He scrambled, a last-ditch effort to defy death, to slip into another moment. He dove, but was too late. The truck was on him.

Billy stood. Unharmed!

He was confused. How?! But, it had happened.
He cried out, thrilled.

Then, around the bend sped another truck, inches away. Again, Billy braced for impact. No time to move. This truck must end him.
But it happened again. The truck barreled on and he was somehow unharmed.

“I’ve got to stay off the road. I’m going to get killed.”

This is my effort in the annual Advent Ghosts 100 Word Storytelling put on by my friend Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall. See other entries there. Thanks, Loren.

Image by Martin Gommel

Jellybean Highfive fell for it again. It was a trick, he realized now, long after anything could be done about it. The clown walked away and Jellybean just stood there, stationary, like a piece of paper lying on a hotel desk.

He somehow found the intestinal fortitude to raise his head up proudly, like a fort made out of intestines, and walk down the boardwalk. Other than his despair, he was optimistic. He had a go-kart race scheduled with his team in five minutes, or an hour; he could not remember. That clown! Clowns in general, sure. But that clown!

He knew he would have to give himself up to the humiliation. Balloons could be tricky and that guy had been a professional. Inside the castle of his heart, up went the white flag of surrender.

He walked swiftly. Away, down the boardwalk he went, imagining his defeat turning to triumph in the Go Kart Cup, or whatever it was called. He was thinking with what he guessed was the front part of his brain when he was jostled. The jostling was harsh, pronounced. Stuttering, he said, “H-h-h-h-hey! What’s wrong with you?” Jellybean stared at the man, who was on a unicycle and had, instead of the customary eye patch, two customary eye-patches.

“I’m very sorry, ma’m,” the eye-patch wearer said, dismounting and extending his hand the opposite direction of where Jellybean lay on the ground.

“I’m a sir, idiot,” Jellybean said politely to the man’s back, “and I’m over here,” he continued, pointing to the area where he himself was.

“My sincere regrets,” the man said. “May I offer you my apologies?”

“I guess so.”

“Thanks.”

Then there were a few seconds where no one said anything at all. An unsettled feeling settled on the two of them like a blanket settles on a sleeping person in some kind of magic place.

Finally, Jellybean asked the question that had been on his mind since the blind unicyclist had collided with him. “Are you blind?”

“20/20 did a special on me, you may have seen it. I didn’t see it, myself.” He paused here for some reason and Jellybean looked at him with the universal expression of ‘get on with it.’ The man did. “Yes. Yes, I am blind. I’m the world’s first blind unicyclist.”

“Are you sure you’re the only one?” Jellybean asked.

“I’ve never seen any others,” the man said, grinning.

“A unicyclist,” Jellybean mused, bored with the blindness angle. He was thinking of racing. “How fast do those things go, anyway?”

“Well, speed isn’t really our primary…”

“I can drive real fast in my go kart,” Jellybean put in, pantomiming a steering motion.

“That’s great,” the man said, a little testily. “Go-karts can be fun, I guess. So, where do you race?” After a pause where the blind unicyclist assumed Jellybean might answer his question, he went on. “May I ask, what kind of work do you do?”

But Jellybean had already left the area. Continuing toward the go-kart track, he thought of what he would name his team. He usually chose the white go-kart because it was really fast. So, maybe The White Knights? The Mean Race Team? Those sounded cool.

He was forming a lot of possibilities with color and ferocity being major influences. Then he remembered the blind unicyclist. Why did they call them unicyclists? He always got confused on things like that. Unicyclists, bicyclist? He guessed that everything that had to do with wheels had an “ist” ending. He arrived at the track just in time to hand the bored, ponytailed teen his ticket.

“Don’t you want to know my team name?” Jellybean asked.

“Yeah, man,” the teen said with a loud exhalation of sloven indignation, “I’m dying to know your team name. Cause all these kids have teams with names.”

“The White Racists,” Jellybean said happily, looking over a ten-year old’s head to locate the kart he was looking for. He grinned at the teen and nodded, motioning to the others around. “They’ll all be waving the white flag after this.”

Sunglasses Image by Stefano Mazzoni

Jellybean Highfive’s unofficial detective business was booming -if booms are what explosions make. Oh, the devastation, he thought.

It had blown up in his face, his third case –The Case of the Bulimic Fatty. He had found the truth at the bottom of the case, but had uncovered it in such a way as to cause it to be forever hidden, like King Tut’s coffin. Will they ever find it, he thought. “I wonder,” he said. Probably not, he mused.

He wondered this while walking down a street connected to many other roads. He wondered how anyone could call a street “secluded.” All streets met up with other streets, didn’t they? He tried to imagine a street all alone, on an island perhaps, sad and secluded, with only its top five books to read.

“All roads lead to Rome, Jellybean,” he said to himself, “and Roman roamers roam them. That’s where I come in.” He smoked on a cigarette, imagining himself to be in a movie called “Jellybean Highfive.” He often did this, even while brushing his teeth. He would look himself in the eyes, half-closing them in a dramatic slit, and imagine a gravelly voice-over voice gravely laying out the impossible odds. “But one man stands in the way…Jellybean Highfive.”

His reverie exploded when he realized he was standing in the way –of a pretty blonde who needed to get past him in order to board a bus headed who knows where.

“Pardon the interruption,” Jellybean said, not able to move due to the magnetic magnetism of her face. Like a tractor beaming its headlights at a deer, he was lit up by a terrifying attraction.

“What are you staring at?” she said prettily.

“My destiny,” he whispered, slitting his eyes and cocking his head just so.

“Oh,” the woman said, embarrassed.

“You should never be embarrassed,” Jellybean said, finally moving to the side and making way for her. He extended a hand to help her up on to the bus, then took off an invisible –nonexistent, really– fedora and made a slight bow.

To him, she was the queen of the city just then. It seemed as though the entire street inclined her way. Birds seem to sing, people seemed to hum, and the sun broke through the charcoal crush of clouds to illuminate her lovely face. Then she vomited. She looked around for a moment, then escaped into the bus as the doors closed. The bus lurched forward and disappeared into the maze of interconnected avenues in the auburn autumn afternoon.

Jellybean stood there, spellbound. All he had was the memory of her. Then his mind started working quickly, dots began connecting in his mind. He walked quickly somewhere, using his mind to think thoughts. He got out a notepad and made massive checkmarks in it. He stopped and shouted, “I have it!” in triumph.

But his triumph turned quickly and his face fell. He stood, looking absently around, like a child from a broken home standing in an outfield, realizing that the one he was scanning the bleachers for hadn’t come like he’d promised.

“It’s not the streets who’re secluded,” he said in a hoarse whisper. He noted absently the rushing crush of people everywhere. “It’s the people in the streets.

“People,” he said in a gravelly voice, “like…Jellybean Highfive.” He looked up at a camera that didn’t exist, stared hard, then looked away. His gaze tracked down the crowded street, as if a bus might stop anytime and vomit out the most beautiful girl in the world.

For more Jellybean Highfive click here and say “There’s no place like home” with you heals.

Jellybean Highfive never saw it coming. It struck him in the face like a punch to the face and he reeled as if hit really hard. Down he went, descending toward the earth like a shuttle’s reentry, surely as a canon ball falls on the forts of the ship’s shore enemies. He landed and looked around, like a landlocked country searching for the sea.

No one was there. Not any single some one.

He looked around again, certain he’d been struck, but flummoxed as to the cause. There were kids throwing a football back and forth about twenty feet away. They were right over there –if they weren’t ghost-wraiths, or spirit-persons.

He thought of Sherlock Holmes and then deduced that it might be the kids who were guilty of the bold-cold face-strike. He wished there was a cabbie he could summon for the twenty foot carriage ride to the investigation. Jellybean longed for a loyal Dr. Watshisname to accompany him and to say dumb things that Jellybean could, with arrogant grace, correct.

“No, no, my dear Dr. Watshisname. I’m afraid you’ve overlooked that I was struck hard in the face area and thrown down to the earth area. Further and more, you have overlooked looking over at them boys throwing things in the bally vicinity.”

Regretful, alone, nostalgic for a fictional Victorian age, face hurting in pain, he began to cross the distance. The boys, corporeal and jolly, were in the midst of their down-set-hutting. They played like little players on a grassy turf that stretched before a section of the long line of identical condos. Each condo was a copy of every other, save for the dissimilar numbers above the sliding-glass doors so clean and clear like transparent glass.

“Boys!” Jellybean said, far louder than he intended. “I wonder,” he whispered, overcorrecting, “if you could help me with an investigation into the cause of a face-crushing strike to my face a few moments back as I attempted to reenter condo 13?”

“No sir,” a boy with hair said. “We didn’t see nothing, except we turned to look after we heard a loud bang and you was on the ground.”

“I’m very interested in how interesting that answer is, son.” Jellybean said, holding an invisible, or rather, non-existent magnifying glass up to a closed eye, while looking at the boy with the other. “Please, carry on with the game.”

As he walked off, he realized that he could have made some kind of “the game’s a foot” comment that would have incorporated his private Sherlock fantasy and the boys’ game. Too late, he thought. “Drat,” he said. Then he said, “Oopsy-daisies.” Then he thought, Bummer.

As he meandered back, he mulled over the possibilities of the case. He loved this case –the case of the face what was striked. If some other detective had butted in at this moment, making inquiries of his own, Jellybean would have asked him to get off his case.

Just before he reached condo 13, an idea came to him in the form of a thought. “Yes!” he said with words. “I was thinking thoughts like this before the attack.” Noticing a cold drink sitting undrinked on his table, the fanning flame of the furious fire of his imagination burned into a burning pile of thoughts. He remembered, nostalgia-like, that this had happened before. He needed more fuel to transform his thoughts into full-blown and irrefutable deductive logic and there was fuel only a few feet away.

Like a thirsty detective, he dashed for the cup. “I have it, Dr. Watshisname!” he said, lunging, “the game’s a-foo…” he was cut off in mid-word as, once again, he was brutally face-smashed to the earth in the second such surprise attack of an invisible enemy.

He’s struck again, Jellybean thought.

Jellybean Highfive found it ironic that the least ironic person he knew worked at an iron quarry. How ironic, he thought. Then he thought something else. He looked long and hard at Chip Beetle, the aforementioned friend. Chip had a mustache.

“Anyway, so that’s what I came to talk to you about,” Jellybean said, finishing a long and interesting monologue.

“There’s no need to get personal, Jellybean,” Chip said, doing nothing with his hands to his mustache. “I mean, do I come all the way to your work area and complain about the state of your trousers?”

“But Chip, Chip, Chip,” Jellybean Highfive said, unable to take his eyes off of what he was looking at. “I’m not saying your pants are beyond all human aid. I just think you should take neatness a little more seriously.”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Chip said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s simply daft to think about a rich bloke like you with your fancy office job, where you wear khaki all day and frolic with female coworkers, coming down here to an iron quarry to lecture me about how tidy my trousers are.”

“They’re full of wrinkles, Chip,” Jellybean said, sucking down a cigarette from a larger length to a shorter one. Just then, suddenly, another Chip came into view and then out of view as he walked in and out of view. Foreigners, Jellybean thought. Then he said, “You know what you need, buddy?”

“No, what?” Chip said in an English accent, because he was from England.

“I’m asking you, Chip. I don’t have any idea,” Jellybean said, throwing his spent cig to the ground in disgust as if it disgusted him.

“I could, I suppose,” Chip said, now almost touching his mustache with his index finger, “go to a shop and purchase an…”

“It’ll never work,” Jellybean said, cutting him off. “Let it go, man. Let it go.” Then Jellybean added, “Let it go, man.”

With a last, backward glance at what he saw when he looked there, Jellybean left the quarry.

The Witness

Bleak midwinter? No. It’s the only time I feel even a little bit free. Otherwise I’m smothered, alone. At least I can see their beautiful faces during the holidays. At least I’m forced out of my box to witness their subdued celebrations.

Ten years ago, Christmas Eve. I was coming home, eager to share what I’d found with my family. In my haste I crossed a wizard.

On our tree an ornament hangs that my children love to scrutinize. It’s baseball sized, appears as a silver mirror. They wonder why it feels so magical. They don’t know that I’m inside.

He sniffed the near-beer, nearly baptizing his nose-tip in hyphenated-draught from a can. (Earlier he had poured this one can’s entire contents into a see-through glass.) He sat there, a satisfied look on his face, basking in the glow of the candles and humming patriotic songs from his native land (America, U.S. of). He looked satisfied and smelled patriotic because this was the land of his dreams. Suddenly, immediately everything quickly changed.

He woke up on the couch with a long string of unmasticated Big League Chew hanging from his sagging, drooling gob, a gob of the same in his hair, and the distinct, dank smell of masculinity-in-isolation filling his nostrils.

‘Where am I?’ he thought. Then, ‘Oh, yeah. America.’

Then aloud he said it, because he remembered about freedom of speech. “U.S. of America, baby.”

Then he took the unchewed string of purple into his mouth and, savoring it as he believed the founders would want, he chewed and chewed. He chewed the chews of liberty.

The author of this story, S.D. Smith, pictured here moments after completing all fifteen minutes of work on it.

More Jellybean Highfive here.

Jellybean Highfive stood at the entrance of the house called Diffident Manor. He walked in reluctantly, stood in the doorway in an unassuming fashion. He had been invited here by invitation.

‘Place looks odd,’ he thought inside his mind, with his thoughts.

“Hello, stranger,” a voice said from in front of him. The voice belonged to a woman –a curvaceous, vivacious, hellacious woman.

“I’m Vivica Hellen,” she said, drawing on her cigarette like a smoker, “but my friends call me ‘Curvy Vivica Hellen.’”

“Because of the…?” Jellybean began.

“…curves,” she finished. “Yes. Because of that.”

“Why are we here?” Jellybean asked, looking around at the quaint, humble insides of Diffident Manor in an uncertain way.

“I got me an invitation, I did,” Curvy Vivica Hellen said.

“Me too,” Jellybean said. “Mine was a little odd. It said…” and he showed it to Curvy Vivica Hellen.

Come to Diffident Manor. Stop. Great riches await you. Stop. Why am I writing this like a telegram? Stop. I just can’t seem to stop. Stop.

“Mine says the same thing,” Curvy Vivica Hellen said.

“Mine too,” Jellybean Highfive said, drawing out a cigarette from his pack of cigarettes. He lit one with fire, began to smoke it cheerfully. “Mine too,” he repeated, this time with extra rasp.

“It’s a mystery. Why are we here?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked.

“You’re here,” a voice boomed, “because I invited you, by invitation.”

Jellybean looked around, but saw no one. He thought how weird that was, then remembered all the ways voices could be projected into the room with a person not present. “Yeah,” Jellybean asked. “But why?”

“Because we need you,” the voice boomed again. “We need you to save Diffident Manor in a desperate sort of way.”

“How desperate?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked. “On a scale of 1 to 12, how bad off is the Manor?”

“10.5, easy,” the voice said. “Maybe 11. I’m so serious. I’m not even lying.”

“That’s high,” Jellbean said.

“Yeah, so…” the voice paused, then continued, “…can I count on you?”

“Sure.” They said together, at the same time.

“Jinx,” Jellybean said, “Jinx.”

____________________________

Ten hours later they stood in the sitting room, having each committed various atrocities combined with acts of goodness.

“The Manor must be saved and it must be by you,” the voice said. “Then you will have a reward of gold.”

“Nice,” Jellybean said, “but who are you?”

“I will tell you who I am,” the voice said, “when you solve the mystery and rescue the Manor and get the reward.”

“The reward of gold?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked.

“Yes. That one.”

“OK,” they both said together, but it was far too pivotal a scene for Jellybean to say ‘Jinx.’

‘Not this time,” he thought. ‘But it is tempting,’ he also thought.

______________________________

Then there was a tumult in Diffident Manor. The entire building began to shake with shaky shakes. Into the room came six ugly giants. Their names were “Essential,” “Important,” “Serious,” “Central,” “C.S. Lewis,” and “Nimrod.” Essential spoke. “This is Important,” he said.

“Nice to meet you,” Jellybean said.

“No, you idiot,” Essential said. “What I’m about to tell you is Important.”

“I knew that,” Jellybean said.

“Hear me and you might live,” Essential said. “Maybe. Go to the bottom of the house, the basement. There you will find three keys. The middle key must be used in the chapel closet, or doom will follow doom.”

“What kind of doom?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked.

“Certain. Doom,” Essential said.

Then Nimrod did strike Curvy Vivica Hellen on the head and she did die. Jellybean felt her pulse and it did not exist. In fury he killed Nimrod with a look, and a gun.

“It’s all right,” Serious said, “I’m kind of a wizard. Go to the cupboard and fetch me a pail of water.”
Jellybean ran, fetched a pail of water.

“Pour it over her head,” Serious said.

“Really? Are you..”

“Serious? Am I Serious?” Serious said. “Of course I am.”

“Do it,” C.S. Lewis said. Then he left, muttering “I have to get to the shed or the whole Manor will fall down at the end.”

“OK,” Jellybean said. He dashed the water on her head. Curvy Vivica Hellen revived. She asked for a cigarette.

They smiled and wondered, ‘What kind of a place is this?’

__________________________________

Three minutes later they were all in the kitchen, except some others had disappeared. There was Jellybean Highfive, Curvy Vivica Hellen, Essential, and Serious. Nimrod was dead.

“Essential,” Jellybean said. “Why didn’t we fetch a pail for Nimrod?”

“Because he got what he deserved,” Essential said.

“But all Nimrod did was kill some one for a little while. Now I’ve killed Nimrod forever.”

“It’s what Diffident Manor wants,” Essential explained. “It’s what Deuteronomical Max wants.”

“Who is Deuteronomical Max?”

“It will be told to you in twenty minutes.”

“What happens in twenty minutes?”

“You mean other than you finding out who DeuteroMax is?”

“Yeah.”

“The Manor of Diffidence will change forever, and we have to stop her.” Essential said. Then he walked into the refrigerator and disappeared in the light.

“Where’d he go?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked.

“I don’t know,” Jellybean said. “But he was the shortest giant I have ever seen.”

“And a good friend,” Curvy Vivica Hellen said. “A good friend.”

“Well, one thing’s for certain,” Jellybean said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to find this Deuteronomical Max.”

“Why?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked.

“So I can kill him.”

“I don’t think that’s what Essential meant,” she said. “Before he disappeared behind the mayonnaise he winked at me and whispered, “‘It’s so cold.’ What could that mean?””

“We’re about to find out,” Jellybean said. “We’re about to find out.”

____________________________________

Four hours and twelve seconds later Curvy Vivica Hellen and Jellybean Highfive stood in the chapel. They thought about the keys, but not very much.

“I’m so glad we’re here,” Curvy Vivica Hellen said. “So glad.”

“Me too,” Jellybean agreed. “Me too.”

Then all the giants came in, smiling, reading books. Nimrod looked up from a Nancy Drew and ambled over. He gave Jellybean a hug.

“Sorry about the, um, unpleasantries earlier.”

“Me too,” Jellybean said. “Me too.”

Curvy Vivica Hellen said, “I’m the one you tried to kill.”

“True,” Nimrod said. “True.”

They were all smiling. With their teeth.

But also…..with their…

…hearts.

The End

Author’s Note: The powers that be posted this at the Rabbit Room yesterday. For a little context, you can go here for the brilliant Travis Prinzi’s post on why he loved the finale of Lost, and the comment thread of his post where fists fly and jaws rattle arguing over the super-important topic of “Did the Lost Finale Satisfy?” I guess you can see, if you watched the show, where I fall on that. If not you can just enjoy this story for the massive literary achievement it is. Kind of like Gulliver’s Travels. Did Swift write that in fifteen minutes?

His son played with the wrapping-paper tube, a skeletal delight for the grave-robbing children of the world. Usually employed as a sword, or a telescope, the boy had opted for an arm extension.

“A robot?”

“I am not a robot,” his son said, robotically. “Robots are evil.”

“True,” Brant said, moving into the bathroom.

Inside, he looked into the mirror and adjusted his emotion settings.

After it he went, like a galloping horse upon which rides a girlish-sized man in bright clothing. He soon caught sight of it again and hastened to the place where it lay. Its point was embedded in the firm grass and its hinder-parts tottered like an insistent metronome. A quivering glory.

“I have found it,” Jellybean said. Then, like men caught up in profundity often do, he said it again. “I have found it.”

A man with a clipboard came and wrote down something about the magic device. Surely those words were an oracle, and Jellybean longed for them as a man longs for long longings.

“Do you know the way to the Avenue of the Twilight of the Javelins?” Jellybean asked the old man.

“I just work here,” the man said.

“Yes you do,” Jellybean said. “Yes, you do.”