The Lollypop Guild- Short Speculative Fiction

         

FICTION PIECE    

When Al first caught their reflection in the darkened glass of their front door, they didn’t quite recognize who was looking back at them. Their eyes momentarily flashed gold instead of beaming their customary brandy-brown hue. Their unruly bob blipped copper and gold and bold as a lion’s mane before fading to its normal shade of rocksalt-and-pepper. For an instant, four huge wings unfurled from their back jolted like a million volts: the top pair were ravens’ wings, and the bottom pair could have come from an albino bat–a monstrously huge one. The cherry on the sundae of strange was the corona of heavy blue and gold flame that enveloped them. As soon as it appeared, the vision was gone. Al was so shaken that they stared for a full minute at their now normal reflection, daring it to try that nonsense one more time and wondering about their mental health. The image could have come from one of her students’ homebrew manga projects. It was certainly recognizable as such. Maybe, Al thought, they were just feeling tired and imagining things. It hadn’t exactly been an unpleasant sight that momentarily met her gaze. Rather, it was a vehemently unwelcome one. 

Al vigorously shook their head and the vestiges of the image flicked out of their mind and back into the aether where they belonged. The edges of this late September Friday evening bit and snapped at Al’s ungloved fingers as they fumbled with their door keys. With a heavy grunting sigh, Al unbolted and shoved open the heavy oak door before walking into their postwar maroon saltbox of a house. This place was the tiniest thing in the neighborhood to be sure. It had a fantastic yard and a helluva basement, which is what sold them on it. The house itself was kind of a dump and needed a LOT of work. They’d only been in the place a month. It felt great to be home and to know they didn’t have to be anywhere else for the next 30 hours. 

It was with great relief and excitement that Al had taken the job of middle school English teacher for Syracuse Public Schools. They hadn’t wanted to leave their parents in the care of a home health aide, but when their Oklahoma college prep academy told them there had been a student “complaint” over something they had said in class, they knew it was time to resign and move. They’d handled student complaints before, but this one was special: it was an Anti-CRT complaint. An evangelical freshman primed by their deeply bigoted parents had eavesdropped on Al’s lunchtime study group until she’d caught asexual, nonbinary Al advising a gay student on how to find resources for coming out diplomatically to their family. The next day, the complaint was made. As the author of Oklahoma’s Anti-CRT policy lived in the same district in which Al taught, and had several friends on the school board, Al knew they had zero chance of not being fired, of not losing their license, and of not being forced to pay an enormous fine, though they might have avoided the yearlong jail sentence. It was just time to pack up and go, so they did. They lucked into finding this place right after they got the job offer. It had all fallen together so well that Al only had a week between moving into her new place and starting her new teaching job. A tough go, for sure, but Al did it, and felt pretty good about themself for pulling it off. 

Al dropped their laptop case and two Aldi bags of first-draft personal narrative essays onto the floor beside the futon sofa,  then shrugged out of their coat and threw it into the papasan chair situated across the Fjallbo coffee table from the futon. No sooner had Al done so than their white and orange dwarf cat Chesh, hopped onto it and burrowed down for a nap. Slipping out of their dirty gray Ebay Uggs, Al collapsed heavy and hard onto the futon and shooshed Chesh off of their coat. Chesh then hopped onto the sofa next to Al and settled in for a nap. Al gently stroked the sensitive spot between Chesh’s ears and debated on whether to get back up and grab a beer. They really needed a beer, but then, they felt too tired to get back up and go get it just yet. Exhaustion won. The beer would wait. 

En route, Al heard the unmistakable sound of panicked yelping. It suddenly occurred to them that their terrier Oz, hadn’t immediately attacked them upon walking in the door. Al listened intently for a minute before realizing that the sound came from the basement door, on the other side of the kitchen. Al hurried to the basement and opened the door. They were immediately bowled over by an energetic ruff of wiry gray hair and big personality. “I missed you, too.” Al said, as they scratched the dog’s neck and shoulders. Oz licked Al’s face with such glee that they almost forgot about the dire situation at hand. Oz was magick that way–they can lick your cares and worries away. But then again, for not the first time since arriving home, Al had an uneasy feeling. 

The basement door had a mind of its own. Sometimes it was open, sometimes it was closed, sometimes it would open by itself,and sometimes it would collapse closed all on its own. It wasn’t too hard to believe that the door had fallen open, Oz had wandered down to the basement to hunt for lizards, and the door had gotten shut. Al knew they had shut the basement door before leaving for work. As Al got up from the floor, they realized that they had not heard the alarm countdown warning when they opened the front door. Al was certain they had armed the alarm before leaving for school, but if Oz had gotten downstairs, then clearly, they hadn’t. Still, the juggernaut of Oz was a welcome distraction from that odd vision. Al checked and found the auto-feeder was still full, so they closed the basement door and locked it. Then, they went to the fridge, grabbed that beer, and headed back to the den to do some essay grading while watching Tail of the Nine-Tailed, 1938. It had taken a while to finally sit down and binge that kdrama, but the wait had been worth it. Episode four was up next and honestly, Hong Joo was absolutely everything Al loved in a woman.  

Al idly glanced into the Aldi bag closest to her feet and saw the slim pile of junk mail they’d grabbed from the mailbox and shoved into the bag as they headed up the driveway to their house. The edge of a piece in the middle caught their eye. Uneasily, Al reached in and slowly withdrew it. “What the…?” they muttered.

Al stared long and hard at the postcard The front of the card featured a movie still from The Wizard of Oz. The subject matter of the image immediately put Al on guard. They sat up, shoved their glasses onto their face, and took a closer look. The Wizard of Oz held great and heavy meaning for Al; it had been a secret obsession they’d only shared with one other person. Rather, that person had shared it with them, and Al had definitely taken notes. Their spine tingled, their forehead throbbed, and their hands shook as the examined the unexpected mail. 

Emblazoned on the postcard was a photo they’d seen dozens of times: Dorthy and the gang armed to fight the “spooks,” but something felt incredibly off. After a few minutes, Al saw the problem, and blurted aloud: “Who in the fuck gave Scarecrow a gun?” In the scene Al remembered, The Tin Man had an axe, the Cowardly Lion had bug spray and a butterfly net, and Dorothy wielded that basketful of Toto like it contained a hell-hound. Scarecrow was empty-handed because he utterly lacked foresight–which was perfectly in character. This gun addition was insanely out of character not only for Scarecrow, but for the entire film. Nowhere in the original Baum books had scarecrow been a pistol-packer, either. Al had read them all, many times. Something was very out of order here. Al swigged that Hoegaarden bottle for dear life and the drew a ragged breath.  

Al turned the postcard over as carefully as they would have pulled wires to disarm a bomb. What they saw made their heart skip a beat: Curved across the upper third of the field was a rainbow that seemed to have been drawn by a child. At one end of the rainbow was a stick-figure with red hair, yellow eyes, and four wings–a white pair and a black pair–holding a sword emitting blue and gold flames. A tiny orange and white cat sat attentively at the being’s feet. At the other end was a stick figure with purple skin and platinum hair who wore a voluminous cloak and held a blue lightsaber. Behind her, a gray terrier sat at attention. Underneath the rainbow was a yellow path with cross-hatching reminiscent of bricks. A sigil floated in the air between the path and the rainbow. 

Al recognized the sigil; it was a combination of hobo symbols that basically meant “go this way!” They’d learned the symbols from their fabulously wayward, train hopping-aunt and only ever taught them to one other person. The same person who’d been as obsessed with the Wizard of Oz as they’d been with Alice in Wonderland. The same person who had sent this postcard. But it was impossible. Absolutely impossible. First of all, the person who’d sent this postcard had died twenty years ago. Second, this postcard had been sent forty years ago. Third, and most impossible of all, this exact postcard had been sent from a place that is absolutely inaccessible to the United States Postal Service because it doesn’t exist–as such. Last time Al checked–which was surprisingly often–the post office hadn’t yet begun training postal carriers in the dark arts of astral projection and occult psyops. 

Yet, the truly troubling thing was the image on the front of the postcard, not the image on the back. Warily, Al picked up their phone and did an image search. Sure as shit, the entire world knew about Scarecrow’s out-of-place gun. There were several people who were as confused by it as Al was, but the vast majority of Google demonstrated that the world was familiar with this version of the scene. This wouldn’t have hit so hard if they hadn’t watched the film with their a week before; fewer than seven days prior,  the scene was decidedly as Al remembered it. 

“Classic Mandela Effect,” Al muttered. 

A Mandela Effect is when a large part of the population remembers an object, event, or media detail differently than the rest of the world. This group always has exactly the same pseudomemory, though. It is as it they all mis-remembered it en masse as a group. The Mandela Effect is so-named because a sizeable chunk of the population remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison, and were incredibly shocked when a very much alive Nelson Mandela became the president of the African National Congress after being released from prison. Nothing about this mass memory failure makes sense. 

While most of the world chalked Mandela Effect instances up to faulty memory and slight insanity, Al knew for a fact what caused Mandela Effects: timeline redistributions. From time to time, the world experiences existential threats due to human stupidity, naivety, or avarice. For example a threat could be caused by an assassination or the detonation of a nuclear bomb, or a human-caused environmental catastrophe. When the threat threshold is reached, there are forces on the planet that create a duplicate timeline as a sort of backup. Then, the existential threat comes to pass and both versions play out.  Thing is, these aren’t exact duplicates. Sometimes details change. Sometimes people didn’t die. Sometimes the Fruit of the Loom logo has a cornucopia. Sometimes children read the Berenstein Bears books. And sometimes Scarecrow didn’t have a gun in that scene from the Wizard of Oz. Whichever version has the best outcome for the planet is the one that the planetary energies shift into, and then the petty details get redistributed. Folks who “mis-remember” things aren’t mis-remembering anything; their energetic consciousness is just high enough that they retain the memory of the timeline as it was and do not relinquish that to accept the timeline as it now is. The really confusing thing, as far as Al was concerned, was that it's hard to tell exactly which events trigger the timeline shift. The average person realizes no advantage in having one memory or the other–it literally makes no difference whatsoever in their lives. For people like Al, though…it’s hideously portentous. It means that some major energetic shift has happened, and even though the planet is usually spared in the process, other things go absolutely sideways. In that brief interstitial moment during the shift from one timeline to another, portals get opened and things make their way from the astral plane and into the real world. Sometimes it’s postcards. Sometimes it’s elves. Sometimes, it's eldritch horrors. Sometimes, it’s honest-to-god aliens. None of it is ever any good. 

Al stretched their neck both left and right until a ripple of crackling on each side indicated that their upper spine was now aligned. They rose from the futon and headed to their room, postcard in hand. Looking down, Al finally noticed the spookiest thing of all about the postcard. There was no address anywhere on it. This magical artifact knew where to go, forty years after being sent from a candy-striped mailbox on the astral plane. “When you get it, come find me, because it’ll be a matter of life or death” Dorothy had said, as she slid the postcard into the mail slot, “And don’t be late for this very important date.” 

“Well, Dorothy,” Al said softly, “you’re already dead, so I guess it’s me we’re talking about.” Then, they closed the front door, armed the alarm system, and headed into the bedroom.  

* * *

Al’s bedroom was bare except for a bed, a nightstand, several boxes, a suitcase, and a gigantic 6-foot-by-3-foot mirror leaning against one wall. The mirror had been left by the previous owner. It weirded Al out to have it in the bedroom. Mirrors are dangerous objects at the best of times, but big ones are the absolute worst. The idea of having gods-only-know what watching back at you from whatever was on the other side of that mirror was a very unsettling thought, and at their age, Al just couldn’t be bothered to mess with any of it. This is why Al bought a batik bedspread from the thrift store down the block and threw it over the mirror. They hadn’t made enough friends yet to help them move the mirror to the guest bedroom. There are times when you need a giant, full-length mirror, so Al wasn’t against keeping it. But Al was not thrilled at having this particular mirror in their bedroom. 

As Al puttered around and pecked through boxes, it occurred to them that maybe the previous owner’s leaving this mirror here wasn’t a coincidence or an inconvenience. Maybe it was one of those happenstances that linger just beyond the edge of coincidence but are far too pointed and pat to be glib synchronicity. Another way to put it might be, “this is a setup.” What if whatever forces brought Al to this place, this house, and this moment were the same forces that conspired to bring that ME-ridden memento mori to their door? If so, would it really be a good idea to go chasing through gods-know-where looking for a long-dead friend? A friend who had been murdered, no less. By the conclusion of this chain of events, Al had gathered every item they were going to need. Oz was settled into place under the bed, watching . Chesh was settled onto the bed, directly above Oz. Though it had been decades since they’d attempted any such thing as they were about to do, Al knew from experience that their retired familiars had assumed guard duty. Both animals stared intently into the mirror, just beyond Al’s reflection. 

Al spread a beach towel out in front of the mirror and sat down cross-legged in front of it, leaving a foot and a half of space between them and the mirror surface. To their left, they placed the incense and very full ash bowl. To their right, they placed the oil bowl. In front of them, they placed the postcard. Muscle memory had already begun to kick in when the procedure came flooding back into Al’s mind. Al grounded and centered themself, pulled Qi through all of their chakras, and slowed their breathing and heartbeat to a meditative rate. When they were ready, they dipped their right ring finger into the oil bowl and drew the sigil of opening over their third eye. Then, after dipping their left ring finger into the ash, they drew the sigil of unlocking on their right palm. When the sigil was complete, Al lifted their right hand, palm up in front of their face and spoke, “Open. So be it.” On the “it,” Al snapped the fingers of their right hand, sending ash through the air to land on their third eye and on the mirror. 

The mirror surface rippled slightly. The air gained a crackly, electric quality. Something moved in the reflection: Oz trotted out from under the bed to sit on Al’s right side. Chesh hopped off the bed and slinked over to sit on al’s left. Al was perfectly aware that both her pets had fallen asleep in their guard positions, because she could hear them purring and snoring. Al’s reflection in the mirror pet both animals behind their ears, while Al themself remained perfectly still. The reflection nodded. 

Al dipped their ring fingers in the bowls of ash and oil. In oil, Al drew a sigil sentence on the mirror’s surface. First, they drew Dorothy’s old hobo code sigil: a dog-faced girl. Then, Al drew the symbol for “this is the place” enclosing Dorothy, and the symbols for “go this way” and “good road.” Finally, in ash, Al drew the final sigil, “hit the road,”while intoning “take me to Dorothy.”

The world went solid chrome. Al felt the mirror reach out and wrap around her, drawing her into itself. In only a moment, Al was deposited on the reflection side of the mirror. Oz panted happily and Chesh rubbed his face against Al’s arm. Al looked up to see that their body had fallen back, unconscious, arms up and legs akimbo. In truth, Al’s body was sprawled out in such a way that it reminded them of the Hanged Man tarot card. It felt as appropriate as it did uncanny. Al rose from the floor and decided to switch eidelons. An eidelon is the cosplay you wear while walking the ways. You can go as yourself, but if you can be an angel of death, why not be angel of death? The fact that Al had lives long enough to have a menopausal pot belly, gray hair, and hips that were finally almost as wide as their linebacker shoulders make Al feel proud of themself. They had no reason on earth to expect they’d last this long. Even so, The scarier you looked, the fewer were the things that tried to bother you. With a snap of their fingers, Al morphed. Before them stood the very four-winged angel of death who’s greeted them earlier that evening. Al turned to face the opposite wall and stopped cold. It was too late for fear, uneasiness, and anxiety, although Al certainly felt all three. It was time for a new tactic: incredibly nosiness. 

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Al said, “Curioser and curioser.” 

Instead of the opposite wall of their bedroom, Al saw another vast expanse of mirror. They’d forgotten the vestibular phase of waywalking. The mirror reflection of the space where one enters the Ways is the most common way to enter and exit the path. Unfortunately, it’s notoriously difficult to lock this space down. Psychics, remote viewers, astral projectionists, spooks, goblins and honest-to-gods aliens can enter the mirror side of your space–the vestibule– very easily. Once there, they can move things around, harm you, or steal from you–usually while you are sleeping. When people wake up with stuff moved around the nightstand, or strange scratches and scars, or stuff actually missing from their room but nobody else present in the house–this is usually why. The easiest way to combat this situation, as far as Al was concerned, was to buy a cheap bedspread and throw it over the mirror. Things that go bump in the night can’t find you if you don’t have a vestibule for them to invade. This method had worked well for twenty years, and Al swore by it. 

But to see this vestibule so visibly connected to the Ways was disconcerting. Usually you had to exit a doorway or sometimes a window, sometimes even a wardrobe, Narnia-style, to exit the vestibule and encounter the vast, iridescent expanse of the Ways. It was incredibly rare to encounter another mirror. This always meant that the place you wanted to go was being gatekept. By who or what, Al was at a loss to determine, but if the deceased Dorothy did happen to dwell somewhere in the Ways, they certainly had reason for it: Dorothy was easily the most powerful wizard the Ways had ever seen and her power had been as great as her reach. It wasn’t hard for Al to imagine someone somewhere in here wouldn’t dare to risk a being that powerful coming back to haunt the whole entire place. They would certainly lock her up. The surprising thing is that there would be anything left to lock up, here or anywhere. 

Al regarded the mirrored gateway with silence and a raised eyebrow. Then, they  decided to try the universal command that forced gates to reveal all locks.

“Open says me.” 

Immediately, the mirrored surface parted like a sea of liquid chrome and two arched doorways poured forward until they solidified about three feet from the wall.. They were identical except for the sigil series inscribed on the surface of each mirror-sealed portal. 

Al shook their head. They knew what this was. This was the lady-or-the-tiger protocol. One door would take you where you wanted to go, and one door would take you to your doom, or if you were lucky, it’s just spit you out into your body and bar you from ever entering the ways again. Al bent closer to get a better look at the sigils. Only one sigil in each sentence made any sense, because each had clearly derived from the hobo code symbols they’d taught Dorothy. Which was interesting. If those were there, it clearly meant that Dorothy was the one who built this gate and installed the lady/tiger protocol. 

“Curiouser and curioser.” Al said once more, with more than a trace of irony. 

“Are yer batshit CHICKEN JALFREZI,” Chesh intoned in a grating Cockney dialect, “or is only TING yer can think of say?” 

Al was taken aback and cocked their head toward Chesh. “I haven’t heard you talk in 20 years and you’ve decided to start speaking in Cockney rhyming slang.” 

“At least one of us can understand it,” Oz interjected. 

“It doesn’t help that that one of us is Chesh,” Al replied. 

“Oy! Your DOLL Dorothy rigged this game so only yer could play it win,” Chesh huffed, so do us a favor get it on in.” At this he lifted his hind leg and cleaned his hindquarters. 

Still, though, Chesh had a point. Dorothy is the only person who would have encoded that. Al took a closer look at the sigils they knew.

On the left door was a combination of sigils that indicated a courthouse and being watched by police.

On the right door was a sigil combination that indicated a locked safehouse. Either could apply to this situation.

Was Al seeking justice of some sort for Dorothy? Fuck if they knew, but given the circumstances it was definitely a likely candidate. But then again,  was it also likely that whatever they were looking for would be held in a safe and locked location? Yes. Absolutely. Al studied both in silence. The other sigils were two different runescripts, only one of which was passingly familiar, and neither made any sense given the context. 

 After a long while of staring at the portals, Oz scratched his ear with his hindleg and said, “Al?”

“Yeah?” Al answered.

“Do you remember the last thing that my mistress told you?” Oz asked, sadly and quietly.

Al drew in a long breath and breathed it out slowly as they thought.  Yup. They remembered. “Yes.”

“What did she say” asked Oz, “before she vanished into thin air?”

A silent, heavy tear rolled down Al’s cheek. The impassioned, loving, and tortured look on Dorothy’s face as she stole one last look at them was sealed into Al’s memory. Al had toled her there had to be a way, and that they could go back and make different choices to avoid whatever was happening. “She said,” Al replied, “Choice is an illusion.”

Oz cocked his head to the side and said, “I think that’s your answer.”

Al stretched their neck, cracked their knuckles, and took a long look at both portals. “If you believe choice is an illusion,” Al said, “then there is not right or wrong choice because any choice you make leads to the prepatterned outcome.” The very thought of this fewl in the face of everything that Al believed. 

Yet here they all were, being gatekept by a deadwoman whose use of a binary choice protocol was nothing short of absurd givner her personal philosophy. The three of them were going to end up wherever Dorothy wanted them to be and that was the only logical conclusion Al could draw.  Al stepped up to the space between the portals. They put both hands out in a Jesus Christ pose and fell forward, landing at an algae to the gates, with each palm touching a sigil sentence. 

The tunnels immediately began pouring into each other and all three watched as the center began to hollow out. The tunnel turned iridescent. A golden grid of bricks lined the floor of the passageway. The passageway was surprisingly long. Taking point, Chesh entered first, followed by Al. Oz brought up the rear. The portal slowly sealed itself shut behind them. Just as Oz stepped onto the path, a loud voice and an even louder digital ringing. 

“Basement door open! Basement Door Open!” 

Al knew they locked the basement. They turned around and started to run back, but the tunnel stretched just out of reach. They could still see into their bedroom. The sight of a black-blocked intruder entering their room made their blood run cold.

“Oh, yeah,” Oz said, “The reason I was in the basement today was to keep the interloper from coming in the rear window. He tried to bribe me with treats, but I just growled at him.”

“NONONONONO!” Al screamed as the portal sealed shut. It was too late. 

“Luv,” Chesh purred, “The only way forward is through.” 

“And choice is an illusion,” Al said, falling to their knees. They were absolutely trapped in the Ways in a manner they’d only ever experienced once before and nothing good had come of it. In fact, Dorothy had died.

Crank Caller, or, "the Dangers of Autism"

 

Photo Credit: Louis Hansel. Unsplash.

I had the most autistic experience of my life talking to a crank caller in Aldi today. When I got the call, I'd already been unsettled by a weird Twitter DM I got from @Norman_911. She's a hot SoCal blonde who's been on Twitter since 2011. She sent a .gif of Napoleon Dynamite shyly waving hello. THAT got my dorky-ass attention, so  I checked out her profile...and was not impressed. In fact, I kind of hoped she was really a bot, but her "follow" list is too small and too tightly focused on very specific things to be a good one. On the plus side, she's really into luxury sports cars and NASA. But then, she's also VERY into Elon Musk and crypto--yuck. Also, did I mention she was a smoking hot blonde from Beverly Hills? Out. Of. My. League. 

Then I glanced over her feed and saw something strange. Despite the dozens of tweets giggling at Elon Musk's latest missive, she liked a comment I made in support of Stephen King's blue check indignation. Strange indeed. Strangest of all, though, was that she changed her tagline while I was scrolling through her profile. Originally, it read something like, "Follow me before chatting so that we can discuss ETH and crypto. Entrepreneur." Yet when I looked at her profile again later, her tagline had changed to "Believe in Love." Creepy. As. Hell. I just had a bad feeling about that. If I answered that DM, I'm pretty sure the story would have ended no other way than with me in a pit and lotion in a basket. So I did not respond. 

About twenty minutes later is when the creepy, pervy, yet Beckett-like crank call came. The conversation had no actual thread and stopped making sense halfway through, so I'm doing my best in relating it here. 

The dude claimed to be calling from US Border Patrol and Customs Patrol over a suspicious package that they had intercepted that was addressed to me. He was calling from a Washington, D.C. number, so I was inclined to take him seriously. He also had a Mexican accent, which also made me take him seriously because it's not uncommon for Mexicans who have become U. S. citizens to join ICE, Border Patrol, and Customs.  I have four former students who've done just that. However, as I've been borrowing addresses for the past six months while waiting on permanent housing, I was immediately on edge. 

First, he said that a suspicious package had arrived from Mexico addressed to me. Enter autism! Instead of wondering what his badge number was, or his station number, or even his NAME, my first response was, "I haven't ordered anything from Mexico, so I think there's been some sort of a mistake." He assured me that the package was addressed to me. I asked what was in the package, and he responded with, "well, we've scanned it and picked up traces of controlled substances, and it's very suspicious."

"What kind of controlled substances?" The guy related that they had picked up traces of cocaine and heroin on a package addressed to me. My auditory processing is garbage, so that makes it tough for me to parse dialects. It was hard to understand him at times. However, his accent kept coming and going and that also made it hard for me to follow.  Even so, I pressed forward, saying, "That's impossible. I've just ordered two dresses from eBay, but nothing from Mexico." 

"But we have this package and it clearly has significant amounts of cocaine and heroin in it--" he related in a wavering accent.  Okay. But like, what ELSE was in the package? 

All I could think was, my dude. I am working on my recovery coach certification. I did NOT order a box of drugs from Mexico. I told him, "Yeah, uh, I'm about to be certified as a Recovery Coach in New York State, and I have two people who can vet me on this. I'm not ordering drugs from Mexico. There has been a mistake." I kept waiting for him to confirm my identity or my current address, but he didn't. And his accent was becoming unintelligible to me at this point, so I finally advocated for myself. I said, "I'm having trouble understanding you because your accent is very strong. Can I please speak to a supervisor? Now?"

A pause. "The package contained sex toys. There were traces of cocaine on them." 

Sweet mercy of fuck, I know for a FACT I have not ordered sex toys from Mexico. Nor would I. Japan and Scandinavia are my favorite cultures for that sort of thing. And even if I HAD ordered something it would definitely, absolutely, not contain any cocaine or heroin. On the off chance that I'd been dealing with a first-day Customs agent lackey who is really bad at his job, I gave this call a few more seconds, for fun and caution. 

"I did NOT order sex toys from Mexico. Those drugs are absolutely not mine." 

The dude re-iterated the sex toys and cocaine claims a few more times. I kept countering with the fact that I am about to be a recovery coach and have not ordered dick from Mexico. I finally told him, "I've told you they aren't mine, and I have no idea why we are still talking. What do you want me to do here? You're VERY unprofessional. Can I please speak to your supervisor?"

"You fucking bitch. You're in trouble. You're been caught with drugs being mail-" Bingo. pervy crank caller. A hateful one who by now had begun to sound strangely like White Goodman from Dodgeball, if the character had had a dodgy Mexican accent. 

"And YOU'RE being unprofessional," I said. That's not how you're supposed to talk to people. I need to speak to your supervisor. Now. Or I'm hanging up."

"You fucking bitch. " Growly and nasty undertone there. "You fucking goddamn bitch!"

"Yeah," I yawned into the phone, "you're not from Customs and this call is bullshit. I'm hanging up now and filing a police report about this."

"You goddamn fucking bit-"

Click. 

I mean, this call was shocking in a lot of ways. Perhaps the most shocking about it is that I still have no idea why the guy called. The entire time, it felt like he was just trying to keep me on the phone. THAT pissed me off because I had frozen stuff in my cart that was melting and  I needed to get in the checkout line.  Sex toys smeared with cocaine and heroin? THAT was pure improvisation. The guy clearly had no script for either seducing me or conning me out of anything. Seriously. If he WAS a con artist, he should go watch the Boiler Room and take some goddamn notes. If he's a perv, he really needs to up his game, because that was pitiful and frightening. It was also straaaaagne; whatever happened to just calling up randos to ask if they were wearing underwear and then just getting hung up on? Drugs in a package of sex toys indiscreetly mailed to me from Mexico? THAT's a stretch.

The thing that gives me pause, though, is why I let the call go on for so long before hanging up. Letting a crank call go that long and get that creepy is also pretty pitiful. But when I think about it, I get it. 

As an autistic person, I am accustomed to constant self-doubt in all conversations. I have zero cognitive empathy when I am talking to people face-to-face. I rely on context clues and prior knowledge of the person and the situation to make sense of most conversations--which is impossible with strangers, by the way. Talking to strangers 0n the phone is even more difficult. By default, I just naturally assume that whoever I am talking to is being honest and can be taken at face value until proven otherwise. In this case, that took too long. 

It took me a really long time to pick up on fairly obvious clues that this call was creepy and pervy. My very autistic response to his questions was to immediately realize that he was wrong, that there'd been a mistake, and that I could probably prove it. I should have been more bothered by the fact that he hadn't confirmed my identity or the alleged mailing address to see if it really was me. I should have been bothered that he never gave me his name, badge number, station location, or anything else that would have backed his story. But my mind didn't go there because I am used to badly misreading phone conversations with strangers, and my misunderstandings are often epic. Usually, I'm wrong. But today, I wouldn't have been, if I'd been more used to engaging with these kinds of phone conversations a little more critically.

It's not for nothing that autistic people are the victims of abuse and assault at rates that are significantly higher than is found in the general neurotypical population. We have zero survival instincts and attract all manner of abusers and predators for that reason. We never understand the truth until it is far too late. I'm so grateful that today's exchange was a phone call and nothing in person with a dude wearing a fake badge. 

About the only thing that could cheer me up after that was my roommate, Will. He had two reactions when I told him the story. His first response was, "dude needs to go back to con artist college." Precisely. Then Will spent twenty minutes recreating the voice of White Goodman but with a bad Mexican accent. Will is infamous for his character voices, and he fuckin' nailed it. That is EXACTLY what the guy sounded like, and it was goddamn hilarious. 

It was good to have a big laugh like that after the past several months I've had. 

Ignoring the Obvious: A Response to "How Hitler's Enablers Undid Democracy in Germany"

Nazis burn the archives of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Opernplazt, Berlin. 

            While I appreciate Prof. Browning’s history lesson on “How Hitler’s Enablers Undid Democracy In Germany,” I was left utterly bewildered by the argument he furthered therein: Americans should be suspicious of using the term “fascism” to describe our current historical moment, even if the fate of the Weimar Republic does provide “some instructive parallels and important warning signals” as regards what is happening in our own ailing democracy. In other words, he’s telling us that yes, American democracy is under threat, and yes, there are parallels between the rise of Hitler and the rise of Trump, but no, there is no reason to think that problem might actually be fascism because America is too different from interwar Germany to ever become a Nazi dictatorship. While Browning’s position may have merits, there are serious gaps in his reasoning that should leave any reasonable person unconvinced. 

“Fascism,” Browning reminds us in the second of two instances where he uses the term, “openly condemned parliamentary democracy.” Well, America is proud of being a democracy. According to Browning, America is much more prone to adopt the “illiberal democracy” being forwarded by Western authoritarians such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán than we are Nazism. These “illiberal democracies,” Browning says, prefer to exploit the appearance of free and democratic elections as a legitimizing force for their agenda while consolidating their power through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the like. In essence, Browning would have us believe that fascism just isn’t America’s style and that is why we aren’t actually facing the threat of a Nazi dictatorship. 

Throughout the article, Browning’s argument relies heavily on an equivocation of the term “fascism” with the term “Nazism.” “Fascism” as such is only mentioned twice, as the article is primarily concerned with Nazism–a specific for-instance of fascism that arose in interwar Germany. The result of Browning’s equivocation is to create a sense of ridiculousness at the idea that America could become a Nazi dictatorship, which in turn obscures the possibility that we could very well still end up with fascist authoritarians as the political majority in D.C. It’s easy to point out how different contemporary America is from interwar Germany and claim that as a reason that such a thing will never happen here. It’s much more difficult to look closely at what is happening legislatively and socioculturally in America’s red states and deny that they are clearly being overrun with Christian Nationalists pushing a punishing and oppressive fascist agenda. By sticking to Nazism in his argument, Browning can sidestep reckoning with the fascist impulses that are steadily growing in red states and still claim that America is not threatened by fascism. 

Browning’s equivocation also obscures the facts that fascism was born in Italy, and that Hitler created his Nazi ideology by borrowing some ideas from Italian fascism. He took those ideas and applied them to the historically and culturally specific context of interwar Germany to create his Nazi ideology. Hitler’s creation of Nazism is proof that fascism is a protean ideology; any sufficiently motivated person can adapt it to their purposes. Indeed, when one looks closely at the suppressive laws and oppressive agendas being passed in red states by the Christian Nationalist regimes that have come to dominate the GOP, that is exactly what is happening here, now. These American fascists have borrowed parts of their tactics and ideology from both Mussolini and Hitler, but they are mixing it with heaps of jingoism, evangelical Christian authoritarianism, Adam Smith, and ill-informed constitutional literalism. Browning might be right: perhaps Nazism is impossible in America. That hasn’t stopped Americans from creating their own version of fascism in the same way that Hitler created Nazism. Nazism is indeed a strain of fascism, but not all fascists are Nazis. Some fascists are American Christian Nationalists, and Christian Nationalism is very much the GOP’s preferred style of fascism, if not all of America’s. 

Of course, anyone reading Browning’s examples of how the Nazi party exploited the machinery of German democracy to wrest and consolidate their absolute power cannot fail to notice that the ultimate goals of American “illiberal democracy” under the GOP aren’t really all that different from those of the interwar European fascists. The Christian Nationalist wing of the GOP has been in the ascendancy since 2015, and they want to consolidate as much power at the state and federal levels into their hands as they possibly can. So far, it’s been pretty easy: several influential GOP stalwarts–Graham, McConnell, Jordan, Cruz, and Rubio among them–have openly embraced the discrimination, nationalism, misogyny, theocracy, and authoritarianism that have come to characterize this subset of the Republican Party. Just as Germany’s traditional conservatives cast their lot with the Nazis to gain power America’s GOP has cast their lot with the Christian Nationalist fascists to achieve the same end–a fact that Browning practically admits.

Is it really so impossible, then, to think that the GOP would likely go much farther than “illiberal democracy,” given that one of their main objectives is to have enough states in their camp to call a constitutional convention? The interwar fascists in Italy and Germany won legitimate elections to get into power, and as soon as they were in office, they brought out the authoritarian sledgehammer to rewrite their constitutions in the image of fascism. Is it really so ridiculous to think that the Christian Nationalists in the GOP will try exactly the same thing when they get the chance? 

There is one particularly instructive comparison between 21st-century America and interwar Germany that Browning makes–a “big lie” has victimized both. Hitler’s early propaganda campaign was a “big lie” intended to delegitimize the Weimar Republic: he claimed that the republic had been installed by the “November Criminals” to enrich themselves and destroy the German people. Trump’s “big lie” came in 2020, as he claimed that a rigged election had cost him the presidency and America was laboring under an illegitimate Democratic administration. 

The goal of Hitler’s “big lie” was to undermine the Weimar Republic. His ruthless excision of any democratic impulse within the German state came only after he had come to power. The goal of Trump’s big lie was to delegitimize the institution of voting, without which we cannot have democracy. Of the two lies, Trump’s was the bigger. Hitler’s “big lie” destroyed a democratic republic; Trump’s big lie destroyed the only means by which a nation can achieve and maintain a democracy. If this lie doesn’t display the hallmark fascist contempt for parliamentary democracy, I don’t know what does. 

Despite this obvious circumstance, Browning assures us that America is not under threat by fascism because “Trump is no Hitler,” He goes on to argue that, “compared with Hitler’s national-socialist ideological fixations, which led to brutal dictatorship, war, and genocide, Trump’s preoccupations seemed mainly to involve attention, adulation, and fundraising.” The only way that Trump’s “preoccupations” could seem so anodyne is if one utterly ignores the massive waves of authoritarian hate speech that have been spewing from Trump since he hit the campaign trail in 2015–as Browning clearly has. 

A massive number of the January 6th rioters honestly believed that they were acting at the behest of Trump; some believed they were following his direct orders. The Proud Boy militias no doubt think the same thing whenever they march, armed to the teeth, into libraries to terrorize families and library patrons who are enjoying public programming offered by the library and minding their own business besides. I’m certain that the 31 heavily armed Patriot Front militiamen also believed that they were acting at Trump’s behest when they decided to violently demonstrate their opposition to a public Gay Pride event last June in Idaho. The fact that Trump is “no Hitler” doesn’t really matter. Trump IS Trump, and what he has done has eroded America’s democratic institutions and civil liberties. Trump doesn’t have to be Hitler; he just needs to command the same loyalty from his followers, who he knows will act–with certainty and violence–on the hatred he habitually vomits forth. No Hitler comparisons should be needed here to recognize Trump as the dangerous, pro-fascist force that he is.

In all honestly, Browning is probably correct in surmising that Trump has no chance to take back the presidency in 2024. To be honest, Trump currently serves the GOP as a figurehead and a propagandist who spurs Christian Nationalists onward toward committing acts of terrorism and violence against their neighbors and the children of their communities. Trump’s hatred and his minions’ vicious antics distract the rest of us from paying any attention whatsoever to the clever pro-fascists currently working over the leadership of the GOP. At this moment, there are at least three major pro-fascist front-runners who are jockeying to take the Republican nomination in 2024. Former Trumpist and current autocrat Rick DeSantis is a darling among Trump supporters. White supremacist replacement theorists J.D. Vance and Blake Masters–who are both backed by a shadowy, foreign techno-elitist billionaire–are practically champing at the bit to take that nomination. We need to start paying close attention to them.

Unlike Trump, these men don’t act out in piques of cranky toddler narcissism, and they are far better at building alliances with the traditionalists and moderates within the Republican Party. Any of the three of them would take the task of enshrining Christian Nationalist fascism in our constitution quite seriously indeed. And they would all make certain that we were too busy reacting to Trump’s antics to notice what they were doing until it was too late. Trump is no Hitler, but that is no matter. DeSantis, Masters, Vance, or some other pro-fascist figure will be very keen to institute policies at the federal level in service to this newly emergent American strain of fascism as soon as they can get away with it. 

Browning criticizes the “facile comparisons” being made between contemporary America and interwar Germany that invoke “fascism” as an “imprecise epithet” to describe the political tides currently drowning the American system. Unfortunately, he doesn’t really succeed in dismissing these comparisons altogether because he fails to define fascism precisely enough for us to recognize–or deny–those comparisons for ourselves. 

A user-friendly definition of fascism is clearly in order, and the Merriam-Webster online dictionary happens to have a great one. Therein, Fascism (“a term often capitalized”) is defined as 

“a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” 

Granted, some of the aspects of this newly emerging American fascism don’t much seem to resemble that definition at first blush. But just because fascism is manifesting differently in contemporary America than it did in interwar Europe doesn’t mean that that’s not exactly what is happening. One need only be willing to look past the pedantic in order to see the obvious. Despite formal differences, the underlying impact of Christian Nationalist fascism will more or less prove to be the same in America as was seen in interwar Europe. 

For example, one would be hard-pressed to deny that the Christian Nationalist fascists in the GOP exult national identification over individual freedoms. Civil liberties are one instance of a government preserving an individual’s freedoms and human rights. The red state GOP fascists keep passing laws to curtail the civil liberties of people they don’t like, or who are likely to say things they don’t like. They are in favor of any and every measure that would compel Americans to work with as few job and safety protections as possible, for as little pay and benefits as possible. They continue to champion the notion of socio-economic mobility as a justification for clinging to an economic system that has generated incredible socio-economic disparity and gutted the American middle class.

About the only aspect of fascism that doesn’t seem to be in place currently is the “centralized autocratic government aspect. Now, it is absolutely true that America is federal system built to ensure that any centralized federal government will not impinge upon the rights of the states to govern according to their leaders’ wishes. Logically, that should be enough to prevent a centralized autocracy from ever happening. However, it is instructive to remember that neither Italy nor Germany had an “autocratic centralized government”  before the fascists took them over. Indeed, the fascist demand for centralized autocracy was one of the things that both Mussolini and Hitler managed to heed as soon as they possibly could after they had seized power in their respective nations. There is really no telling what in our constitution would be rewritten if committed Christian Nationalists in the GOP managed to have enough power to call a convention and shape the future governance of our country according to their fascist objectives. 

As we all know, the constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any state laws that conflict with what is in the constitution are inevitably struck down. If the Christian Nationalist faction of the GOP were to achieve the super-majority they would need in both houses of Congress, they would absolutely change our constitution to reflect their bigotry and their priorities. In that case, blue states that have enshrined democracy, equal protection under the law, and civil liberties for all of their citizens in their state constitutions could very well end up having those constitutions struck down for being out of compliance with the federal constitution. Those states could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for infrastructure, social safety net programs, and education–and that’s just to start. 

In the face of such a devastating turn of events, how many of those beautiful blue bastions could successfully resist the demands of a federal government that has found them to be out of compliance with the “law of the land?” If any managed to resist at all, it would be very few who successfully could for any length of time. As it turns out, you don’t need a ready-made centralized government to inflict fascist autocracy upon the whole of this nation; you just need the willful and egregious tyranny of a pro-fascist super-majority willing to exploit the mechanisms of federalism so that they could force every state in the union to follow their agenda. 

Ultimately, Browning’s argument that America is in trouble, but not actually fascist trouble, falls flat because he fails to take his own warning signals seriously enough.  He’s right that America is unlikely to become a Nazi dictatorship. He is wrong to use that idea as a justification for dismissing the fascism already occurring in our midst and the very real threat it poses to all of America–not just the red states. America is in danger of becoming something far worse than an “illiberal democracy,” whether Browning wants to admit that or not. Fascism is already here in America, it just isn’t evenly distributed…yet. 

Doppelganger and Symmetry

 

It isn’t every day that you meet your metaphorical doppelganger, much less possibly acquire your next residence from them, but that’s exactly what transpired of late. As it turns out, Scott, the realtor who sold my friend W his house, is also a rental agent. Unbeknownst to me, Will asked Scott to help me out. That is how I came to see this cute little midcentury tract home. Now, it’s smaller than I would like, but it has a big, dry, basement. It also has a huge fenced yard. Both my cat and my dog will be very happy there. This is my intention for myself as well. Having a place of my own is just the foundation I need both personally and professionally to get back on my feet and hit the floor running. 

Perhaps the best part of all this is that the owner of the house is leaving most of her furniture behind. She’s relocating and renting the house out for extra income. Now, I have radically different decorating tastes than Mrs. B., that much is certain. However, as I basically fled East with my pets and a carful of clothes and other essentials, I have zero furniture to put in any house, anywhere. Having that stress gone along with my housing shortage is 100% worth living with Mrs. B’s cave-like, earth-toned abode until I can finally find my forever home. 

When I accompanied Scott to visit the property and see if I would want to rent it, I was rather surprised by both Mrs. B and her household. Mrs. B is about five years older and five inches shorter than me. I was dressed in a teal dress with peacock-feather print leggings. She was in sweatpants and a teal T-shirt. I noticed decorative peacock feathers arranged in a knot on the wall behind Mrs. B. I noted the interesting synchronicity, and then turned my attention to my potential landlord. 

Mrs. B is an army vet from the Dominican Republic. She’s also a retired vet who spent her post-military career as a staff veterinarian for the ASPCA. Her house was full of rescued animals. I mean, there were animals in every single room of that house including the basement and the bathroom. And I don’t mean just a jumbled menagerie of many cats and many dogs. Mrs. B. specialized in rescuing exotic birds from their abusive or neglectful owners. There were more birds than dogs in that house.

When she first invited us into her house, I was struck by the smell. It was literally the warmest, cleanest-smelling house I’d seen that day. In front of the window was a 50-gallon fish tank with Koi, Angelfish, Molly fish, Swordtails, Gourami, and a clown loach. They burbled happily just under the water’s surface in their own little school. Mrs. B must have just fed them. Pumpkin spice scent wafted through the living room, courtesy of a wax burner on the table just inside. Before pointing out any other feature, she introduced me to the trio of lovebirds who resided in a bamboo cage in the living room. Hero, Bruno, and Jose sat huddled together on the bar in the center of the cage. Their eyes were closed in what could only be described as cozy contentment as they huddled three abreast on the bar. I’ve never seen lovebirds huddle in a group of three before; they’re kind of known for being “couple birds” for lack of a better descriptor. Yet these three were in their own little world of happy, nestling close. Maybe it works out so well because they are all male. 

The fish scattered to the far side of the tank as we moved through the living room and into the kitchen. Before I entered, I noticed the 3-foot dark blue, green, and purple Macaw perched atop its open cage. Her face was a muddy purplish-blue color, and out from it shone piercing yellow eyes gazing upon us with absolute malevolence. Mrs. B introduced us to Marlena the Macaw by warning, “That’s Marlena. Don’t get too close. She gets testy when there’s a man in the house. She don’t like being separated from her boyfriend.” I had no idea what Mrs. Be meant by that, but I could see that Marlena was chewing anxiously on a chunk of a resin tree branch that jutted haphazardly out the far side of the cage. I honestly felt like she would rather have been chewing on my face. Gave me the willies. 

Scott and I made a wide berth of Marlena as we squeezed by into the truly tiny kitchen. Scott and I stood side-by-side mere inches in front of the Macaw habitat and listened as Mrs. B pointed out all the things she would be leaving behind for me to use, absent-mindedly remarking at the end that the stove was electric because she had just then realized a potential renter might want to know that. At just that moment, I felt a drippy heaviness drop on my shoulder. Splattered across my right shoulder was parrot crap. “OOOOH. I’m so sorry. She always gets like that when there’s a man in the house.” Scott is 6’5” and 300 lbs, and his build is indistinguishable from that of a grizzly…or a sasquatch. But for some reason, the bird shit on me, the nonbinary potential renter. I guess she saw me as more manly than the grizzly man beside me, and that thought kind of amuses me. It amused me more than scrubbing that shit out of my heavy velour jacket, I assure you. 

Mrs. B. handed me a towel to wipe it off and scurried to find some cleanser. Scott and I moved out of the kitchen and into the tiny hallway. Not long thereafter, Mrs. B emerged from her room–two doors down to the right–which was apparently where she kept the caca cleaner. Before she could step all the way out of her door, a small tidal wave of dogs rushed out from behind her to crash on the shores of my flocked peacock leggings. There were two chihuahuas, a husky, and a golden retriever. She called her yappy canine brood to go back into her room and be good. They reluctantly did, mostly because neither Scott nor I was going to pet them. I really wanted to, but given my luck thus far with pets in the house, I thought it better to keep my hands away from their excitable and yapping jaws. I looked to the left and saw the bathroom at the end of the hall. I moved past Scott to get a better look. On the way, I glanced down and noticed that my shins were matted with dog hair. 

My gaze fell on the pipe sticking out where the tub faucet should be and then stopped.  “I’m gonna fix that tonight!” Mrs. B assured me, as she moved past Scott to address my curiosity and forestall my decision to pass on the house. She knew exactly what I was staring at. I noticed a lonely, homely little turquoise parakeet in a sire cage hanging just outside of the shower. Under other circumstances, he’d have been a little gem of a bird. But after seeing a polyamorous triad of male lovebirds and a menacing if magnificent Macaw, this little gal was kind of…basic. “That’s Pedro. I’m pet-sitting him while my friend is in DR.” I noticed a faucet, a caulking gun, and an assortment of small hand tools were laid out on a faded magenta beach towel in the large, deep, gorgeous old cast-iron tub. I am a bath person, but overly complicated whirlpool tubs are lost on me. Give me one of these mid-century cast-iron tubs any day. The tools in the tub told me that Mrs. B really was planning to fix the faucet spout soon. I relaxed a little.

“Let me show you the basement!” Mrs. B said, gently grabbing my forearm and leading me back across the kitchen and towards Marlena. Mrs. Be lead us to the basement stairs and said, “Her boyfriend is down here. She don’t like being separated from him” Scott glanced at me, eyebrows raised. I just kind of shrugged and followed Mrs. B down the steps. As soon as I got to the bottom step, I saw what Mrs. B. had been talking about–or, rather, who. Perched atop an enormous iron cage was a 3.5-foot brilliant vermillion, saffron, cerulean, and white Macaw with a bright yellow face and eyes. He opened his wings to their full 3.5-foot width and flapped them briskly up and down a few times. He dipped is head twice and then stared me down with a level gaze before emitting a loud, screeching honk. His call was met and matched by Marlena, his erstwhile upstairs Juliet. “That Raoul. He misses his girlfriend,” said Mrs. B. Oh. Marlena the menacing Macaw was Raoul’s girlfriend. “I use to put them together, but then they made babies. I had to find homes for four baby parrots. Never again!” said Mrs. B as she moved in to show the basement. 

The bone-dry basement was huge, bright, and fully furnished. The furnace, water heater, and washer/ dryer set were all less than four years old. Could not say the same for the pristine but obsolescent fuse box keeping the lights on in the place. I loved the basement of that house more than anything else. I turned slowly in a 360-degree loop to survey the whole space. My eyes lighted on the cages next to Raoul’s. A smaller red, yellow, green, and white Macaw was inside his wrought-iron filigree cage, munching contentedly on a carrot. Next to him was a bamboo cage with a dark shape huddled in the center, staring out hauntedly. Upon closer inspection, I saw that he was an African gray parrot. 

Improbably, Scott’s phone rang. “I gotta take this. I’ll just go upstairs.” With that, grizzly man tromped up the basement steps, leaving me with Mrs. B. 

“Do you like the fish?” she asked.

As a matter of fact, I did, and I told her so. “Would you like to have a fish tank? Here with you?” No I would not, but I didn’t say so. While the rest of the house was ho-hum, the basement was fantastic and I could see myself just actually living down there most of the time. Between that and the yard–which I had only seen pictures of, by the way– I knew that this was the place my dog and cat would be happiest, and I already loved the bathtub–a major consideration for me, to be honest. 

“Why would you leave it?” I asked.

“Because it won’t make the trip to Kansas. They all die before we get there.” Having recently traveled to New York state from Oklahoma, Kansas’ neighbor to the south, I understood exactly how she felt and knew that she was 100% right. Getting this far in a car with a dog and a cat was pure hell and torture for all three of us. “If you rent the house, would you take care of the fish?” It was very hard to say no to that. Before I could say so, she added, “I can find someone to take care of them, if you can’t.” 

“That might be the best thing.” I responded, “I don’t know that I’d be able to keep them alive. I’ve only ever owned three fish and all three of them died within a week. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you for being honest,” she added, sincerely. I asked where she was moving to.

“To Pittsburg, Kansas. My sister lives there,” she said. “I have cancer,” she added, “I’m doing chemo right now.” She paused a bit and then said, nodding emphatically, “I want to be near my family.” She went on to explain that her son lived with his family in Florida and that she didn’t want to burden him. 

“That is extremely rough luck, Mrs. B,” I said. “It couldn’t be happening to a kinder, nicer person,” I added ruefully. She cracked a smile at that. After a moment, I looked at her and said, “I truly wish you the best of luck on your journey to Kansas. You seem like the sort of person who really deserves it.” With that, Mrs. B got a bit of a look in her eye, like she was measuring me. Her eyes had become a bit misty, and she wiped at them before saying, “Let’s go. I show you the backyard.” 

We schlepped slowly up the steps in silence. As we went, I reflected on the uncanny coincidences at play. This woman was as hardworking and handy as I was. She had clearly done every bit of interior repair work on that house–much like I had my own home. I recognized the bathroom faucet as her desire to finish one last thing to make the house more appealing to a renter. I’d spent weeks doing the exact same thing to my old house before I left. 

Mrs. B took in stray animals and cared so well for them that her house smelled only of warmth and love. The only fur in evidence was matted on my leggings. Otherwise the place was spotless and yet completely accommodating of her much-loved menagerie. Both my furbabies are rescues. While the trip East would have been much easier without them, I was not about to part from them. You don’t dump animals you rescued from near oblivion, no matter how hard it gets. I knew for a fact that she absolutely did not want to leave those lovely little fish behind, either, but she knew as well as I that they had a better chance of surviving if she left them here and could re-home them. My being honest about wanting them to live long and healthy lives had actually sort of impressed her, it seemed. 

Mrs. B. stopped so abruptly at the bottom of the steps that I almost ran into her. She gestured to a small pile of tchotchkes and assorted small appliances. “That is all I am taking with me from the garage,” she said. “The rest is yours. If you decide to rent the house.” Mrs. B. then led me on a tour of her garage to see the abandoned DIY projects she must leave behind. She showed me a new Shower/tub enclosure with frosted glass doors. “I did not have the time to do that one. You can put that in, easy, if you decide to rent the house,” she said. She gestured to a perfectly vintage midcentury minibar that only needed to be restrained. “You can do that if you decide to rent the house,” she said. We stopped in front of a few more projects scattered around the periphery of the garage. It felt for all the world like I was walking the Camino de Santiago with a fellow pilgrim, and both of us had serious prayers to make at the shrine of our final destination. Finally, she takes me to the back door of the garage, behind which lies the enormous fenced yard. She gently swung the door open, and then stood aside so I could step through and get a better look. 

The yard has an enormous hill sweeping from the east to the northwestern edge. I was very happy that Mrs. Be was also leaving behind her a weedeater, two lawnmowers, and a snowblower because I was definitely going to need all three to keep up with that glorious yard. I noticed that a lovely little niche was created by the downward slope of the hill and the curve of the yard. A pit group and chiminea sat in the clearing. Mrs. B stepped in close to my left side. “I need to ask you a favor. For if you rent the house.” Having had to refuse the fish, I was hoping this was a request that I could actually accommodate. 

“Lay it on me, mama. What do you need?” I asked. 

Tears gathered in her eyes as she turned her face toward the far back of the yard. With a sweeping gesture, she pointed to a tiny tree with a wind chime hanging from its lower branches. 

“There. That’s where my first baby is buried. My chihuahua, Maria.” she then swept her hand across and down the hill to rest at what looked like a tiny grotto. “I put that pond in for her. She love it.” Mrs. B. stopped for a moment and stifled a sob. I fervently hoped that whatever favor she wanted, it was something I could grant. 

“Will you…look after her?” Mrs. B. looked at me, eyes pleading. “After her grave? Make sure nothing happen to it? If you rent the house?” 

Boy, howdy. Did she ask the right person for that favor. I smiled gently and told her, “Ancestors and graves are sacred to me. I’m happy to look after it,” adding, “If I rent the house.” She smiled widely and wiped her tears away. “I hope you rent the house, then.”

In that moment, I knew for a fact that although my life has been extremely rough for the past several months, I was still in a better place than she. “I would never trade places with her,” I thought to myself. A moment passed before I realized that in taking her house, I was doing EXACTLY that. A chill trickled into my spine and settled heavily on my limbs as the realization hit me. 

Mrs. B, like myself, had spent her professional career being referred to as “Doctor,” just like me. She was alone and bravely facing an uncertain and foggily dim future, just like me. She barely had anyone other than family to rely on, just like me. She was being forced to part from a home she loved so very much and had planned to live in until she grew old, just like me. She was being compelled to flee halfway across the country to avoid a dread, implacable, and deadly fate, just like me. She didn’t deserve to be going through any of it, just like me.  And to top it all off, she was moving to a Kansas town less than 2 hours from Tulsa. I’ve even been to Pittsburg–several times. My college theater department at NEO A&M had a reciprocal course-sharing agreement with Pittsburg State University that I took advantage of.

At that moment, Scott came into the garage. “Well, what did you two decide? 

I paused for a long moment, lost in thought. Mrs. B was most certainly my metaphorical doppelganger. We were both shedding dire circumstances and setting forth, cross-country, into an uncertain future with only the hope and intention of making a better life. Mrs. B knows that with me as a renter, her Maria’s grave will be respected and tended, and that thought lightened her mind considerably. The thought of having a mostly furnished place so accustomed to and accommodating of pets lightened my mind considerably. Given that zero of the other AFFORDABLE properties I had seen that day were actually habitable, much less safe for pets, I decided that Mrs. B’s place might be a trade I would have to live with. 

“Let me talk things over with my agent, and we’ll get back to you this afternoon,” I finally said. Scott was happy to escape Mrs. B’s feathery menagerie. 

“Ok. But if you rent the house,” she asked “you will take care of my Maria?” 

My gaze leveled at hers. Nodding slowly in the affirmative, I replied, “If I take the house.”