Selections from: THE HANGING OF LITTLE TIMMY TIPTOE

CHAPTER 17: ARMPT'S DREAM - The Deal

He awoke in the back of a hearse looking down at a dead man, and realized it was himself. Filthbore drove and two of Minnie’s girls sat next to him in the front seat. A gentle tugging reminded him that the tube was still attached to the back of his head. He'd first become aware of it at Minnie's, just before passing out. It felt as though the mouth of a leech were sucking on his mind.

They were talking about his scent now, the Armpt smell. Minnie had washed it clean in her bath, but during the session it had returned. It always returned. Ashamed, he wanted to cover the body below him with blankets. 

The hearse vanished. He was five years old, tears running down his face as he begged his mother not to be sent to school. "Please don't make me go, mommy, please, please!" because his curse had already become apparent. How they teased him, holding their noses, making faces and running. 

The specialists all shook their heads. "It's a rare condition, nothing to be done. Perhaps it will go away when he ages." 

But it did not go away. 

He tried to shed the memory but a whispering coercion promised peace if he would share the pain.

"You must endure," his mother told him. "Learn to live with it and it will make you strong." 

But the derision of the schoolyard was terrible beyond words. Weeping, he clung to her leg and begged to be allowed to stay home.    

"You must never feel sorry for yourself, do you hear? Never." It was a quiet voice he had not heard before and it frightened him almost as much as the children. And then, to make sure that staying home would be worse than facing the school, she beat him until his shrieks filled the house.

The whisper sighed sympathetically. 

It had been for the best. Her words proved true. He became strong, and one by one challenged the children. Soon, none spoke of his odor, nor were there any who would not play with him. As the years went by he came to view his curse as a source of strength and the beatings as one of his mother's greatest gifts. 

The hearse hummed with energy. He became aware of a glowing life force emanating from the girls, Filthbore, and the body beneath him, and thus came to realize that he was still alive, and dreaming. He wondered how it was that he could see and hear in this strange fashion, and where they were headed. And suddenly he was above the hearse as it rushed along Delicious Avenue and the town was full of moonlight. 

Again he felt the tube.

Shhhhhhh, comforted the wind.

A storm was rushing toward them from the south.  Billowing thunderheads towering in the moonlight racing to cover the sky. At that speed it will quickly pass, he thought.

Noooooo, sighed the wind.

It was then he realized that something was inside his mind. Fear shot through him. Of all the things that could have happened to Judge Harold Armpt this was the most terrifying.

Be still, it urged.

Be damned! He cried, resisting with all his strength. 

Now the tube felt much more real. The back of his head tingled. Something had wormed its way into his consciousness, and sought to take possession of him. This was not a dream but a nightmare!

As the hearse passed through the gates and up the drive to his home, breathy concern sounded in his mind.

"Leave!" He commanded.

Let me stay, it cajoled.

"Who are you?"

Ahhhhh.

As they carried him to the bedroom he tried to move, to shout, to come awake. The thought of being left alone with the voice was horrifying. "Help me!" he cried, "Please!" But no one heard. They covered him and hurried off, leaving him helpless in the yellow lamplight with a parasite in his mind.

"Get out," he raged, "Get out, get out!"  How long he resisted he didn't know, minutes, hours, days – then, finally, silence.

It was gone. He was alone.

Dust fell on the law books in his study, on the carpet, on the cellar stairs. Like snow, like sorrow, in the fullness of time it gathered, a blanket of softness meant to bring sleep – unwinding – undoing – the end of all things.

He’d begun to let go when it dawned on him that he still saw with the strange sight, knew things that he should not know, was part of something that he had not been part of before. 

It had not left. It was soothing him with dust.

I am the dust, it said.

"What do you want?"

Armpt saw the familiar fluttering at the edge of his eyes. He glimpsed a boy's shoe and the cuff of an old pair of blue jeans, then the image moved beyond his sight. But it wasn’t necessary to see, there was only one child in Appletown who flew.

Him, said the wind.

So, that was it. It wanted Timmy. The one thing he would gladly give had he the power. But it was not so simple. The boy was Edna's child, Edna who kept him sane, Edna, whom he loved, Edna who was out of reach.

Suddenly, she was there beside him, just like Tuesday afternoons. Only this time it wasn’t Minnie pretending, it was her. The costume hidden in his closet was in her hands, and while he waited, she, in his bathroom, removed her clothes and donned the petticoats, the white dress, the stockings, the shoes and the little white gloves, which buttoned at the wrist.

You can have her whispered the wind.

Never, thought Armpt conjuring visions of her husband, her children, the mores of the church and town.

The mother for the son promised the voice. And for a fleeting second Armpt saw himself in carnal embrace with the woman who had become the girl of his minds eye.

"Who are you," he asked.

Dust and undoing said the wind.

The voice seemed not a voice at all but an endless sigh.

I am sloth, dissipation, forgetfulness. I am the end of all things. I am the last of the last."

"What do you want?"

The boy. You. The town. All.

"What's in it for me?"

Everything.

Suddenly Armpt saw the valley in a different way -- wide, close up, with infinite magnification; he could select any view and see anything he chose. Wherever Entropy had a foothold on the world Armpt had sight. And since there was no corner of existence in which some system was not in decline, there was no limit to his perception. He looked fifty miles to the end of the valley, zoomed in until he was inches from a clump of dying grass then moved within the grass to discover the cellular microcosm where bacteria waged war. 

Ahhh, sighed Armpt.

Together we will be invincible, whispered the wind.

But I will have to die, he realized.

Some dayyy it sighed.

Silence.

Had it gone? The tingling at the back of his head told him no. Whatever it was, this other that shared his mind, it frightened him. The soft, sweet rustle of dust settling on dry leaves filled him with an awful certainty that Death was coming as it came for all who did battle with the wind. Till now his adversaries had been tangible, but the air itself? Weapons were worthless against so insubstantial a foe. Like the mythical Greek hero who took up his sword against the waves, he was doomed. When it would take him he didn't know, but sooner rather than later, and, somehow he knew the end would be violent.

“Get out,” he hissed. “Let me go!”

His struggle to escape sent him up through the roof of the house and high into the air above Appletown. The moon was gone; snow fell in blankets. Below, the valley had become white and seemed softer than the dust on the cellar stairs.

"Free me!" he cried.

Black squares appeared in the white, snowy landscape, a chessboard.

Play me, came the response.

It was his game. And he was good at it. And since escape seemed impossible, he had nothing to lose. 

You cannot win, came the whisper.

"I can," he responded.

To Armpt will was the ability to endure, beyond pain, monotony, and hope, beyond the very borders of life itself, and through endurance, to shape time into something favorable to his desire. Diamond, the hardest stone was carbon based, just like Armpt, and had always been the symbol of his will, adamantine, born of fire, bright, clear, flawless and impeccable. When his pieces appeared they were hewn of this precious stone, towering and many faceted. 

He looked across the board and shivered. Guarding the opposing side were the plump, black bodies of living spiders with long sharp legs that tapped nervously at the boundaries of each square. He had always hated spiders. Armpt smiled. The thing inside his mind knew too much. He would proceed carefully. Advancing a pawn, he watched, fascinated, as the eight legged creature opposite moved ahead to meet it. 

He protected the pawn with another.

A second spider moved ahead two spaces, forcing the exchange. The aggression angered Armpt and the living chess pieces filled him with distaste. Seizing the diamond soldier he thrust it into the advancing creature's oversized body. Sticky fluids poured from the wound. Frantically, the creature sought to remove the object from its side. Others left their squares and formed a circle around their wounded comrade. The ugly creature began to tremble, it's legs curled inward and with a hiss it died.

Expending enormous effort the gathering of spiders extracted the diamond weapon from their dead brother. 

The game continued. And it was Armpt’s turn to lose a pawn. The spiders gathered around it as they had their own and carried it to the far side of the board. Then the largest among them began to stroke it and through some magic Armpt could not perceive, the hard stone crumbled. Perhaps it's the tiny hairs, he thought. Minutes later his pawn had disintegrated into a pile of sand. On the board where it had stood a spider had taken its place.

Your move, whispered the wind.

The game felt wrong. It was a coward's way to fight. He longed for the contact of fist against flesh, of steel against steel. And with that the chessboard vanished. Armpt found himself high upon the cliffs above Appletown, a broadsword in his hand. Behind him a little girl cowered in clichéd innocence, her dress and white gloves soiled, her petticoats torn.

A screech drew his attention to the sky over the valley as a winged Griffin swooped to the attack. He engaged the creature with a mighty swing, sparks flew from its talons, and     suddenly the town below bloomed into a waving skein of glowing threads. Armpt had never seen the Dreamnet before, yet he knew, but not how he knew, that each strand was a living soul, delicately entwined with all the rest to form the soul of Appletown.

Struggling to remember how he knew this he almost failed to see the Griffin’s knife sharp talons reaching for his throat.

“Not yet!” he cried, diving into the thin air above the glowing, living creature that was Appletown. Again it came. Again they fought. Sparks flying from his blade. A hit! The creature’s leg grew red with blood. It fled and he pursued, out over the town, fury in his eyes, death in his hands. He was flying like the boy now, his only thought to kill the thing that whispered in his mind. Swinging furiously, his blade cut through two glowing strands. Memories, dreams, and fantasies came poured into his mind. The knowledge staggered him, sent him reeling through the sky! This was the secret of the Dreamnet, to touch a strand was to touch a soul. Find Edna’s he would know the truth. Suddenly he knew which strand was hers and experienced a jolt of fear. Did he really want to know? And then, before thought could whisper “caution,’ he touched his sword to the strand. All of Edna’s feelings poured into his mind. Her desires laid bare, for the first time, he saw her as she saw herself, not a child but a woman, lusting and wanton. He knew what she felt when she sat beside his bed, her desperate wish to have him take her. Then he saw her in the arms of Wilbur Filthbore wrapped in the consummation of that wish. It was the ultimate betrayal. The shrieking Griffin came in for the kill. Armpt chose to die and dropped his sword. With that the creature disintegrated. Before him hung a dark, unholy cloud. Looking into its heart he saw an endless downward spiral. He heard laughter, the taunts of the playground, Edna whispering the name Wilbur. He felt uncertainty descend from the cloud like dust into the glowing strands, a sense of doom and confusion raining down. Faint sparks when a strand was touched. The colors of the Dreamnet begun to fade, the disintegration of Appletown had begun.

The game board came back into view and he was inches from losing his queen, so much for fist upon flesh. Armpt knew his enemy, scowled, and thought of Edna. If she desired him once, she could desire him again. Another spider died. 

“Your move,” said the judge.