Each One Beautiful

Conquistador Adams was old and fat, and often tired too. He had hired the voluptuous Ms. Sandrake for one reason and one reason only—getting the books for him on the high shelves. At his request, she was now climbing the ladder, and Conquistador moved as quickly as he could to get under her, ostensibly to hold the ladder steady.

It truly appeared to Ms. Sandrake to be a great, sturdy and reliable ladder, fixed on wheels that moved along rail tracks around three sides of the store. But her boss had a strict rule that male employees must wear ties and female employees must wear skirts, preferably red. She was almost sure she knew what this was really about.

“Where is this book you’re talking about?” she said.

“Get up there, my dear. It’s more than halfway up.”

“Here?”

“No, higher. No, stop, you’re there, you are very much there.” His eyes were bright now.

“What book?”

“I don’t remember its name yet. Keep looking.”

“But I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“Please, we’re trying to sell books in this store. It’s important to the customer.”

“Yes, but which one do you want me to get for you”

“It’s the very popular one.”

“You had better remember or I going to come down right now.”

“I remember now. It’s ‘The Art of the Deal’.”

“That’s impossible. There’s nothing here by Donald Trump. You only keep these classics up here, the valuable books.”

“Move a little.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I see it now, “ said Conquistador, “Oh God, I see it.”

That’s when Ms. Sandrake pulled out a book at random and ‘lost” her grip on it. As it sped toward the old man’s face, he recognized it as Alice In Wonderland, a beautiful first edition, one of his favorites. He was a man who appreciated beauty. Then everything went swirly and finally black.

Emerging from a fog, he found himself in front of the bagel-shaped time portal from the Star Trek episode “On the Edge of Forever.” Through it, he could hear music, and incredibly, he could see the images the music depicted. There was Lucy in the sky with diamonds. She was naked but covered in them on every inch of her body. He looked at the parting clouds. There was a bad moon rising, and a knife to open up the sky’s veins. There was Alanis Morissette being ironic. Some things never will change, he thought.

A painful shock stung his head and then things got weird.

His psychiatrist appeared. “Do not regurgitate partially hydrogenated pig’s feet,” he ordered sternly.

“But, Doctor Hackysack, when you ask me not to do that—urk—then I can’t help but—urk—I just can’t help but regurgitate partially hydrogenated pigs feet!”

“Of course you can’t. There it’s out. It’s out, and now do you feel better? That came straight from the damaged part of your mind, the flossus epithelius, where you hate your father for being married to your sister. You’ve compounded it by being a signifying monkey. I could lose my license, and you, sir, could lose your grip on reality.” The doctor was dressed as Freud’s mother on a bad day with a hat made of hood ornaments. His assistant had Spock’s phaser in her mouth and was spitting green rays, destroying a small version of Gamera, a lesser-known Japanese tyrant.

Something else stung his head and things got stranger.

There was a porcine Sarah Duchess of Pork wearing particleboard pasties, awarding him an Order of the British Empire emblazoned on his favorite enema bag.

The CIA’s Porter Goss was there dressed as a porter and sitting on a stalking horse. He hefted a bag of growls and perfume.

His brother stood there as a door and Conquistador pulled a hand to open it. A plastic Topo Gigio was back there strangling his best friend, Ed Sullivan, while Lex Luthor was giving his mortal enemy, Superman, a sponge bath.

Something stung his head again and again and again, and it all was going very fast. He entered a carpal tunnel filled with carp. A possum was playing human. The thermometer said it was six degrees of Kevin Bacon. He witnessed an army traveling on its stomach, and he had to put a stitch in time. Then he put it all in his pipe and smoked it. The last thing he heard was Elmer Fudd saying, “No more buwetts.”

He awoke back in his bookstore with his head aching. Ms. Sandrake was gone. The shelf above was empty. Conquistador found himself lying in a pile of classic first editions—each of them beautiful.


[If you liked this story, you can move on to the sequel "Invalid Item" ]