He wasn’t cruel or evil, just thoughtless, to him she was a workdog or horse that cost too much, and the more work she did for him, the more he shrank into his bed and screens, the more he disappeared down holes and so did their munmuns.
“I do understand a little bit though, scaling down feels awfull, today I scaled down from threefifth to halfscale and even just that makes you feel so sick and sad, weak and helpless, your lungs don’t bring in enough air and your tummy doesn’t hold enough food,” she sorrowed.
“Crap,” I said.
“But enoughenough, I’ll get used to it, how about you meanwhile, don’t you feel amazing,” she asked.
“I do,” I admitted.
“Breathing, eating, wearing clothes, doesn’t it all just feel so so good,” she pressed.
“Super good, the best,” I agreed.
She kept asking me about how it felt and how happy was I to be out of jail and pardoned and everything but my answers were short, I still didn’t have a lot of words in me, prettysoon she was talking again just to fill the silence.
“The marriage was bad but I learned from it, bro,” she declared, “I really did, just talking to customers and selling things and working out in the world, honestly I think I’m a grownwoman now, I’m a whole different person from a yearago, that littlegirl knew nothing but this middlewoman is going to attack life, attack opportunities, attack knowledge,” and she kept talking as I kept sinking, she kept weaving and looming the spell that sent me off into Dreamworld.
In Dreamworld Kitty was waiting, the flowerhouse was crisper than I remembered, cracklier, less of a cartoon, more professional. But this time I could walk inside, easy, I stepped through a door and was in my own little operabox.
The inside of the flowerhouse was a giant concerthall, domeshaped and honeycombed with cozy boxes for a thousand blissfull dreamers, in the centerbubble she sang and played the music from many years ago.
How can I tell you what it was like to hear it again, I can’t.
But it was better than my memory of it, bigger and sharper and sweeter, actually the whole point was you can’t remember it.
So all I did was float in my operabox, listen, relax, let the musicfingers push out the knots and stones from a year of angry fearfull nights.
And I went back the next night, and the next night, and the night after that, and just listened, floated, let my body go liquid.
Maybe it was the same song every time, I wouldn’t know, no one could. It was too many notes, too many rhythms, too much texture, too glorious, your ears couldn’t focus. It was a thousand parades on one street, a thousand lives in one life, a thousand years of living and dying in every second.
I began to realize, it was the music of This Is How The World Feels When You Are Huge.
Huger than Kittyscale forsure, Kittyscale is only twoandahalf, fouryards tall or so, not enormous.
Huger than billionair big, bigrich, eightscale, twelvyards, that’s not bigenough for how this music makes you feel.
Maybe as huge as trillionair big, sicktyfourscale, hunyards. But probably huger than that.
The bigger you are, the smaller things get, the more things you can touch at a time and the more amazing little detail they have on your fingertips, toes, tongue.
The music fits into your dreaming ears the way Hue Family House could fit into your giant hand, if you wrappped your hand around the whole thing. Windows, brickwork, gutters, ivy, slateroof, columns, buckling crackling, crunching under your knuckles.
Music of the forest scratching your enormous godfeet, leafy barky trees between your toes, trickly streams dribbling under your arches.
Soundscape of mountain handfulls, thinly iced and melting into your fingerprints, crags digging into your thumbball.
If you were a god hugging the worldplanet and felt every single thing, big and little, pressing back into you to tell you, I’m alive, that was the music Kitty knew somehow to make, the music that swallowed me everynight.
Maybe it sounds overwhelming to you, exhausting, insane. But for a little red jailfish it’s a way to recover, become yourself again, or atleast stop being the tight furious dreamless sleeper, reset to being no one.
For sure it was therapy, for sure it could heal someone with a hard bad life, afterall she was using it to heal herself.
And did I want to make my own wild dreamstuff again, sure, ofcourse I did. But I couldn’t.
Everytime I tried to dream like previous me it was toohard, impossible, I wasn’t me anymore. The bigger the stuff, the more my mind fought back, nightmarestyle.
Dream a snow of flowers, snow turns to rain, flowers turn to paint.
Dream some lazy airdogs, dogs turn to sharks, sharks get stuck in the air and die, floating ballooncorpses rotting and popping.
Dream water and it floods your house, dream trees and they block your way, dream rooms and they don’t have what you’re looking for, what are you looking for, you don’t even know but time is running out.
Something in my head had broke and my dreaming was like other people’s, incomplete and outofcontrol.
LIFEANDDEATHWORLD
And meanwhile my days were whirlwinds, trying to allofasudden live a busy middlerich existence and absorb a quality education, spoileralert, this was completely impossible.
Step One, buy clothes, okay, that part was not so impossible. Hue and Tony took me to Fine Young Man for some stiff officesuits and Sporty Run And Jump for casual athletic gear to wear around the house, meanwhile Dawn and Kitty bought Prayer some sensible ensembles at Study Girl and Busy Bee.
Secondpart, see some doctors, also fine and infact great. We got our bloods inspected, hey greatnews, no one has a sexdisease or cancer. A middlepoor dentist gave me replacement faketeeth, plastic stones in my mouth, whiter than the real ones. “Reminder, faketeeth will not scale up or down with the rest of your mouth so if you ever change scale you must remove them first or you may risk serious injury,” he said super bored and fast, this guy must have to say it twentytimes a day.
Stage Three though, attend Wet Almanac Middlerich High, sorry poorkids, this is the impossible part.
• • •
First day at school was endless, a nonstop parade of hopeless tasks and humiliations. Sprint across the giant campus at topspeed, leap up bigsteps, arrive toolate at a shut door where you can’t reach the doorknob. Scrabble wildly, a sternfaced professor cracks the door open, nexttime please just knock, noneed to claw the door like a dog who needs to pee. Swim and drown in discussions you can’t understand, symbolic math, chemical processes, litratures of the world. Ask the teacher basic questions, repeat in a scream because your middlepoor voice is too small for the room, Sorry Who Was Toneymoorisson Again, all around you the doublescale kids nosebreathe with impatience, a muttery forest. Spend all of lunchtime not finding the foodcourt, ohwell, no lunch for Warner, stare longingly at garbagecans all afternoon and dream about the pizzarinds inside.
At familydinner Hue asked us how was our first day.
We paused like deerintheheadlights, is there any single part we can even describe.
“It is a very new and stimulating environment!” exclaimed Prayer. “That is for sure!”
Hue turned his sympathetic eyes to nodding silent me and said, “I know it’s difficult, it’s quite an adjustment atfirst, but please trust me and just stay with it, this is going to take you places you never thought you’d go.”
The second day was ofcourse the same but worse, all the frantic scurrying and leaping and inability to understand, but with the professors now also asking, Warner have you completed yesterday’s assignment, Warner I suggest you take notes, Warner we do take attendance promptly at the beginning of class and it is your responsibility to get here however you can, maybe you can buy a gocart.
Second night, more confident babbling from Prayer about all these new exciting ideaviruses she is being exposed to, more shaky silence from me.
“Warner, you’re a hero just for trying your h
ardest, I know you will succeed,” cheered Kitty, Daisy tried to roll her eyeballs all the way into the back of her face.
But it didn’t get better, Warner this essay is unreadable, Warner that presentation was incohearant, Warner these testresults are actually worse than random guessing and it’s hurting our classaverage, until you learn the material may I recommend just punching random letters.
A few more impossible days ground us down and look, in the end I couldn’t pretend it made sense for us to stay, you couldn’t either.
What did it was, in the planetarium I overheard mocking kids talk about us.
But they weren’t mocking me, not Prayer either, instead it was Kitty.
Idiot yellowtard girl bringing two ratty hardluck poors to our school who probably can’t even read, just so she can feel better about herself, ugh what a dumb selfish slut, youwish she was a slut you horny bonehead, that’s true she needs to be less of a prude I would smash that, you know who’s a slut though Fern is a huge slut, et set set setera.
Prettysoon these boys weren’t talking about Kitty or me but I walked off campus that afternoon knowing we couldn’t stay at this school for educated riches. It was law school alloveragain. We just didn’t belong.
I tried to tell this to Prayer before dinner but she freaked out.
“Warner you idiot, we’re going to lose everything if you say that, do you think Hue wants us to transfer from nice hard school to sad easy school, nope, wrong, the opposite,” she hissed.
“Neither of us has learned anything and instead everyone hates us,” I pointed out.
“We just have to try harder, ofcourse the first days are going to be hard but we belong if we decide to belong, so just decide it, dummy,” Prayer argued.
“We literally don’t belong,” I yelled. “Look around nexttime at school, tell me if you see one person our scale, nope, zero. I mean Prayer you belong even less than I do, you read slower than me, your legs don’t sprint fast as mine, they’ve got you taking junioryear classes and that’s way too advanced.”
“Good,” shrieked Prayer. “Put me in the most advanced. I will outsprint everyone and get all ays, I have a raging bottomless hunger for success, Prayer stops at nothing.”
But still I piped up at dinner, “Hue Family, I am super appreciative of everything, gottasay though I just really don’t think middlerich school is working for me, I think maybe middlepoor school is a better fit.”
Surenough, there were grim reactions allaround, Hue was the grimmest. Meanwhile, under the table Prayer was forkstabbing me.
“Warner, I’m going to be frank,” Hue rumbled. “At your age, ofcourse through no fault of your own, you just have a lot of ketchup to do and not a lot of time to do it, and I’m doubtfull that a middlepoor school will challenge you in the way that you need.”
“Everyone thinks you’re a dummy, don’t you want to prove them wrong,” helped Tony.
“Hue, Tony, everyone, let me explain with a mentalpicture,” I pleaded. “Envision school as a stairway to knowledge. Now picture that each step of this stairway is too big for your legs. Infact the first step is way above your head. You just can’t use this stairway, you’ll never get up to knowledgeworld no matter how hard you try.”
Prayer was muttering nopenopenopewrongs but I continued, “I truly believe what will get me up to all that great knowledge is some smaller stairs that fit my halfscale legs, and you betterbelieve I’ll race up those stairs as fast as I can, if those dinky schools don’t challenge me enough, dontworry, I’ll challenge myself, I know you will too, just give me the right stairs, Prayer you need to stop freaking stabbing me.”
“Prettygood metafore,” mumbled munching Hueagain. “Maybe he should go into politics.”
“As the one who knows about politics, I don’t agree,” disagreed Tony.
“Prayer, do you also find Wet Almanac High too difficult,” asked Hue.
“Are you kidding, wildhorses will have to drag me out of there kicking and screaming,” promised Prayer. “Challenges are my favorite thing, second only to achievements, can I just remind everyone that I am in it to win it.”
“Kitty, what do you think,” wondered Dawn.
“I’d miss having Warner at school,” whispered sweet Kitty. “But I do understand.”
“Why would you miss having him, it’s making everyone hate you,” asked Daisy.
In the end Hue okayed me to transfer, but with warnings and conditions of We Need Results From You, I didn’t ask what those exact results were and he didn’t tell me.
And so I transferred to the nearest middlepoor school, down in Eat Almanac, a school with the proud important name of Eat Almanac Middlepoor Vocational and Technical, Eat Votech forshort.
Eat Almanac is a floodplain that doesn’t flood anymore, hot dusty desert gazing up at the Wet Almanac hillsides. It’s a little strange ofcourse that both towns are Almanacs, I guess it’s kind of like having a brother and sister of different scales. Wet is the leafy land of riches, middle and big, down in Eat is very different, lots of cinderblock compounds, factories, dealerships, sweatshops, Mun Worlds.
A Mun World is a vast shopscape, pretty common in middlepoor districts, infact there’s one right across the parkinglot from Eat Votech.
Actually the school seems like Mun World’s little grubby echo, similar squat blank cinderblock struction, similar wide flat warehouse, worse paint job, similar number of cops, forthatmatter similar number of Votech students because at any moment many students are not taking classes and instead chilling in Mun World.
What kind of school is Eat Votech, gladyouasked, Eat Votech features the Track System.
Track System means when you show up, they figure out what you do the best, then they put you on a track where you only keep doing that thing.
Usually they start by seeing, are you good at math. If you show up to Eat Votech good at math, congratulations, you’re on Mathy Track, math and science classrooms for you, and when you graduate you get to work in labs, lots of munmuns coming your way.
Bad at math but can read and write, noprob, you’re on Wordy Track, writing and editing for whoever needs words to sound good, decent munmuns.
Can’t read so good but talk pretty clever and confident, great, you’re on Busy Track, a life in sales or business, better munmuns alotoftimes than Wordy Track even, a little messedup how that works.
Dumb at everything so far but clever with your hands, fine, you’re on Handy Track, fixing cars and robots. Clumsy hands, welcome to Drivy Track, learn to drive stuff around, or Lifty Track, learn to carry heavy stuff, Cleany Track, clean and scrub, Servy Track, politely serve people and shut up.
Day One for me was notsogood. It was me in an unwindowed room with two sleepy middlepoor counselors, were they excited to meet this new mystery student named Warner, nope, not even a little, let’s just figure out this bonehead’s track realfast and maybe we can get an early lunch, afterward cross the parkinglot and rummage through great deals at Mun World.
We started with math, and I was a littlebit hopefull, I’m not terrible at math. Numbers make sense in my head, just not when you throw letters in there too, what is that even about.
“Pick the answer you think is right,” they said, ay bee see dee.
“Can I maybe get this read to me outloud,” I said.
“Ecks minus three is three,” they said.
“Good, good,” I said. “This thing answers itself. I’m pretty sure it’s not even a question.”
“Your choices are zero, three, six, and ecks,” they said.
“Can’t go wrong with ecks,” I said.
“You can and did, so let’s cross off Mathy Track and move on,” they said, but the readingsample was disaster numbertwo. They gave me four little pages about volcanoes and rock science, half the words in there were a crazy vowel aircomma festival, I had fifteenminutes to read it and didn’t even get to page two.
“No Wordy Track for you,” they said. “How about you try and sell us this pen
.”
“Do you want this pen,” I said. “It’s super great.”
“Not really,” they said.
“Do you know anyone who wants a pen,” I said.
“Nope,” they said.
“Guess I get to keep a great pen, suckers,” I said, but they took the pen.
“Here’s a puzzle,” they said, handing me two bentup wires all tangled around in each other, and watched me grapple with it for a while like a rackoon, noluck.
“Here’s a driving game,” they said, giving me a little driving simscreen, instant carcrash, wow, programmers had tons of fun putting screams in there.
“You seem good at pushups,” they said finally, so I dropped to the gritty floor and started pushupping, and after I got to fifty I glanced up to see them giving each other grim satisfied looks of, secretly we knew allalong this was where we were headed, and the younger one said, “Welcome to Lifty Track, sign these forms please, don’t need your whole name, W is fine, thereyougo.”
“This is prettymuch what I was afraid of,” frowned Hue.
“He’ll study with me and retake the test in six weeks, dontworry Dad, he’ll retrack for sure,” promised Kitty.
“I hope so, for his sake,” grimmed Hue.
“I hope so too,” I agreed, wasn’t the right thing to say though.
DREAMWORLD
And what about Prayer, great question, she stayed at Wet Almanac Middlerich. It was a life of tasks she couldn’t do, languages she didn’t speak, problems she couldn’t solve, and distances she couldn’t cover.
It was grades of FAIL and PLEASE REWRITE and SEE A COUNSELOR OR SOMETHING, attendance records of LATE and ABSENT and STUCK IN THE LOCKERCAGE AGAIN, misery and mockery everywhere you look, but she was determined to succeed.
But it took a bad toll, I could tell in Dreamworld, she needed Kitty Music even more than me, just lay there like a zombie corpse in her operabox, letting the songs massage and crush her.
Every morning I woke up first, I had the longer commute, long walk to the busstop and a longer busride to Eat. So rightbefore I left I would shake her awake, and always there was two or three seconds of sick terror on her face, pleading eyes of, ohno I can’t do it again, saggy mouth of, please don’t make me spend one more day pretending like this could ever be a success.