The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island Read online

  "I'm tired of Pickled Planet. I'm tired of sadness. I just want something else, anything.”

  I hovered a short distance from the ghosts now.

  "What makes you think something better exists? What makes you think happiness didn't go extinct?"

  "It's a feeling I have," I said. "I feel something out here calling to me. I deserve to find out who or what is calling. I deserve happiness. I deserve to have it all."

  "That is why you cannot have it. You cannot have it all. Now turn around and return to your planet. Quick, before you infect us. We are sad enough from observing your race at a distance."

  I loosened my grip on the spider wheel. The lights dimmed, closing the mental window through which convulsions passed. Maybe most pickles gave up so easily, but these ghosts were silly to underestimate me. I had equipped my ship with garlic guns in case a situation like this arose.

  My hands depressed the gun triggers, blasting two flurried streams of hungry garlic spiders at the giant ghosts.

  "Out of my way, spirits!"

  The spiders burrowed into their flesh. Part of me wanted to stick around to see their ghostly organs float away on the dark tracts of space, but I felt that my time was limited.

  I sped past them as they clawed holes in themselves. They tore spiders from their wounds and howled at me to stop the feeding.

  "Out of my way, spirits."

  When I got back on my way, trails of white blood followed me for miles.

  Beyond the ship, everything turned monotone. I wouldn't call it darkness. It was less than that. A blankness.

  I turned on autopilot and closed my eyes.

  *

  Outer space was a downer. I feared that I would never cross another being, let alone a planet.

  I had no way to chart the passing of time. Nothing around me felt real. Whenever my insides grumbled, I scarfed a can of cold brine chowder, but being all alone with nothing to do, I became aware of chowder's proclivity for stimulating my most depressing thoughts. I was eating the concentrated essence of my home planet straight from a can. When I framed it this way, I realized brine chowder could jeopardize my entire mission.

  I went on a fast. I resolved to eat nothing until I found happiness. I felt less depressed after I stopped eating, but the boredom and solitude of outer space took their toll on me as well. Without food matter in my belly or any room to walk around in my tiny ship, I grew rotten. My skin dried up. A fever came on. My throat itched. Nausea. Aching spine. The ailments piled on until I forced myself to eat another can of chowder. Brine stimulated sadness and sadness was integral to my biology. Deprived of sadness, I was not even myself.

  At some point in my fevered daze, I opened my eyes, expecting to look out at more blankness, but the blankness had faded. My rocket ship was nose-diving into a bubbling golden sphere.

  Autopilot had failed. I was dead.

  HOW THE SUN DIED AT THE DECEITFUL HANDS OF ONE PICKLE

  My rocket ship bobbed on the waves of a golden sea. I was lucky my rocket ship remained afloat. Who knew what sea beasts lurked in these waters?

  The air smelled sweet.

  A big, flat, round, doughy thing in the sky whistled a cheerful melody.

  "I am the sun," it said.

  This whistling sun worried me. The sun of Pickled Planet never whistled. She shouted curses and death threats. She whispered notes of discouragement. Even stranger than this sun’s whistling: its mustache. The sun's bushy brown mustache curled upward at the corners. I wondered why the sun didn’t shave the silly thing off. Nobody could take a mustached sun seriously.

  Oh drat, I was being a cynic again. I had to stop. I would never unchain myself from the Eternal Plight if I held fast to my prejudices and bad habits. I stuck a hand in the ocean and raised a liquid glob. I brought it to my lips, stuck out my pickled tongue, and took a lick. Sweetness!

  I slurped down three handfuls of the ocean and rubbed my hands all over myself. The golden liquid's sweet odor masked my stench of brine. Warm fuzzies tingled in my belly.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “What is this ocean made of? What is this place and will I find happiness here? Are there beasts in these waters or am I safe to swim ashore?"

  The sun's black pupils swung downward in the huge white sockets that housed them. The dark pupils fixed on me. "Pleasant to have a strange traveler today," said the sun, speaking in a baritone voice that rippled the surface of the sea. "Welcome to Pancake Island, the happiest place in the whole wide universe, the final refuge of pancakes against the sadness that has swallowed everything. Nothing in the syrup sea will harm you, but no reason to go ashore either. The bacon vultures will fix your vessel. You will go off soon."

  "If this is the happiest place in the universe, can't I stay and be happy?"

  "You cannot stay. You are not a pancake."

  "That's unfair. Who are these pancakes to horde their privileges? Why can't I have some of their happiness?"

  "Pancakes are happy creatures. There is not enough happiness remaining. There is not enough to squander it on those who are not pancakes. As sun and guardian of Pancake Island, it is my duty to fetch help for stranded travelers and send them on their way. We must preserve our way of life. We must preserve happiness. Without us, the universe would be a sad place for everyone."

  "The universe is a sad place for everyone," I said. "Everyone but you, and you're just a mean old silly sun."

  "I am not old or mean. I'm as happy as can be. Everything makes me happy, for I am a pancake.”

  “Okay,” I said, as if in agreement. I was a born deceiver. I would wait for a chance to strike. “Okay, send in your bacon vultures and I’ll fly back to my sad planet. I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused.”

  "That's more like it. Keep up the polite attitude and maybe someday you'll experience a greater glimpse of happiness than you received on this temporary landing. Happiness and sadness are not eternal, you know."

  "I am from Pickled Planet. My race suffers from the Eternal Plight of the Pickle. Happiness might be ephemeral, but sadness is eternal. I am certain of the latter. Even when sad things die, they keep on being sad. We have no reason for being or not being. We just go on getting worse."

  "I am the sun and the gatekeeper, the only pancake aware that poor creatures like you . . .” the sun paused, looked around, sank toward the sea, and whispered in a low voice, his mustache tickling my ear, “. . . commit suicide.”

  An awkward tension settled between us. I knew the sun was just finishing his statement and wanted no one else to overhear him, but his cold, commanding tone gave the impression that he was also suggesting that I commit suicide. I wondered why the sun would have it in for me. Was meanness the natural state even of happy suns? Was it the mustache?

  “Suicide,” the sun whispered.

  My face was buried in his mustache.

  “Stop breathing on me and summon your vultures. Your mustache tickles.”

  “Suicide.”

  “Why are you saying that?”

  “It’s my favorite bad word.” Maybe I had a reason to be paranoid. Maybe the sun was a pickled pedophile disguised as a pancake. Maybe Pancake Island was not a happy place at all. “I only get a chance to say bad words when sad travelers crash here. Pancakes know no bad words. They only know good ones. My proximity to the sky and role as guardian has allowed me to pick up certain words and ideas, things I overhear from outer space, things I hear from those like yourself. I like to say bad words. I like to say 'suicide.' It is my favorite word to say.

  “I am never allowed to say it. I am never allowed to talk about it because the pancakes I interact with on a day to day basis would not know what I am talking about. So I am saying it to you, my sorry pickle. You who are unworthy. You who are a disease. The words for who and what you are, for your condition of being, do not exist in this culture. You cannot stay here because as far as pancakes are concerned, sadness does not exist. You do not exist."

  The sun floated back t
o a higher point in the sky. I raised my fists toward his golden, fluffy body. I shook my fists and yelled, “I am a pickle! I exist!”

  “Oh, I know you exist,” the sun said, “but you belong with other pickles, with your sadness. Go home to Pickled Planet. Return and suffer with your species.”

  I hung my head and rubbed my eyes and sobbed. Real briny tears came out, but the tears were false. As a pickle, I could cry on demand. Tears were part of my plan, and so far, everything had gone accordingly.

  The sun opened his mouth and yawned, as if bored with me. Birds without feathers or bones flapped out of his mouth. Birds of red flesh and white fat. Corpuscular birds with beaks and claws of white fat. Eyes that rolled and melted because they were also made of fat. They must have been the bacon vultures.

  They circled my rocket ship several times, descending lower with each succeeding circle, until they landed. They communicated by clapping their crispy wings together. They got busy fixing the rocket ship. They had a stupid way of fixing it, slapping it here and licking it in other places, letting their grease soak in. Since they lived inside the sun, the bacon vultures must have overheard our conversation, but watching them work, I realized that it did not matter. These birds were idiots. They did not understand our mode of speech. I lamented that my ship was likely lost forever, but it hardly mattered since I had no intention of leaving Pancake Island.

  I stopped crying. I laughed, pretending to have gotten over the foul mood that had taken hold of me.

  I knew I probably caught the strange sensation from drinking those handfuls of the sea, but I figured I might as well query the matter.

  "Excuse me," I said. "I drank some of this sea and feel rather pleasant. What is this stuff?"

  "This is maple syrup," the sun said. "To prove that I'm a kind sun who sends all voyagers merrily on their way, you may leave with one jar of maple syrup scooped from our tiny sea."

  "Just one jar?" I said.

  "One jar," the sun said. "Maple syrup is the most important resource in the universe. Without it, our happiness wouldn't be as sweet. It would be nothing at all. Maple syrup is also a very limited resource. The sweetest things always come to an end. We pancakes rejoice in their temporal state. This is one reason we live happy lives. Unlike you, we believe in no eternity. For a while we will be the proprietors of happiness, but no one can say for how long. We've already lost so much. The last agave apes curled up and fell asleep some while ago. They never woke again. The honey horses went before them. Now these creatures sleep on the bottom of the sea, beneath your broken vessel as we speak. No one disturbs the horses and apes, for sleep is a happy thing."

  "You're telling me dead animals sleep in the sea of happiness?"

  "Dead animals sleep in every sea.

  "Happiness slows the decay process, but happy things also break down. They just break down slower. Everything breaks down. It's a matter of when and how bad. When you're happy, breaking down is pleasant. At the peak of psychosomatic breakdown, pancakes dance into the sea. They dissolve into Yummy Decay.

  “What is Yummy Decay?”

  “It is like being subject and object all at once. The boundaries between your perceptions and the world disintegrate. Pancakes treat Yummy Decay with the greatest deference. Yummy Decay is a state reached only by enlightened pancakes who have lived very long lives. Nobody talks about Yummy Decay. It’s just something that happens. The best things in life are never talked about. If there were words to explain them, they would cease being the best things in life. Yummy Decay is too great for words. The awesomeness of Yummy Decay shrugs away all words, like syrup off a bacon vulture’s back.”

  The bacon vultures flapped their wings and took flight from my rocket ship. They squawked ugly grease noises. I hoped they had completed the repairs. Otherwise I was out of luck and might find myself in trouble with the sun.

  “I think it's time you leave. We don’t want you in our lives,” the sun said.

  The hairs of his mustache bristled, quivering as if they were tiny fists flailing. My chance was now or never.

  I pressed several spider buttons. The cinders of Father and Mother coughed. The rocket ship came alive. I rose up and took pursuit of the bacon vultures. I blasted them with garlic spiders. Hot out of the guns, the spiders melted the fat of the birds. The spiders lost their footing in the melted fat and were carried away by the toasty wind like eight-legged leaves. The birds fared no better. The birds' meat splashed into the sea. Their fat congealed on the golden surface and bobbed there.

  I turned the steering wheel for a head-on collision with the sun. I closed my eyes to protect myself from the light. When I opened them again, the rocket ship hit the sun's mustache, tore a green hole through his face, and left him floating in the sky, dead and flecked with brine.

  I set my course for shore.

  PRIMITIVES ON PARADE

  I stepped out of my rocket ship into a bustle of parading pancakes. I had failed to land in a secluded area as hoped, but that was alright. I'd pickled the sun and made my way ashore.

  I couldn't yet tell whether to classify the warm feelings inside me as happiness. On a sliding scale, this was certainly the least sad I had ever felt. I reserved any hope I might have. Who knew what these shore-dwelling pancakes would do to me if they discovered that I'd tricked their sun.

  I dragged my rocket ship behind me. The ship split the dancing crowd of pancakes. Some of them rode bicycles and unicycles. Others waved to me and called things like "Cheers!" and "Happy breakfast!" and "Awesome bike!"

  I presumed they mistook my rocket ship for a bicycle. I resisted frowning. I even smiled and waved, "Thank you!"

  I left my rocket ship behind and joined their parade.

  The pancakes wore identical maple smiles. The syrup was hard, fixing their expressions and imposing on their flapjack faces the pursed visage of ventriloquists. Their mouths never moved when they spoke. Their hair flowed like pickled fries without the gloom sauce. Their sun-crisped tresses emitted cheer. Their round plump bodies brought ticklish sensations to my groin. I felt naked and ashamed in my slender, warted body.

  Their eyes were made of maple, frozen in their sockets.

  I wondered what was in those heads of theirs. Were they as empty as they put on? I was afraid of these pancakes. Besides the sun, they were the first happy creatures I had seen. Pancakes on parade could not be the happiest creatures in the universe, but I could be no judge of happiness.

  This parade took us through a spud-lined street. It came as a surprise for these pancakes to accept me and allow me to join their parade as if I wasn't just some bitter green monster. I leaned in close to a pancake to my right and keeping with the rhythm of the dancing crowd, I asked, "What are we parading for? Has someone died?"

  Funerals were the only parades I had ever taken part in, and on Pickled Planet, the processions were always led by the deceased pickle for whom the funeral was held. Funerals left me severely depressed about the futility of dying. Fortunately, I'd learned from Father and Mother that to get out of a funeral parade, all you had to do was act bedridden. Sometimes we exploited our depression for personal convenience. Sometimes, Mother and Father told me, you won't feel sad enough. Fake your sadness whenever you don't feel sad. Your sadness will always return. Even in our most sincere moments, we pickles were never truly ourselves.

  I repeated my question because the pancake failed to hear me over the ruckus of its thousand stampeding fellows.

  "The sun has turned a new color," the pancake said. "We are celebrating its old beauty, its new beauty, and all the beautiful forms yet to come. I love the beauty of the sun."

  "I love it too," I said. I'd never said I loved anything aloud, and here I was, saying I loved the celestial body I had murdered.

  The pancake grabbed me by the hand. Unaccustomed to feeling the touch of another, I jerked my hand away. The pancake stared at its hand, surprised in equal measure, perhaps, that I'd refused its touch, and also that its fingers had turned
green.

  "I am a mirror of the sun's beauty," the pancake said. "This is the best parade ever."

  "How often do you hold parades?" I said, wanting to distract the pancake from noticing that I was also green -- and that my touch was responsible for its pickled hand.

  "Every day. Every day there is a wonderful parade. Don't you go to all the parades?"

  I said that I did, catching sight in that moment of a monolithic green castle and a pancake girl standing atop. She was releasing balloons into the sky. I fell a little bit in love. Without having even met her. I stood in the middle of the street. I wiped briny tears from my eyes and gazed at the pancake in the green castle. My heart yawned, stretched, and began to thump, awaking from a very long coma.

  After overcoming the initial shock of not feeling dead inside for the first time in my life, I moved on with the parade, to a feast on the other side of Pancake Island.

  *

  The potato housing district ended.

  We climbed a hill that peaked in the center of the island. The hill was a pancake. In the center of the peak, a fountain spewed syrup. The pancakes got down on their knobby knees and ladled syrup from the fountain. The syrup rolled down their chins. It seeped in through their porous flesh and made them glow.

  I pushed my way into their circle and drank syrup from the fountain. Sometimes pancakes raised their heads and wiped their mouths and smiled or cheered.

  Other pancakes drank from crystalline bottles. "What's in the bottles?" I asked the pancake to my left.

  "Fanny Fod's maple beer. It's the most delicious beer ever."

  "Who's Fanny Fod?"

  "The pancake in the green castle."

  "Oh," I said, lowering my head to the fountain.

  I drank syrup until my belly bloated and I collapsed. I lay there, not thinking much about anything.

  Eventually, I got up. I patted my full belly and separated myself from the parade. I headed for the green castle, leaving a trail of pickled footprints in my wake.