The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island Read online

  THE PICKLED APOCALYPSE OF PANCAKE ISLAND

  A Tragedy for People Who Eat Food

  By Cameron Pierce

  The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island

  © 2010 by Cameron Pierce

  Eraserhead Press

  Cover art © 2010 by Alan M. Clark

  www.alanmclark.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical or mechanical, including photocopying, scanning, recording, or posting on the Internet without the written consent of the author, artist, or publisher, with the exception of short excerpts quoted in articles or reviews.

  PART ONE

  THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PANCAKE IN THE UNIVERSE

  FANNY WINTER FOD

  Fanny W. Fod had peanut butter lips, blueberry eyes, chocolate chip dimples, and hair softer than cinnamon. She lactated the most delicious maple beer in the universe, and she bottled and distributed her beer all around Pancake Island. The pancakes loved her beer. They savored it to the last drop. They would wave and call out, "Thank you, Fanny Fod!" They would cheer, "Hooray, we're so happy. Let's be happy forever. Let's hold a parade for happiness." And so the pancakes savored the beer of Fanny Fod and commenced their daily Ultra Yummy Happiness Parade.

  What they did not know was that Fanny Fod, the most beautiful pancake in the universe, felt sick inside her soul.

  It was nighttime on Pancake Island. The pancake sun snoozed in his bed of stars. His mustache glowed like a furry nightlight.

  Fanny Fod lay on her back on the roof of her green zucchini castle. Every pancake lived in a castle, but Fanny's was the only castle built out of zucchinis. However, this caused no jealousy among the pancakes. The others were happy with their potato castles. Potato castles were special too. As potato castles got older, they grew spuds that turned into other potato castles. After many years of living in potato castles, it was as if all the pancakes lived in one giant interconnected spud kingdom, except for Fanny Fod, because she chose to live alone.

  Fanny Fod, the most beautiful pancake on the island, lay on her back on the roof of her zucchini castle and stared out at the stars. She knew there were a lot of sad creatures in the universe. She wished she could help them. Maybe she could bottle her syrup and launch the bottles into outer space. Maybe, somewhere out there, a sad creature longed for monogamy, just like she did.

  Fanny Fod longed for a sad creature to love and make happy. She had been romantically involved with many pancakes, but the love between two happy creatures was just too sweet.

  Happiness was all she'd ever felt. She wondered what sadness was like. There must be something else, she thought. There must be something besides happiness. She knew something strange was happening for her to think this because everybody loved happiness and she loved happiness too. She was always happy, but some nights she wished she wasn't.

  She pondered whether the Cuddlywumpus locked in the dungeon of her zucchini castle was affecting her in some way. Or maybe these strange thoughts and feelings -- nostalgia and longing for abstract or nonexistent things -- thoughts and feelings that were not exactly happy but resulted in happiness because she desired them -- maybe all pancakes experienced these things, just nobody talked about them.

  Maybe it was the Cuddlywumpus. She was afraid of the Cuddlywumpus. She was afraid some other pancake would find out about the Cuddlywumpus. The Cuddlywumpus was her big secret. She wondered if all pancakes had a big secret that they kept to themselves.

  Fanny Fod closed her eyes so she didn't have to look at the stars dancing around the sun's mustache anymore. She stood up with her eyes closed and groped her way to the zucchini spires. She rested her spongy elbows on the ledge. She leaned out, her eyes still closed. She wondered what would happen if she fell. If she jumped. It's all the same to fall or jump, she thought. Given the choice, though, between falling or jumping, I would jump every time. Too bad I am happy. If I were to jump, or even fall by accident, I would rise, because that's all I'm capable of. Happy things just rise. I could splatter to pieces amidst the pancake flowers in the front yard, and I would still be rising. Even when they are hitting bottom, happy things continue to rise. When you are happy, everything gets better all the time. Are things getting better for me, she wondered, or is this more of the same life?

  PART TWO

  THE PICKLED DIARIES

  ROCKET SHIP FOR SAD DAY PARTY

  Hello, my name is Gaston Glew.

  I felt suicidal this morning, so I stumbled outside and stood in the brinestorm. My sixteenth Sad Day party was scheduled for today. That's why I was suicidal, and also because I was born a pickle. All pickles kill themselves sooner or later. Anyway, back to my Sad Day party.

  Mother tried baking me a cake but she slit her wrists instead. Father got so worried, he had an epileptic fit. I took my single present to my room. Alone, I unclasped the rusted latch of the mildewed wooden box. There was nothing inside. My parents had been so depressed, they forgot to buy me the customary sixteenth Sad Day present: a shotgun.

  I dropped the box underfoot and stomped it into splintered scraps. I decided I would leave this place forever. I had reached this decision a long time ago. I hated Pickled Planet. I hated my fellow pickles. I hated brine. Every pickle received a shotgun on their sixteenth Sad Day, but not me. I guess I’m not your ordinary pickle. I don’t worship my sadness.

  *

  We were in the living room. Father and Mother lay side by side on the floor. They had blank expressions on their faces. Mother's wrists bled.

  "Father?"

  "Yes son?"

  "Will you buy me Captain Pickle brand rocket thrusters? My rocket ship needs them. It's my Sad Day."

  "Isn't the Nothing enough? Your Mother strained herself wrapping it this morning."

  "I deserve more for my sixteenth Sad Day, don't I?"

  "No, you don’t," Father said. "Go on now. Go away. Waste your own time. Build that stupid ship of yours. I don't care."

  Father rolled onto his side and yelled at Mother. He called her pathetic. He called their marriage a disappointment. He called me a walking abortion. He called her pitiful. I left them lying on the floor and walked into the kitchen.

  I opened the back door and shut it quietly behind me. I shivered.

  The fallen, mold-flowering cacti twitching in the muddy yard reached their arms to the algae nooses hanging from the sky. Brinestorms made the cacti sick. I thought how lucky they were to be just physically ill.

  The brinestorm cast a yellow glow on everything.

  I bent over and dug beneath a cactus. I lifted a handful of garlic spiders out of the mud. I needed them to complete my rocket ship. Garlic spiders relied on cacti for nourishment, so they were easy to find. I pocketed spiders until my rubber trousers bulged.

  I returned to our green, dome-shaped house and went straight to my room. I took my rocket ship out of the closet and set it on the floor, parallel to my bed.

  My rocket ship was almost ready for takeoff. I would finish it today. I would launch into space at nightfall. I would discover happiness and never feel sad again.

  I removed the tool kit from beneath the bed and set it between the bed and the rocket ship. The hollow craft was carved from the corpse of a pickle who'd been twice as large as me, allowing room for brine chowder, for when I got hungry on the journey.

  I crawled into the cockpit and nailed a garlic spider to the control panel. Its pale guts splattered across my hands.

  I nailed more garlic spiders to the panel. Their white, cloven abdomens formed perfect, tender buttons. They squeaked and pleaded as the nails pierced
their squishy skulls. I pretended they were me, or I was them, but even fantasies of death failed to make me happy. That was the Eternal Plight of the Pickle. We were always sad.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to leave it all behind.

  The Eternal Plight of the Pickle started a few hundred years ago, when the climate of Pickled Planet changed drastically. Our ancestors, who called themselves cucumbers and named this world Cucumber Planet, left behind a lot of books and pictures about the transformations that swept over the world. There used to be all kinds of joyful weather, like Happy Hurricanes and Smiling Tsunamis. The weather spread so much happiness that all the cucumbers danced and played and laughed every day of their lives. They were healthy creatures. They were glad. Even death was a fabulous affair in those times.

  A few cucumbers had the foresight to stockpile happy feelings in bottles and cans, but when the joyful weather turned sad and briny, their reserves quickly diminished. The cucumbers evolved with the evolving planet. In the span of a few years, Absolute Happiness became Absolute Sadness. Cucumbers became pickles.

  We called our pickled plight eternal because misery was everything to our race. Nobody felt good about anything, not even for a second. If not for the books and pictures left behind by our ancestors, no pickle would know sadness's polarity had ever existed.

  There was a little bit of hope in knowing that somewhere in the universe, a little happiness might remain. That smudge of hope soured our pickled hearts a little more. That hope made the sadness just a little bit too much to take. I could not continue worshipping my sadness like the rest of these pickles. I had to leave the sadness behind, no matter what awaited me.

  Unchain yourself from this briny fate, oh pickled prisoner! was written in cactus blood on the side of my rocket ship.

  Unchain yourself from this briny fate, oh pickled prisoner! was the motto of Captain Pickle, the superhero we loved to hate. When we watched his television show, we screamed obscenities at the screen. We clawed at our faces and rolled on the ground. Our loathing for Captain Pickle made us insane. Secretly, I admired Captain Pickle. I'd scrawled his motto on the side of my rocket ship because even if we never transcended the sorrows of our brine, even if the laws of the universe preordained us to fail, failing was no excuse to avoid trying.

  I had to blast off into space and search for happiness, no matter how small or inconsequential. No matter how gracelessly I failed.

  Even if I discovered happiness, would I recognize it?

  All I knew of happiness had been learned from the words and pictures forged by dead vegetables. I often lay awake at night and wondered if happiness was a lie.

  I killed garlic spiders until I ran out of nails. I felt so weak and tired; I could not hold the hammer. I was ashamed of my ship. It disappointed me. I disappointed myself. I would never finish it. I would never fly away from Pickled Planet. I'd prostrated myself for a dream, and all for nothing. I stroked the crushed abdomen of a garlic spider and wished that I’d been born a cactus. I whispered quietly to the twitching dead thing.

  I understood none of the words that I whispered.

  Depression killed my mind.

  *

  I crawled inside my spaceship and shivered in the cockpit. Besides the pickled framework, the whole ship was built of garlic spiders, hammer nails, and the feces of my family. The feces was the hardest material to acquire because we were all too constipated to move our bowels most weeks. My ship was rotten, decay upon decay. I had to finish it before the whole thing fell apart. I got out of the ship and read Captain Pickle's motto. I popped a bubble of green paint in the slogan's crooked exclamation point. I felt a little bit better.

  I needed two rocket boosters to lift me from this crazy planet forever. What could I use for rocket boosters?

  I looked around my room, at the bare walls and molded carpet. I owned next to nothing. The cacti in the yard could work, but I did not think cacti deserved to be happy. They were too stupid.

  I left my room and shuffled down the hall. I kept my eyes on my feet. I jostled my shriveled brain for ideas. If only Father was kinder.

  I opened the back door, but a swaying in the kitchen grabbed my attention. I looked up at a tall, slender, pickle-shaped object, precisely what I needed for a rocket booster. I thought it was a ghost. Pickled ghosts were sly, so I hurried into the kitchen before it had a chance to sneak away.

  I felt like shouting, “I've got you now.”

  I did not shout.

  I leaped from the hallway to the kitchen in a single bound. I clutched the air. The ghost was not what I'd perceived. The ghost was Father, hanging from the kitchen rafters.

  "Father?"

  I hopped up and down to grab the rope coiled and knotted around his neck. I thought maybe he'd decided to play a Sad Day joke on me by falsely hanging himself. Since the day Mother birthed me, I had perceived in Father a melancholy that transcended suicide.

  I dug my nails into his sides. His flesh came off in strips, gumming up beneath my fingernails.

  I was angry. I felt like the victim of an unspeakable crime. Today was my Sad Day. Father had to go and cast a shadow over everything. What kind of Father died on the anniversary of his son's tragic birth? I did not pause to mourn. I had to get Father down from the rafters. His corpse would make a wonderful rocket booster.

  The noose around his midsection unraveled and he crashed down on top of me. I pushed him off. He weighed less than a can of pickled chowder. Nearly four feet long, he stretched longer by a foot than me, but I weighed more like ten cans of pickled chowder. Father had been a little anorexic. Mother and I were always on his case.

  Father's flesh darkened from green to black as I carried him to my room.

  There were two slots on each side of the rocket. I loaded Father into one of them. I slid him in so that his head faced outward. If I discovered any happiness in outer space, the happiness might bless his carcass with a peaceful rot. Being dead was supposed to hurt a lot more than dying itself. Seeing him loaded into Booster Slot #1, I retracted my feelings from a few minutes earlier, when I found him hanging. His suicide wasn't lousy. It was fortuitous.

  I felt bad for Mother. She was unfit to live alone. I walked down the hall to the living room. She was asleep on the living room floor. I knelt beside her. I shook her lightly and said, “Father died.”

  No reply.

  “Mother?”

  I shook her again.

  I saw the cuts down her arms and realized she’d done it this time. My Sad Day had turned into a family death party. I wondered if they’d planned this all along and shed three tears, one and a half tears for each parent.

  I slung Mother over my back and returned to the rocket ship. I loaded her into Booster Slot #2. I loaded several cases of brine chowder into the storage compartment, put on my yellow spacesuit, and dragged my rocket ship from my bedroom into the backyard. The brinestorm had subsided. Conditions were ideal for takeoff.

  I crawled into the cockpit and buckled myself in. I had to take off as soon as possible.

  I pressed a few white spider buttons and the rocket boosters ignited. Mother and Father would burn to ash soon, hopefully before they woke up out of death.

  "You better watch out, happiness, 'cause I'm coming for you," I said.

  I was escaping the Eternal Plight of the Pickle forever.

  *

  From way up high, Pickled Planet seemed like a place you might want to visit. The pea soup tinge appeared rich and fertile even though the soil nurtured nothing livelier than cacti since the Cucumber Days ended.

  My breaths came easier. I took in more air and held it in for longer. I felt a weight leave my head as the domed green houses faded away. Mother and Father shot me quickly out of the atmosphere.

  Bright white lights burst forth all around, blinding me. I'd never known such brightness. I shielded my eyes with one hand. I squeezed the ring of spiders that formed a steering wheel. My vision warbled and turned static. The white murmur of
an impending seizure blossomed in my head, into voices from the past. The voices exploded in a succession of hot flashes. My brain stretched into a jellied rope a million miles long, and then it snapped. The bright lights were killing me.

  I raced toward the lights. I needed to avoid them, but there was nowhere else to turn.

  The fit came on.

  My body fought against the seatbelt. I fought against myself to keep control.

  I won control.

  I terminated the fit before it turned bad.

  I won.

  I uncovered my eyes and pressed the spider button that engaged the pickled loudspeaker. I held down the button and spoke into a special rigged-up chowder can. My voice projected for miles. The pickled scientists insisted that voices went unheard in outer space, but scientists were too sad to complete their experiments most of the time. Scientists knew nothing of outer space.

  I held the empty can to my lips and said, "Bright lights, are you happiness?"

  I was approaching the lights at an incredible speed. Eyes and mouths appeared on each of the bright lights, as if they were yawning back to life. They appeared lumpy and misshapen. They had arms and long tails. My rocket ship thrummed forth.

  I tried again. "Bright lights, are you happiness?" I pressed another button to slow the ship. I wiped drool from my mouth.

  "Bright lights, are you happiness?"

  "We are not happiness," they said. "We are ghosts in a black field. We serve no special function. We cannot help you and we cannot let you pass."

  A shiver ran through me. I sweated brine. "If you can’t let me pass, can you tell me where to find happiness?"

  "Happiness isn't something a pickle has ever gone looking for," they said. "We cannot let you do that. You are a disease. You will destroy everything."