Chapter 21: Starfish

By Allen Frost

George’s opened eyes stared at a black and white photograph of Frances. He stirred in real terror not knowing yet if this was a bad dream starting. Her picture was on a green can, words above it said, Have You Seen Me? George grabbed the can from Sam Samsara. He turned the can around trying to find something out. Cactus Juice. There was no news about Frances, but he tipped the can to read the fine print on the side. Water, Agave, Saguaro Puree from Concentrate, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Citric Acid, Beta Carotene, Green 18. “Green 18?” George gulped.
“That’s from their factory,” Sam told him.
George lifted himself off the park bench.
There it was, filling air with deep throbbing of living machines and furnaces. Smokestacks roiled out green colored smoke.
“You got this over there?”
“They gave it to me,” Sam shrugged. “I’m a movie star. You should give some to the soldier. Maybe it will grow the rest of his body.”
“Not funny Mr. Samsara!” the head chimed.
George turned in the direction of the ocean. “Did you see--?”
Cornelius Barter wasn’t out there anymore. “What time is it?”
“Relax George,” Sam laughed. “The car’s out of the water, those elephants were swell. Take a look.” Sam took a couple steps back and motioned. The silver car, crumpled sheets of abalone metal, was parked up on the grass off the road. Like a steamship boiler it hissed, like a sunken ship dragged ashore it was covered with barnacles and weeping leafy camouflage.
“It still works…” George’s floating words were as hollow as heron bones.
“Come along, Wervers wants us to meet him on Jupiter Hill.”
“No, I can’t. I have to find out about this can, this picture on it is my daughter.” George held it out to Sam and the giant began to laugh.
“Your daughter??”
George looked at the can again, turned quickly in his hand. Have You Seen Me? asked the bold letters. It was a picture of a shepherd dog.
“Your daughter,” Sam repeated as if he had to remember that punchline for the camera crew. He slapped George on the back with a weighty hand. “Let’s go.”
A hallucination, George decided—I saw the wolfish dog and I thought of her; it’s all a trick of the subconscious mind…After all, he had been asleep, it was nothing more than the last melting imprint of a dream…Absently he put the can into his bag.
“Yiiii!!” the soldier yelped.
“Oh—sorry.” George fumbled the cool green can from the face’s skin.
“Careful there, doctor. Don’t ever forget I’m in here.”
George put the can into his coat pocket, thinking who knows, it might stop another bullet. And “Green 18?” he muttered barely audible. What was Green 18? Was it an improved Green 17? Would he be able to run some experiments? Or was it up to fate for him to find out?
Sam was halfway to his car when he turned to check on George who shrouded slowly after him. “My daughter,” Sam husked.
Closer to the car George could see light stripes of rust banding it like a tiger. The rattling engine wheezed out charcoaled smoke from cut holes and torn tin edges—it had a hard time in the sea.
Sam crawled into the big harpooned shark. There was a splashing sound. While George caught up, Sam baled out cupfuls of water.
When George opened the door on his side a small waterfall poured out on his shoes.
“I still have not got all the ocean out,” Sam apologized.
“I can see that,” George answered. He put his bag down and sat in the aquarium car. He stared at the starfish on the dashboard. They probably think it’s low tide and all they have to do is wait for the ocean to return.

Chapter 20: The Water Operation

By Allen Frost

Sam Samsara was in a rowboat again. The oars were stowed and he leaned over. The small boat tipped dangerously as he stared past the glassy surface swerve. The high tide floated him over his car sunk shoulders in the sand below. A flight of sticklebacks flecked across the shining silver submarined hull. It seemed a peaceful part of the sea, there were weeds and anemones already waving to it.
With slow unreeling, Sam let an anchor line descend through the green. He had to scull an oar to catch the car’s bumper on the second try. He pulled; it was tight; he let the line unloop around the oarlock to keep it caught while he rowed back to shore.
The bow hushed up onto the sand. Sam stepped out trailing the lasso. It cut a taut trail back to the ocean.
George had already drifted from the scene at the beach. He didn’t feel like watching elephants pull a waterlogged car, he was busy wondering. It occurred to George that he hadn’t slept for a long time…Had he? He felt warm in the glow of the climbing sun of another new day. Then he darkened with the breaking thought—what if he was sleeping right now? What if this was a dream, how could he know? This world seemed as real as a dream. These worries carried him away from Sam and the elephants and the water operation.
He left soft footprints in the sand like the invisible man fading from view across a thin white layer of London snow. By the time he passed around the rocky bend of the cove, he was a mile away. The city showed itself across the bay. Gray barrage balloons made buttons in the sky. The war was started. He wandered on to the next beach holding the soldier in the bag. He stopped when he remembered and looked inside.
“You okay?”
“Sure.”
“What are you thinking about?” George asked him casually.
The soldier didn’t worry over words, “I’m thinking about what will happen when I’m back. Look what’s left of me…How am I supposed to be when I go home? Mister, my mind is going a hundred miles an hour thinking.”
“I know,” George said. His eyes were on the distance too. “Do you mind if I take a walk to that pier way over there?”
“No. Go ahead.”
That was all they said for a while along the high tide chalk mark. Like a strange two-headed machine steam powered by hundreds of thoughts, George followed the washed up flotsam, ribbon bits of weed, beautiful stones shining wetly in sand, shells, bird prints and odd remnants of man-made things.
Each time George looked up from his feet, the dock materialized closer and clearer as if it was building itself. It had the look of something that was built very swiftly. It leaned crooked angles, there were boards missing, light shone through its planks like a rickety piano keyboard.
“There’s someone out there at the very end,” the soldier said. His head was half out of the doctor’s kit bag so he could see.
George nodded. He switched the bag to the other hand.
“Woahh!”
“Sorry. My hand’s getting sore,” George said. He was curious to see what the silhouette on that cartoon dock was doing. He wasn’t expecting to know who it was, but he did.
It was Cornelius Barter playing his trumpet to the sea.
“Look at that,” said the soldier.
George was. Cornelius Barter was actually playing directly into the ocean, the bell of the trumpet had a microphone wire fishing underwater. George didn’t want to be a disturbance, so he stopped near the rocky shoreline.
The water was hopping around the microphone wire. At first George thought the bubbles and chop were from the sound and trumpet air. But he soon realized there were hundreds of thrashing fish. It reminded him of a summer a long time ago when he was out in the woods and he heard the ecstatic water slapping of those carps in the lagoon. The fish had gone lovestruck or something. Maybe he was playing in a particular key that caused such a reaction in that species of fish, George noted. It’s certainly a possibility, George yawned. He looked for somewhere to lay down for just a minute.
Beyond the fish, the ballad reached into darker and deeper water, in veils offshore where the cold current welled, a Japanese submarine drifted in riveted silence. Sailors crowded around the receiving monitors while a reel to reel live recording was made for Imperial Broadcasting Services, to be pressed next week into long playing records labeled The Cornelius Barter Water Opera.

Chapter 19: Revenge of the Shriners

By Allen Frost

The old men stood outside the drawn down door. They all wore the same peculiar uniform, wine red fezzes, blue suits, festooned with ribbons and ranks and heraldry. The shriners had been there for fifteen minutes in the blue shade of Tiny’s Garage. They knew he was in there, the mad sounds of hammering, the whoosh of an arc welder, Connie Francis’ ululation echoing; Tiny was in there alright, an oyster shut up tight with the industry sounds of creating its pearl.
“What’s he doing to our cars?”
Four or five of the vanguard addressed each other before the shrill cacophony.
The elder with the most lean into his cane picked the weight of his arm from the mottled door. “Rennie!” he bleated.
The less silvered Rennie stepped forward eagerly with sun blasting gold on his black rimmed glasses.
“Rennie, I want you on stake-out in that phone booth over there.”
The whole daffodil contingent turned to stare at the phone booth. It looked like it had tumbled onto the street corner from the top of one of the warehouses. Bent frame, cracked or shattered glass panes, the phone hanging to a twisting cord.
But Rennie saluted smartly.
“You can keep yourself busy with this phone list.” The oldest man took a parchment from his coat pocket. “These are people you can hit up for contributions,” he explained. “You know the routine. And—” he added, digging into another pocket, “Use this quarter for the calls.” He dangled a coin, sewn through with a loop of thread so it could be pulled out of the machine afterwards. They all chuckled, making the dry rasp of forest leaves unfolding in the breeze.
“Let’s get back to the 249.” He referred to the lodge by its familiar name. While Rennie took up residence in the phone booth, the rest of the shriners ambled, hobbled and steered chairs past the garage to the alley in between Tiny’s and Shelton’s Packaging.
Their parked squadron of miniature red motorcycles waited in rows. Some of them had sidecars for the less nimble. It took them a while to prepare helmets, goggles, get seated and start motors. They had done this for hundreds of parades, but time made them slower and slower.

Chapter 18: 421 Maple

By Allen Frost

In the doctor’s black bag the soldier’s head had gone off, quiet and marble gray. The morning sun was painting Monets over the canvas big top tent.
“Do you remember where he said he lived?” George asked Sam in a sigh.
“Yes. 421 Maple.” Sam touched his forehead, “Remember? Photographic memory.”
George clasped the doctor’s kit shut. “We better take him home.”
Sam thought about it for a moment, then agreed.
Wervers got the circus to loan them some transportation so they could hurry back, get their car and drive to the studio.
After a last cup of green tea, they were freed into a jitney cart pulled by a zebra, trotting out of the circus into the other world.
The sky was mad with flying wings burning contrails. For a while the thick green canopy of cedars and maples hid the swarm from view and George was glad. A crazy war was starting and there was no way to stop it. He thought about the doctors in the cities that would be bombed. They won’t get any sleep, their distant streets will be filled with terror.
Sam interrupted him, “I never drove one of these!” His face was gleeful. He held the ringing bell reins like an antique, staring at the zebra’s amazing stripes, the look of a star struck moon man crowning him. There was no shouting motor or crushing speed velocity, the clapping hooves on the road was all they needed to hup along.
“There’s Maple,” George pointed at the green street sign pressed in a lilac tree. The zebra responded to Sam, they turned the corner. Sedans parked under the awning of leaves, lawn mown yards led to big houses. The sound of them arriving on the quiet street brought faces to windows to see a red painted miracle zebra rattling bells. Little did they know how it hid a wonder as apocalyptic as some folklore portent; they had arrived with a severed head.
George looked nervously back into the bag. “What are we going to say? He never told us what we were supposed to tell his wife.”
Sam shrugged.
They shook to the next block. A dog barked along a slatted fence.
“421,” Sam said. There on their right was the house. They clip clopped to the grassy edge of the curb and Sam pulled the reins to a stop. The zebra reached out for a mouthful of dandelions. Sam looked at George. “Let’s go.”
“Okay…” George got out and stood next to the short white fence. Rose petals patterned across the yard on the other side, scattered by the windblown night before. George read the name on the little swinging gate. “Parrot Residence,” painted on a flat piece of driftwood. George hefted the zipped bag in his hand. “Okay,” he sighed.
Sam pushed open the gate and led the way up the stone path. His shadow threw down a cloud.
“What should we say?” George hissed, hurrying behind him.
“We’ll find out what happens.”
Sam’s big hand tightened into a rumpled fist and he knocked on the door.
A woman with a baby in her arms opened the door, stood there surprised. “You’re--!” she stammered. She looked into her yard for cameras. She noticed the strange zebra contraption eating her flower bed. “Is this one of those sweepstakes?”
Sam shook his head, “No.”
“Sam Samsara,” she laughed and stepped aside. “You can come in, I’m just making tea, can you stay?”
“Yes please,” the giant had to duck under the eaves a bit. George followed quietly, carrying that bag with her husband…what was left of him. “George is my friend,” Sam told her.
“Hi,” she smiled, “Edith,” and took them by the photographs in the hallway to the kitchen. The baby stared over her shoulder at them. A teapot was steaming. “I wish Archie was here, he’ll never believe Sam Samsara was here! He used to see you every Monday when you were a sumo wrestler. Now we see you in the movies and magazines. What a world, huh?” she laughed.
“Please take a seat.” A table with a candle and half a bowl of oatmeal.
Sam sat down and rested his hand on the windowsill and asked, “Can I turn on the radio?”
“Yes, of course Mr. Samsara.”
He did so, deftly spinning the dial to his station and landed on it.
George was relieved when it was Cornelius Barter. It would have been a nightmare if Sam smashed her radio right away. Hopefully the music would last a while.
Edith opened a cupboard over the sink and took down three cups.
George startled Sam as he plopped the black bag onto the tabletop.
“Excuse me,” Sam remembered, “We have news about your husband.”
“Archie?”
“Is he in the army?”
“Yes—Oh no! Did something happen to him?” She hugged the baby tight enough to make his arms windmill. “What happened?” Then she whirled around so she wouldn’t see them tell, busied herself pouring hot water into three cups.
George glanced at Sam, wishing he had a script, something really heroic he could say, like in the movies.
“Ms. Parrot—”
“Edith,” she urged Sam.
“Your husband had to guard the circus last night, that’s why he didn’t show up yet. He wanted you to know he’d be late.”
“Oh—” she let a laugh go. “What a relief. I thought—” She turned to hide her face again.
George gasped as he saw the kit bag inch forwards. He clapped his hands on it. The baby was watching over Edith’s shoulder. George opened the bag some and said, “Shhhh…” into it.
Sam whispered in a croak, “He’s alive again?”
“He must have been sleeping, I guess.”
Edith carried two cups over for them, holding her baby pressed to her. She was still a little rattled.
“He—” Sam tried, starting a new story for her.
The soldier spoke up again, “It’s okay, you can tell her.”
“What’s that?” she asked George with growing alarm.
The hidden voice called to her, “I’m in here, darling.”
“Uhh…” George stood up with the bag held closed against him.
“Is that my husband’s voice?” she pointed.
“No!” George yelped.
Then Edith’s confusion abruptly managed another nervous laugh, “This IS one of those sweepstakes, isn’t it? Is there a telephone in there?” She reached for the bag.
George grappled Sam’s arm. Cornelius Barter was fading out. “Oh no…” He reached and tried to turn off the radio, quickly, before it got crunched. To his horror, the head rolled out of the bag with a plop.
Edith screamed.
The song ended. George knocked the radio off the windowsill into the oatmeal.
Edith screamed again. The baby was crying.
The soldier stared up at the woman and child. “Who are you?”
She bit her hand in terror. “What is that?!” Her screeching son crabbed in her arms.
“She’s not my wife,” the soldier’s eyes rolled gruesomely at Sam and George.
And the radio clucked the news bulletin in a grim monotone. Sam flinched, flashed a block fist onto it, crushing it all into pulp and oatmeal.
George jumped, the head teetered, Edith screamed again.
“Sam, I think we better leave.”
“Yeahh,” the big man stood, “Sorry for this, Ms. Parrot. We found him on the beach like this. He asked to be brought here.”
“Actually,” George tried to soothe her, “We got the wrong address.”
“Thanks for the tea though,” Sam bowed to the woman, “I apologize for your radio, I’ll have a new one delivered.”
She was holding her baby and staring at the table, the shattered bowl and radio, the candle knocked down, rolled against a cup of spilled green tea, a man’s head planted in the middle.
Sam batted the head into George’s bag and they left the kitchen in a sprint, the hall, bashed out the door.
“That went well, didn’t it?” George panted, but Sam was approaching the crowd of boys ganged around the jitney. He cracked his knuckles and they turned around.
“Samsara…” It was Crybaby Johnson. “What are you doing riding this rig? You doing a circus picture?”
“No.”
“It looks like you’ll finally be doing a movie with us.”
Sam pushed through them.
“We started production today in a haunted house,” Crybaby Johnson continued.
In two strides Sam got back up in the creaking jitney. George sat next to him.
“We’ll be seeing you, Sam,” Crybaby Johnson tried to make words sound as rough as sand dollars.
Sam clicked and flicked the reins across the zebra’s back.
“Want me to count the stripes and make sure they didn’t take any?” George asked.
The Crybaby Gang stood watching them go, grown no taller than the lilies and the half eaten weeds.
“You brought me to the wrong house!” the soldier gasped inside the open bag.
“I don’t know what happened,” Sam murmured. “I thought I had photographic memory. I’m very sorry.”
“That’s alright, Mr. Samsara. Heck, after that scene my wife will be a breeze.”
“412 Maple,” George said. “That sounds right to me.”
“Yeah,” the soldier agreed. “412 Maple is where I live. Hold me up, let me see.”
George obeyed. “Just don’t fall out again.”
“Hey—a zebra!”
“There’s 412,” Sam said. “That’s the place, correct?”
“Home sweet home.”
“Alright, let’s do this right this time,” Sam said as he pulled the zebra to stop. He bounded out.
A spray of sparrows flew out of the overhanging mimosa tree.
George got down and patted the zebra for luck. Saturn Circus was stamped on the white of a stripe.
“Don’t worry fellahs, my wife isn’t loony.”
“I hope you’re right,” George replied. He kept the bag open to dapple in the light of the front yard to the porch and the screen door that Sam opened.
After a rap on the wooden frame they all waited listening. Sam rapped again and one last time. “She’s not home,” he decided.
“Look,” the soldier piped. “I don’t want to be any more trouble to you. There’s a key over the door. Just let me inside and you can go.”
George looked at Sam.
Sam shook his head. “No, we cannot risk another misfortune. We will all return later.”
“Aw! You can put me on the mantle, I’ll be fine there Mr. Samsara, honest.”
“No,” Sam burred and he looked like he was on the verge, Imperial flag unfurling in the background. It would have been the perfect time for words to match a movie.

Chapter 17: The Rainy Movie

By Allen Frost

Frances stared at her reflection on the ice wall. Behind the thick frozen window, a couple salmon rocking-chaired in the current. Smaller fish hurried past, upstream or downstream, she didn’t know. This was a good place for her to end up, she thought, after everything she’d done. Some moon was getting on the ice and even though the electric effect of it may only be enough to run a train set, it was powerful enough to keep her a werewolf.
She remembered everything…tying real explosives onto the white balloons, arming and setting a timer on a torpedo, howling in the fog last night…she covered ground on all fours and made it to the top of Jupiter Hill where the Mayan looking windmills powered half the city.
The newspapers and radios were already chattering about how it happened—using cover of the fog, a skilled team of Nazi saboteurs had struck! Even far underground she could feel the rumble.
Would they ever know it was her? Far above Frances, the doomed windmills tilted against each other, broken shells of them were scattered around. She had torn down power lines and used them to rope all the sails together and bring the whole fleet of windmills crashing into each other. No wonder her arms were sore. After that and the fall, she could barely move at all.
So this is why her father kept her inside all those years of full moon nights—it wasn’t so much a dangerous world…it was a dangerous her. She relived watching her destruction sparking against the black sky swoop like fireworks, then the explosion and the ground gave way, she fell into an old mine or well. She was in a room sized cavern. It would be dark if not for the flickering moonlight coming from the ice.
She leaned a wolf’s arm against the frozen projection. The ice traveling down her arm took its time, freezing her and transforming her into a statue. Maybe it was best for her to stay tombed, she was too tired anyway. In front of her, the ice steamed with her breath. Her breathing slowed from one minute to the next. There wasn’t much to do but lean on the blue window and watch the rainy movie of the swimming fish.

Chapter 16: The Unfilmed Beginning

By Allen Frost

Wind brushed across the field in a
ripple effect pouring up to the road.
Next to the worn-out gray tar
stands a fence post with a silver
dented mailbox. The red flag is up.
A car engine can be heard approaching,
wheels stop next to it and the driver
reaches out to grab the mailbox door.
The door snaps open and a sudden huge
green hand springs, reaching out of
the dark:

FRANKENSTEIN’S HAND

Chapter 15: Some Dream Contraption

By Allen Frost

George made room in his doctor’s kit bag for the soldier’s head.
“Don’t close it all the way!” he pleaded, so George let the bag gap open.
“Everything will be fine,” George reassured him. Sam was the quiet one, green with moonlight, staggering along like an oak tree put roots and all onto a moving treadmill.
George led them away from the shore towards a soft glow settled in over the saw grass and sand hill. “Everything will be fine,” George repeated.
By some fortune they found a violet path, tracked up that sand until they got to the top of the rise. They were looking down on other fires, not wreckage but campfires and candle lanterns strung around a big dark shrouding tent and the gloomed dinosaur boned shapes of amusement rides.
“It’s a circus.” George tipped the doctor bag so the soldier could see it.
“Hey!” the soldier brightened. “We’re not far from my house. 412 Maple,” he chirped, “I saw these guys setting up this morning before I left for work.”
Sam had his eye on the animals tied in the tent shadows. He mumbled, “I bet those elephants could pull the car back to the road.”
They followed the path again. Sand slid in front of them in sugary gasps.
Soon the soldier asked, “Do you suppose you could drop me off at home? I’m not sure yet what I’m going to tell my wife…but I think I should be there.”
George nodded down at him, “We’ll get you there. Let’s talk to these circus people first.”
They went towards the nearest burning fire, trampling the last of the beach grass as the ground leveled into shadow. Weird scraps of burning paper took to the air whirled and jerked into nothingness.
Someone saw them arriving and stood up.
George waved his arm that wasn’t holding the soldier steadily. “Hello,” he called and stopped.
Sam stopped walking right next to him. “We had a crash on the beach,” he graveled. “Could you spare a couple elephants?”
After a dead dropped silence, “Hah!” was drilled back at them.
George looked at Sam.
“Sammmmsara!” someone at the fireside yelled.
George and Sam froze in criminal poses.
“Where have you been?” Wervers yelled, “Join us over here, wait til you hear what happened.”
While he spoke George and Sam got closer. They were a little amazed to find Wervers where they were.
Wervers made a raspberry sound, “Our movie’s over. The studio brass showed up and shut it down. They didn’t like the dailies we shot. The balloon bombs and the sinking lightship were a little too realistic for them.” Wervers laughed.
George and Sam walked into the floodlight with the moths.
He smiled an ivory set of teeth, “They took us off the film, boys. It wasn’t going the right way. Guess what? They gave me the choice of two movies to accept instead…The Crybaby Gang Meets The Gong, or Frankenstein’s Hand.”
George and Sam were caught in the amber circle of firelight.
“It’s probably no surprise to you, no way am I going to work with that Crybaby Johnson or his rotten gang ever again.” He made a sour face. “I had no choice but to take the monster movie.” He paused dramatically, “Of course, I thought of you first. You’d be perfect for the monster, Mr. Samsara.”
Sam shrugged. Movies were all the same to him. He’d been every other shade of villain, he didn’t mind being Frankenstein too.
“That’s great!” Wervers explained, “That’s the reason I came here, to get help. That’s Fled Magyar over there. He’s going to do the special effects. He makes puppets and he can do the make-up.” He laughed, “Believe it or not, I’m looking forward to doing this. It’s got a great opening shot. Anyway,” Wervers kept the story going, kept them hypnotized reading from the script, building and building the movie into some dream contraption, reminding them that tomorrow was the start of Frankenstein’s Hand and before they knew it, the sky was rolling over to dawn, tomorrow was today.