Coffin Island (22 page)

Fresh meat had just arrived on the
doorstep of Crypt Island with a bloody thump. The butcher had
cometh. The heart was still beating in the ribcage. The creatures
were panting with fear. It doesn’t get any fresher than that. We
would run if something dangerous gave chase. We were sporting
creatures as it were. But where were the predators in the bloody
smocks to greet us? Were their chainsaws in the shop? Perhaps the
axe murders had peacefully died of starvation. There had to be a
sensible explanation for the lack of butchery in this
world.

However I wasn’t hopeful because there
weren’t any skeletons on this shore. The skeletal remains of the
last creature standing had gone missing. What happened to it? Had
the flesh fallen off it? Then the creature’s skeleton had walked
off? I was thinking that it should have eaten itself for a little
bit to prolong the inevitable. A fierce little creature could chew
itself down to one arm while waiting for a meal that was not
forthcoming. Show you where your fragile existence was headed in
this world. First you eat your legs and then you eat your arms.
Where was the hope in this world?

There wasn’t a single meatless digit to
point the way. Perhaps something was just eating the bones. The
last creature standing in this world was breaking down bones to an
imperceptible amount of dust. We were breathing the ashes of the
dead in atomic amounts. The bodies along with the lives that they
had once contained were too immeasurably small to calculate never
mind ponder at this depth. There had to be a sensible explanation
for all of this. History was always explicable when you looked back
and fabricated freely. You worked freely towards your thesis and
erased anything that didn’t support it.

A savage creature was eating everything
on the island. The creature’s digestive tract featured fission.
Bowel movements included atomic cremation. Don’t worry about the
gamma rays. Your nuclei can handle it. There is nothing to fear
here in magic’s Third World. It’s just an oversight by the gods in
the heavens that this shore is currently depopulated. Something
truly horrendous will lumber along shortly. Then it’s sayonara
Booster Boo. What’s the symbolic importance of a glass island with
nothing on it?

Unfortunately I was stuck with the
narrator’s task as the author was previously engaged with his
tiddlywinks. His heavens were above my security clearance. I
couldn’t even begin to comprehend what drove him. Perhaps the cat
in his hat was operating him. What do you make of a trickster
operating a trickster? He’s one tricky cat.

I was sadly tasked with the unrewarding
task of trying to read the signs and symbols of this world to guide
my safe passage through it. Not that it had gotten me anywhere
glorious thus far. The signs and symbols of this world were like
allusions to another man’s allusions. It was like living in a
police state with pranksters for cops.

The magical cop seemed to delight in
directing me towards the crash. That ogre was toying with me when
he wasn’t laughing at me. He was gesturing for me to cross when he
wanted me to stop. He was putting typhoons at my back when the wind
was supposed to be gently pushing my hair back. Was that ogre
mocking me as a form of an endearment? Should I put my mind at
ease?

You wouldn’t mock something if you
didn’t truly care about it. You would just leave that complicated
task to somebody else. You would not deride a worthless person. You
could not be bothered. Not only is that person beneath my contempt
but I am far too busy mocking the ones that I truly care about. I
am deeply invested in scoffing them. You’re lucky that I am
currently ignoring you instead of outright ridiculing you. My
schedule is just too full with important forms of ridicule. I
haven’t got the time to even recognize you never mind harass you to
death. Perhaps being burned at the stake was a cause for
celebration. Your enemies believed in your powers to the point of
clamoring for your immolation. Who couldn’t admire such a
compliment as the flames licked over your head?

Was I beginning to see the vague
outlines of a larger design? Or was that just another moment of
delusional clarity? One last gasp before the permanent madness took
over and started operating me? Witchcraft poured in whatever
flammables they had into the tank and turned the crank. What’s a
Molotov cocktail without a fuse? Why not stuff a rag in the tank
and light that too?

Had the rum from Coffin Island become
madness and poured itself into me in this Third World of
witchcraft? Or was I just another empty vessel in a world that was
constructed entirely out of glass?

I wasn’t even worth killing apparently.
That was a pretty harsh insult right there. Whoever was running
this world didn’t think I was a threat. I wasn’t dangerous enough
to warrant killing. I aimed to change that. Whoever was in-charge
of this world was going to die at my hands if I could only figure
out the creature to attack. Something needed to go into the crypt
on Crypt Island and it wasn’t going to be me.

Unfortunately this magical world wasn’t
like the real world. It wasn’t quick to provide pat explanations
that flew in the face of reason to put your mind at ease.
Everything might happen in this world for reasons. However the
reasons defied reason. Moreover the reasons were vague and unknown.
And they moved around like mercury if you tried to put your finger
on them. Perhaps the real world and this world shared more in
common than I had originally thought. Insanity was looking like a
serious thread.

Chapter

Fortunately a glass Cadillac pulled up
on the shoreline boulevard to end my descent into madness. I had
been musing in that magical maze for far too long. You make a habit
of looking too closely at the human condition and you’re bound to
draw some harmful conclusions. You run the risk of eating a handgun
among other perils. Or turning it on your tormenters which is more
my style. I was looking back fondly on running that saber right
through Professor Coffin. It was the precise point when things got
squirrelly but I would do it again in a heartbeat. It just felt
right to kill that costumed fool.

Perhaps the heavily armed militants
within the glass Cadillac could offer some guidance to the newly
shipwrecked in Old Havana in glass before this madness became a
habit.

What were the proper steps to take
next? Resort to cannibalism? Embrace island alcoholism? Teach
literacy at glass Alcatraz? Hurl yourself into the bubbling lake of
rum as a human sacrifice to the indifferent gods that were playing
tiddlywinks with your person in their heavens?

As always, what is a gentleman to do
next when these ceaseless challenges of an indeterminate nature are
dumped into his lap like so much cosmic trash? What to do with
black holes, for example? Is it even a decision?

“
Welcome to The Crypt Island
School for Witches,” the wolfhound said.

He rolled down the window of the glass
Cadillac slow. He showed us his face. He let us get a good look at
it. He pulled a black mask down over his face. It was real horror
show.

He pointed a shotgun out the window at
us. He racked a round into the chamber. What’s the point of having
a pump shotgun if you aren’t going to rack a round into it? You’ve
got to make those victims shudder.

Finally we had found a sensible
creature to barter with. Perhaps we could cheat him out of his
continent with mere trifles. We just had to get around the shotgun.
How many trinkets was this world worth to this armed
wolfhound?

“Kaiser,” Madison said. “What are you
doing here?”

The King of the Wombats was the ruler
of this world?

“He’s chilling,” I said.

“
Put your telescopes where I
can see them,” Kaiser said.

We held our telescopes out for
inspection. I didn’t realize that my telescope was also a weapon. I
was fingering it a little more fondly now that it was an implement
of destruction. I could see a little gleam in Madison’s eye too.
Professor Coffin was holding his as if it were a bomb about to go
off and separate him bodily from his appendages.

Our telescopes were dangerous. Our
telescopes were bad news. This was very good news. I knew the signs
and symbols were starting to shift towards us. I could sense that
the ogre on the end of the dock with the lamp was about to let us
cross. He was gesturing for us with his hairy knuckles out on the
horizon.

“
Put your telescopes over
your head for your own safety,” Kaiser barked. “Put them up where I
can see them.”

We raised our telescopes over our heads
for our own safety. What harm could there be in complying with the
proper authorities of Crypt Island now that we were armed illegal
immigrants newly shipwrecked into this strange world? The logic of
this world was becoming clearer. Or perhaps it was becoming vaguer
and that accounted for the clarity. Finally something was
happening. Nobody could argue with that. Kaiser was also looking
like a pretty good suspect for the director of the magical test. My
first brush with Coffin Island was with him. Madison was peering at
him quite murderously too. Why wouldn’t witchcraft have a talking
wolfhound run the whole show? It was all becoming deliciously clear
to me.

“
Welcome to Old Havana in
glass,” Kaiser laughed. “You can lower your telescopes now for your
own safety. An elephant parrot might peck your arm off. Every
creature on this island is starving to death.”

“
I’m a bit peckish myself,”
Professor Coffin proclaimed.

We walked down the glass shoreline
boulevard towards the glass Cadillac. Kaiser was backing up the
glass Cadillac as we walked towards him. Perhaps he was the ogre at
the end of the dock. He was enjoying keeping the glass Cadillac
just beyond our reach. It was rolling just beyond our grasp. The
headlights were green like Gatsby’s fabled dock. I wondered how
many books were under the hood.

The Coffin Island library had somehow
relocated itself inside the glass Cadillac. The books were swimming
around in the glass Cadillac like fish in a tank. Flash was
hunkering down. He was minding his fiery business in the muffler.
Was this glass Cadillac a vehicle of higher learning? Was this
magical motor vehicles powered by the written word? Or did it burn
books to get where it was going?

“We don’t want to take you prisoner,”
Kaiser said as he backed up the glass Cadillac.

I watched Flash devour a
book.

“
Stop fooling around
jailor,” Professor Coffin bellowed.

“
Get out of my prison,”
Kaiser said and drove forward.

Flash ate another book.

“
I demand to commune with my
cot,” Professor Coffin said. “I’m aged and I’m
exhausted.”

“
He’s on his fourth century
on the lam,” Madison snorted.

“
We aren’t taking you
prisoner,” Kaiser said and threw the glass Cadillac in
reverse.

The glass Cadillac was definitely
running on books. At least something was running on something. It
was something definitive to hold on to. Books were powering the
glass Cadillac. Knowledge was gasoline in this world. You just had
to find a fire to throw it on. Perhaps the lake of fire was where
the graduation ceremonies took place.

“If we are on the topic of what we are
not doing,” Professor Coffin said. “I am not making the customary
phone call from prison.”

“You’ll make that customary phone call
if I take you prisoner,” Kaiser barked.

“Who would he call?” Madison
snorted.

“
I don’t have any friends,”
Professor Coffin sniffed. “No one will have me.”

“
Booster or Madison is going
to have to take your call if I take you prisoner,” Kaiser said.
“Take it up with them.”

“
What say you, men?”
Professor Coffin asked. “Which one of you pupils will take my call?
I’m in desperate need of a friend.”

“I’m not taking your call,” I
said.

“Don’t look at me,” Madison
said.

“That’s why I refuse to do it,”
Professor Coffin said. “I won’t be humiliated in the
can.”

“Looks like you’re out of luck on being
taken prisoner in this world, Professor Coffin,” Kaiser
said.

“Appeal,” Professor Coffin
shouted.

“
How do we get out of here?”
I asked.

“Show us the exit,” Madison
said.

“I demand a shower,” Professor Coffin
said. “I’m aged and I’m filthy. Work with me here,
people.”

“
He’s been a fugitive for
four hundred years,” Madison snorted.

“You can’t get out here,” Kaiser
said.

“Nobody gets out alive,” Madison
snorted.

“You see our dilemma,” I
said.

“I certainly wasn’t expecting to
leave,” Professor Coffin huffed.

“You have to take us prisoner,” Madison
said.

“What kind of blasted hoosegow is this
anyway?” Professor Coffin demanded.

“He isn’t going to take us prisoner,” I
groaned

“That’s the first step towards setting
you free,” Kaiser said. “You’re the last free witches in
creation.”