money and demanded, to some amorphous cloud of authority in his mind, that the man ought to be fired. Viktoria, on the other hand, thought the extra three feet made the park far too large. She became afraid and took a picture of the event:
It was very cold that day, and Mason and his classmates could not feel their fingers or toes by the time they got back to the subway. This was nature’s way of preparing them for worse things to come: several days later snow blanketed the City and transformed it into a treacherous obstacle course full of foot-deep icy water wells that swirled at the boarders between sidewalks and roadways. Leonardo da Vinci had solved this problem many centuries ago when he proposed to separate vehicles and pedestrians. Nobody ever followed his advice. Now we have obstacle courses full of foot-deep icy water wells whenever it snows. These were Mason’s thoughts as he traveled on Valentines Day to studio to read and work. He did not have a Valentine this year, though his mother had sent him a whole bucket of home-made double chocolate cookies. This made Mason happy, as chocolate was his favorite food. He liked it as much as Jack Kerouac liked pot. And that was saying something.