"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"~Steven Wright
Will stood in the elephant room, in front of a mirror, and as far away from the jar of lanterns that was perched on Peanut's desk as he could get. He could feel the jars emptiness filling up the room; trying to pull him in and make him live in his failures. For now, he ignored them. The mirror was a sufficient distraction. An egomaniac with only one mirror. Will laughed aloud. One can't have enough mirrors!
"Mirror mirror on the wall, I'm the best." Will laughed aloud again. Peanut must be quite a sight in the mornings; standing in front of his mirror and combing that ridiculous hair, quietly encouraging his ego. Will looked at his reflection smiling back at him. The mirror seemed nervous, making his reflection blurry; probably unused to reflecting smiles. Will tried to coerce his face into apathy, bringing his lips into a taught line that ran parallel with his now leveled nose. He put his hands in his pockets, jammed them down into the deepest lint mines and made his lips manipulate an invisible toothpick. The mirror was unsatisfied; it continued to blur his appearance. Somewhat frustrated at his failed attempt at apathy, Will saw a comb on Peanut's nightstand. Ah yes, you are good mirror, even devious, but I am smarter. He picked up the comb and ran back in front of the mirror, adopting his former stance and now running the comb through his hair. It was a scythe, chopping hairs and ripping stocks up by the roots. Will grimaced and made an attempt to extract the comb. It remained, stuck in the curls and frizz. The mirror chuckled. Will turned around; his new image in the mirror had his mouth sagging to his chin. One more yank. He pulled the comb free, along with a lock of hair and some accompanying tears, that rolled down his frowned face, which funneled them onto his shirt. Will walked over to the bed. Stupid mirror, what did it know. No one cares about apathy anyway.
The room returned to its somewhat unstable equilibrium, boxing Will into a submissive corner. Will's gaze returned to the painting by Renaldo Dali. Renaldo seemed right, he must be gallant to paint something like that. A sort of eccentric knight, or Spanish Conquistador. Satisfied with the name, Will tore his eyes away from the painting and began to grow curious about things behind locked doors and gathering dust under the bed. The unmentionables and the unnoticeable that lay out of sight crept into Will's mind and feathered the muscle of curiosity. He knelt down and lifted the bed sheet, awaiting a hand or emaciated child that Peanut kept as a pet to leap out at him and beg for freedom. Nothing. Just Battleship. No pet child could fit in a Battleship box.
What a strange sense of disappointment the absence of a pet toddler can instill. Will sat himself up, and then stood. The plaster stars didn't shine on the ceiling, just kept quiet beneath the off white paint. They were simply another universe that Peanut kept the reigns on. They all stood in rows, silent, dull, and dead. The mirror was still smugly nestled on the closet door, awaiting the stance of an apathetic professional. Will walked casually over to the mirror, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the bed still remained free of psychotic pets, and pulled the closet door open, which seemed to silence the mirrors griping.
Jam jars sat on the shelves, replacements for clothes and ties; clothes that were most likely hiding underneath the carpet or in the bottom of the trashcan. Strawberry, grape, peach; every flavor rested in the refrigerator of clothing, keeping their deceased occupants cool and ready for embalming. Will inched closer to the jars. Would a gasp be fitting? No, no gasps; just wear a forlorn look, a look that you use at funerals of very distant relatives.
A praying mantis was hanging limply from the crux of a branch, like it had been lynched by a radical anti-mantis group. The eyes hung black in the doldrums of their sockets, the praying hands hanging at its sides, defeated, the remnants of a martyrs last prayer. Dead lanterns lay in the bottom of the adjacent jar, the bodies shriveled, stacked atop each other. Some of their bodies stuck in the air holes crudely punched in the jars tin lid; stuck in their life giving holes. Will took his eyesight to the bottom most shelf. The innards of the jar was in shambles. Grasshopper bodies decomposed underneath the debris, their legs separated and leaning against the side of the jar like shovels and rakes in a garage.
"Appears you have found my marble orchard then." Peanuts monotone voice mundanely shot up Will's spine, hitting nerves and severing cords; he decided to remain frozen, and hope Peanut's anger was based on eyesight. He could hear Peanut's hair moaning in contentment as the comb's brush strokes sounded out lapping waves, an endless ocean of waves combed everyday. Peanut spoke dryly, "Quite a collection, isn't it? That is just this summer's worth. For some reason or another I can't bring myself to empty the jars, feels like my collecting was all for nought. So I prefer to keep them hidden, that way I can still enjoy them." Will turned around and looked at Peanut, who was standing, phone in hand, in the exact stance of apathy Will had been so earnestly trying to mock. It was the eyes Will had been missing; Peanut's lids hung lazily over his eyes, shielding them from interpretation and making his face sag. Will frowned, a momentary slip of visible unhappiness. The mirror glowed cheerfully behind him.
The phone rang, startling Will and even causing Peanut to flinch. The curtains and carpet wiggled with the sound, jarred awake by noise that was otherwise lacking. Countless pairs of elephant eyes shifted from the walls and ceilings, peered from inside desk drawers at what the ruckus was, slaying the silent peace and erecting a raucous regime. RING. Peanut held the phone away from his chest, gripping the end by slender fingers as if the phone would soon explode. RING. It was a dull, numb sound that burrowed a hole into the places where holes were not permitted and let the sound leak into the body, flooding the senses. RING. Will pointed to the phone, with a bent index finger, like the Ghost of Christmas yet to come pointing out the fate of mankind and mouthed the abbreviated instructions for answering a phone. RING. Peanut attempted to shoot venom back at Will, but the sound shot it down, left the hateful glances shriveled and lifeless on the floor. A joyful click silenced the unharmonious, strident sound of some unknown caller, standing in their kitchen impatiently, a shadow of a body posing as a friend with a voice that sounded inside houses and woke the parents of mischevious children and the husbands of pregnant wives. The ring shooting through wires and foisting unwanted sounds into unlit homes. Peanut answered with the already soundly established talent of phone answering, polite but vaguely direct.
"Hello. Peanut speaking."
A muffled voice sputtered on the other line, a voice that was coming from the ocean or being spoken by a man lost in an untamed forest, searching for a signal that would point him back to civilization. Will bent his ears, cupped a hand around them, that nestled against the side of his head like a tailored hat. The words shuffled around the room, covered in a wool blanket that distorted their features and gave only an obscure outline unbeffiting to their natural shape. Will's cheeks flushed with frustration as Peanut simply nodded his head during the brief intervals of silence, after which the voice would launch into another static tale as if it had perceived the nod, giving it the go-ahead.
Peanut eased the receiver into one of his palms, cupping the sound into the fortune telling lines and blotting it out. "It's your father, he needs to talk to you about something or other. I'm not really sure what about, he is rambling." Will nodded and offered a hand, in which Peanut gladly placed the phone, where it buzzed impatiently, a steady breathing quietly making it's way from across Will's front yard and over fences and zipping along wires underneath the feet of squaking blue jays into the empty air of Peanut's room.
"Hi dad, uh, what is going up?" The line lay dead, Will collapsed upon himself. He had killed his father by the failure of piecing together a simple hello.
"Oh, hi there sport. I'm not sure what you mean but everything is fine, I just wanted to remind you to be home by two tomorrow. That's two P.M., not A.M." Muffled chuckles hit the ear piece, knocking Will back and making Peanut cringe at his desk. The remnants of Will's fathere's self-induced laughter hung in his voice as he returned to the reciever. "Now don't be gallavanting around all night, and be respectful to women, and don't throw any stones." With the trifecta of parenting advice swimming in Will's ears, his father took a deep breath of satisfaction; an inhale of pride at his parenting capabilities. Will said unenthusiastically, "I will dad, no stones, I gotta go." His father clucked a few last words of encouragement and understanding and killed the line, the room sighed.
Peanut hunched over his desk, shuffling papers and arranging an area free of clutter for Will to perform his contriver duties. A clean sheet of paper, glowing yellow underneath the desk lamp, and an overly-sharpened pencil where the lead came to an infinitesimal point, sloping away to the yellow neck were placed in the open space; the eye of the storm, ordered and the least dangerous if one could find it.
"Here, you work in the hole I cleared and I will put a call into Nite. We will need his help tonight." Peanut took the phone from Will and walked over to his bed where he began punching numbers, scanning through a book that he had opened on the bed. Will turned to his work, picking up the pencil and snapped the pointed end off, which left a dull stub. The graphite etched paper into shapes and plans; projections of world domination and savory revenge oozed from the pencil point as if the plans had all been tightly bound inside the wood shavings, locked in a knot of a now defaced tree, waiting to bring lives and hopes to a blinding halt.
The chatter and dealings of Peanut lingered behind Will's thoughts, shadows that darted in and out of corners, causing a momentary stir but then settling neatly into the ground. Will had met Nite only once, when he had been apart of his former army. His perceptions of people had been pure and soundly based then; he could take in the attire and facial exressions and posture, blend them into a satisfying description and place people in neat bins of personalities and intentions. Nite had been apathetic, but a genuine apathy that was almost liberating, unlike the confining apahty of Peanut that pulled enthusiasm up by the roots and beat all dissenting feelings into callous, stagnated shells, where light used reign and now only a gloomy paleness lit the bare walls.
Goldenrod stocks were drawn at angles on the page, the field of golden globes that Peanut considered his own was laid out in an oval shape stradling Soldier Beetle Field. Distinct X's were marked around the peremiter of the area as a whole, to symbolize where Peanut, Will and Hopefully Nite would be positioned to attack with the most efficiency. Plans enveloped Will like a second skin, a satisfying outer layer that sluffed off onto paper and wiggled into precise and flawless manuevers that would leave any enemy detached of their head. Will took pride in his work, meticuously calculating every possible turn of events, becoming the enemy, morphing his thoughts into that of a deviant and sly war lord. Execution never entered Will's mind; his brain plugged in situations with cold, analytical exactitude, but never wandered outside the realm of the definite, never envisioned circumstances where reality might nudge his plans aside. Perhaps the beauty of the Hellenic army was Will's unrivaled tactics and Peanut's savvy for in battle decisions. The other armies were more than vaguely aware of the two man armies capabilites, but the strength that lay in numbers did not lay with the Hellenic, so alternatives were arranged.
Will let the pencil rest calmly against the paper, making a faint dot of lead above his own X. Contemplation was through, the plans were lounging in his brain, reading magazines in the waiting room, simple waiting to be called. He could relax, let his mind wander. Sounds of Peanut's coyness floated over and he let his ears inch open, and the sound rustled around, telling Will words and stories he already knew. Peanut was an artisan of persuausion, could persuade the devil to vacation in Alaska. Will darkened the X representing Nite, for he would be there, that Will was certain of.
Deadly, unwavering persuasion was the reason for Will's existence. In his previous army, when he was a merry man of Sherwood, life heaped all that it posessed at his feet; offered him all the benefits that a lifetime is spent yearning and dying for; the vanity in front of the truth. Power, fame, friends gained, a say, land; everything was orbiting his decision, he had been the man behind the leader, prodding power in selfish directions. There was no reason for leaving Sherwood's Merry Men, they had stood for something, and that was what life was for, believing in something and fighting for it. Now he wallowed as a servant; a slave that was bent and molded by the lash of a rulers words; he stood for nothing now, but he could sense a feeling, a faint perception of genuineness in Peanut that had been lacking from his previous army. Plans carved yawning chasms and sweating walls of labrynths beneath Peanut's exterior, and despite the outward apathy and cruelty, Will felt as if Peanut knew about larger ideas, had captured the answer to every riddle and stored them away from sight, so Will stayed subservient, hoping for truth and answers to come.
A beep stung Will's ears as Peanut eased off the bed leaving the phone on the bed, closing the book he had been scanning and walked toward Will, who began straightening up surrounding papers as a vain attempt at being industrious, even though nothing was getting done. Peanut leaned over Will's shoulder and glanced over the plans, eyes moving back and forth, snapping from one detail to the other, scrutinizing.
"This is good, and Nite is coming with the tools we need. I don't like you being way in the back of the field, and I know you do this intentionally because you don't want to fight, you peace loving hippy, but we will need you tonight." Peanut motioned to the pencil, which Will assumed meant to erase himself and place an X where Peanut decided; Will hated being close to the battle, but he wasn't a hippy. The two talked quietly, breathed slow gusts of sighs out their noses and discussed manuevers; Peanut needed a well oiled machine going into battle, but he had the tools to fix it lest it break down.
"Hey, pin heads. Who is listening to Bob Seger, I know you know." Peanut's brother seemed a silhoette of himself in the doorway, his black shirt ran into the door jambs seamlessly, hanging on his thin, sloping shoulders and his painted on jeans were snuggly shooting into the ground covering his unapparent feet. "Now I heard like a rock, and so help me once I find who is playing it, I'm sending them straight to hell, just POOf, down to demon city!" Peanut's brother made a gun with his thumb and index finger and pointed it at them, staring down the end of the barrel, sending them both to hell. "You dweebs prolly don't even listen to Seger, I'm giving you too much credit. I bet it's dad and his stupid ass-hole record machine. That thing is going to hell!" With a quick spin of his hand he blew out the smoke rolling from his barrel and holstered his Hades revolver. Doors slammed all down the hall, a chorus of angry wood, most likely going to hell, as Peanut's brother left numerous rooms in a flurry.
"Idiot." Peanut did not apologize or attempt to explain his brothers actions; he assumed that Will would surmise that his brother was insane, and that was close enough to the truth for him.
"We need to go to the garage and get some balloons, and I'll go downstairs and cooking oil from my mom's closet. Nite has all the rest of the materials we need." Peanut gathered the now perfected plans off his desk and stuffed them in a worn knapsack that he had on the bed, along with a book entitled, "The Tactics of Hannibal." Peanut continued in his outlines and instructions, "I'm going to put you in charge of the pellet gun. Don't aim for heads, this is only to teach them a lesson, for their own good of course." Will percieved the sly smile that gripped Peanut's face that spoke the opposite of what he had just said. "You will be at the beginning of my field of dandelions. Be sure to stay out of them, I don't want you crushing them; just kneel on the outskirts and wait for Nite and I to carry out our manuevers, then you deliver the remembrance shots." Pellets, insect repelent, matches all went into the knapsack, along with several tiny glass viles that Peanut carried with him in case he discovered anything interesting in the field without his jars. Will listened intently, knowing that it was nearing the breaking point, a time where Peanut sidestepped idle conversation and drew in his perephrial vision, narrowing his sight and broadening what he saw.
The sun was being put out of it's misery, falling into the horizon, chasing it's own tail. The last hints of zenith rays reclined in the cracks of the cement and cooled on the air conditioned paneling of houses. Birds around the neighborhood took the rest of the day off, twittering in a woods somewhere, resting and at ease underneath the shifting shadows of forest leaves and unseen insects burrowing and tunnleing underneath decaying logs and discarded leaves. Escaping light tapped on Peanut's window, sighing and moaning, making the window glow at the edges, like the light behind the door of an enchanted world; Peanut's window, the next spare oom.
Peanut had his knapsack slung over his back, marching toward the door, but Will could only look to the painting, where the elephants towered, eclipsing red sky and shadowing desert houses. There legs bending in slow motion, and causing the specks of humans to seem irrelevant. "Peanut, sir what is this painting..or who is it by I mean?" Peanut didn't turn his head; he grappled in his breast pocket for the key to his room. "That is by Salvador Dali, and it is Hannibal's elephants that he took over the mountains. Every good leader needs elephants."
