It Happened To Futz

Bob Futz stepped out of his garage one Saturday morning, hedge trimmer in hand, and, after considering briefly, trimmed the 20-inch bangs of his wife's cascading side garden to about six inches below the top of the retaining wall. His wife, when she saw it, though in her own time no mean shortener of shrubbery, was nevertheless powerfully offended by the presumptuous shearing. It was something he had seen before: a reaction like the emotional equivalent of that puff-up-and-choke thing that happens to some people when stung by a bee.

Futz, prepared as always for battle, fanned out his fingers, leaned into the fray and ticked off each evidence of good faith on his part. His wife was unmoved: a palpable transgression like this one didn't come along everyday and it was not to go to waste. The chill came down on Futz.

Since he had no friends and did not drink, Futz retreated to the hardware store. He roamed the warehouse canyons scanning the shelves for low-priced thingamajigs that might fix his life.

Finding nothing of interest elsewhere, Futz made his way to an aisle that he knew contained an array of white cardboard drawers filled with small curious items housed here because they belonged nowhere else. When he arrived, he found a woman stooping, palms to knees, already scanning the drawer fronts.

"What are you looking for?" he asked.

"Corks."

"You think they're here?"

"The man said so. Here they are." She pulled out a drawer and stared into it, shaking her head. "What size?" she asked aloud.

"What's it for?" countered Futz.

"A bottle."

"A wine bottle?"

"Actually, a Pepsi bottle. This look right to you?" She held up a cork.

"What's it going to be?"

The woman looked Futz in the eye. "I'm sending a message in a bottle."

"Seriously? Is that a school project or what?"

"I'm looking for a man," she said. She made an eye with thumb and forefinger and popped the cork in and out of the eye.

"And this is the way you're finding him?", asked Futz in surprise.

"This is the way I'm finding him. Want to help?"

Futz stared, fingers to his chest. "Me?" Her face, small and round, turned up to his and Futz noticed for the first time a pair of small, nearly imperceptible, protuberances at the hairline, one above each corner of her arched eyebrows.

"Excuse me for just a moment, would you?" said Futz, and stepped hurriedly into the adjoining aisle. "Get a grip on yourself, Bob boy," he muttered. Peering cautiously under a display of switch plates, caulk and grommets into the next aisle, he could see the round-faced woman humming to herself and poking through the drawer next to the corks. This one was apparently full of lamp wicks, for she pulled one out and began measuring it along the palm of one hand. Futz had about made up his mind to return to her side, when he saw the end of the wick she was holding begin to smolder, then burst into tiny flame. Just as quickly the flame extinguished itself. She seemed to find this satisfactory, and returned the somewhat charred remnant to its drawer.

Then suddenly she hunkered down and tilted her head, screwing up her mouth to scrutinize him through the merchandise. He smiled sheepishly. "So you coming with me or what?" she asked.

Bob hesitated. At home his wife was probably having the dog walk over his delicately assembled model train layout at that very moment; here he had found no gadget to console himself. Deep down, he felt an almost imperceptible shove. Do it! Do it! the little voice said. (This was the same little voice that encouraged him to get out the hedge trimmer this very morning, however.)

The woman seemed to sense the tiny voice and said, "Great! Come on! It will only take an hour or so. I'll get you home for lunch!" And she headed for the exit.

Without paying, she strode past the security gate. The door person began to motion to her, but suddenly the alarm went off when the customer behind them passed the gate. He turned to inspect the laden cart. Futz had to trot to keep up with his mystery woman.

She headed straight for a blindingly red Toyota MR2. "Hop in!" She said and stepped on the gas even before Bob shut the door. The car was already out of the parking lot and heading down a two lane highway when he looked up from fastening his seat belt.

"What road is this?" He asked. The country surrounding them seemed rural and Bob could recall no area near his neighbourhood like this at all.

"We're on Pitchfork Road heading west. It goes nearly straight to a wonderful beach. It should be a good spot for the bottle."

Futz looked behind her seat. It was a tight two seater, but there was space for a satchel there. The satchel was open and he saw at least two dozen bottles laying neatly inside.

"Do you think it will take more than one bottle to catch your man?", asked Bob.

[Are things as diabolical as they seem? Or is she just different?]

The woman merely turned her head briefly to chuckle at his question. Even so, she answered him honestly: "It all depends on how you look at it." She smiled.

"That’s not the answer I was looking for." Futz responded.

"Well, why don’t you tell me the answer you’re looking for, then that’s what I’ll tell you? It doesn’t matter anyway; you’ll only become more confused."

Futz thought briefly, I already am more confused. "What?" he said aloud, confused by the sentence more then the odd-ball woman.

"I guess you don’t really need to understand me or what I said," she smiled in a friendly manner now, "none of them have." she said the latter carelessly.

"What? What is that supposed to mean?" Futz's feelings were mixed. Should he be feeling worried? Fearful? Nervous? Excited? He preferred to think the last was true.

The Woman chuckled again, "You simply don’t understand." The car came to a complete halt after skidding only a moment on some loose sand in an old parking lot on the beach. "We’re here!"

[what does she mean by "the others"?]

Futz looked around at the isolated stretch of beach. A little twinge of fear panged him deep in his stomach. He searched back for the moment when he had first placed himself in the hands of this woman. When was that? ... What had initially seemed to be a short time ago now felt like a lifetime.

Suddenly he was aware of a chorus of tiny voices. The hardware store lady was leaning toward the back seat, her right hand independently searching for an empty bottle in the satchel. Her left hand held the newly acquired cork. "Hush" she said impatiently toward the satchel.

Then, nodding toward a small note size envelope on the dash, she said to Futz "Be a sweetheart and get me that envelope will you?"

Imbued from childhood with the reflex to be polite, he reached unthinkingly for the pastel colored envelope. No sooner had he touched the little thin parcel than he experienced a sudden swooshing sound and a feeling of falling swiftly through a transparent pipe.

"Waaah-hooooooo!" Futz reflexively yodeled as he plummeted down the pipe. Through its transparent walls he saw a confusing blur of subterranean strata and pinwheeling galaxies, melting clockfaces with hands spinning counterclockwise, cows, Margaret Hamilton dressed as Mary Poppins, the faces of all his ancestors and descendants, and many, many pieces of hardware (among which he fleetingly glimpsed the thingamajig that would have fixed his life), all shot through with psychedelic beams of light streaking infinitively into the yawning pupils of the enormous, laughing eyes of the woman from the hardware store. He noticed incidentally that the pastel envelope, which he was clutching like a security blanket, smelled of lavender and brimstone.

With a loud, hollow-sounding "thonk!" and a weird, but not entirely unpleasant, full-body squeezing sensation, he landed. He stood up, and found himself inside a slightly-larger-than-person-sized Pepsi bottle. He gazed out on an enormous chamber draped in red velvet curtains. The walls of the chamber were lined with tier upon tier of shelves holding rows and rows of bottles, each one containing a man clutching a pastel envelope.

Far below him, on the floor of the chamber, the woman from the hardware store was seated at a huge, multi-registered organ keyboard. She was playing, with one hand, the Toccata in D minor, and with the other, the Good Humor Ice Cream tune. As she played, the men in the bottles corresponding to the notes were momentarily propelled up into the necks of their bottles so their heads protruded out of them. While outside, their hair briefly caught fire and blazed for a moment, and was then immediately extinguished as they plunked back down into the bottle when their notes were released.

Futz couldn't help thinking that things had become every bit as diabolical as they had seemed. Sweating with the apprehension that at any second his note would be played, he glanced down at the pastel envelope. The words "Read Me" were written on the front in loopy, feminine script. He frantically tore open the envelope as the fellow next to him shot upward, dangled haplessly for a moment and then collapsed to the floor of his bottle, hair smoking. Futz unfolded the matching pastel sheet and read it. It said Hiara pirlu resh kavawn. Having read Lilith as a teenager he knew this meant "If you can read this you will know I love you." He felt himself whisked upwards and scrunched his eyes shut for the inevitable.

"This is the way I'm finding him. Want to help?"

Futz blinked and stared, fingers to his chest. "Me?" Her face, small and round, turned up to his and Futz noticed that what had appeared to be a pair of small, nearly imperceptible, protuberances at the hairline, one above each corner of her arched eyebrows, were actually a pair of pearlescent plastic barettes (if he had the word right).

"Excuse me for just a moment, would you?" said Futz, and, spinning on his heel, strode out of the hardware store without looking back.