The Wish Belly XVIII
Photo courtesy of Shane Kimberlin
April 15, 2023
Shane Kimberlin
The Wish Belly is an original fiction serial. If you missed prior installments, you can catch up at the links below.
We asked Melinda how to get back to the cave.
“I don’t know. Just go back from where you came. It’ll work itself out.”
“Thanks for everything,” I said.
“Sure. Hey, when you find her,” she smiled, “both of you come in here. Dinner on me.”
“Thanks, Melinda. Yeah. We will.”
“That’s rude of you to not invite HER to dinner,” said Leo.
We all laughed.
We left Highway Blues in good spirits, taking a left down the hall and retracing our steps. The walls were blankly grey and smooth. I looked back at the doors of the cafe one more time and marveled at its impressive features: the deep rich black painted doors that seemed so out of place for a modest business. The doorknobs, a golden bear and lion, looked at each other from their respective position and appeared to be smiling. I didn’t notice them smiling before.
“Back down the hallway we go,” said Leo.
“Why don’t other students walk this way?”
“They must,” said Leo, “but it’s different for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. But they can’tallgotothatcave,right?” The light that hung over the Hallway Blues door grew smaller, and so did our sight. I turned on the backlight of my phone.
“Yeah,” I said, “I wonder. What do you think about Highway Blues? And Melinda?”
“If I wasn’t a cat, I would fancy her.”
“Okay.”
“Good milk. Warm place. Better than this hall.”
“But what do you think about her?” “Do I think she’s just a business owner and life-long college student? Is this what you ask me?”
“Yes.”
“No, I would say, she is not just that. And that is fine.”
The walls turned to a lighter grey that I didn’t recognize from before.
“Doesn’t this look different?”
“Perhaps you just don’t remember.”
The walls were positioned to make the floors slightly wider, then smaller, then wider again. This repeated many times, and they appeared to oscillate. “This is new,” I said.
“Yes,” said Leo, “the hall’s walls aren’t the same for everybody. This much is clear.”
“Why is that?”
“Who knows? Because it is.”
It occurred to me Leo didn’t much bother knowing the Why of things. This was a wonderful trait to have. The Why of things would be laughable to a talking cat. The Why was not only not important, it just wasn’t around.
“Who do you think she is?” I asked.
“Who knows? She knows Hoshi. This much is special. She knows where we need to go next. She knows more. I would bet, then what she lets on. But what of it? All of us wear the mask of what we hope is normal, so the real and strange parts of us can thrive below its armor. Like roots of diamonds un- derneath the wheat and chaff. But the mask we choose is a real choice all the same. Look.”
Small scratched drawings aligned the cold walls. Ran-dom objects. Tree. Boat. Train. Cactus. Cloud. Brick.
“Weird,” I said, “Graffiti.”
“All nouns. How do you say...hieroglyphics?”
“I didn’t see these before.”
“They weren’t here before.”
We kept walking. A slow, steady pace. The tapping of our shoes and the swish of the pants created a ticking sound of a clock. That was the sound of a return to the task at hand, away from the break of reality back into the descent of some dream.
“How long were we at Highway Blues?”
Leo said, “After we awoke? I would guess five hours.”
I didn’t remember the hallway being this long. But time’s movement has a funny way of changing based on the hour of day or how hungry you are. A few other drawings dotted both sides of the wall. There were ducks and candles, cups and gloves.
There was something up ahead. It was in the middle of the hallway. It filled up the hallway. A wall. “Dead end,” said Leo.
The stone wall was perfectly gray and looked, in both texture and form, just like the hallway walls. More graffiti. A house with a chimney on the far side. An urn of flowers on the bottom left. Scribblings. Heart shapes. A cloud. A tree. In the very middle was positioned the largest drawing: a scratched, amateurish sketch of an old man, wearing a straw hat and sitting in a rocking chair.
“Well, what have we here?” I said to myself.
“Howdy,” said the drawing.
Leo and I jumped back.
“Didn’t mean to scare ya,” the drawing said in a southern accent. His arm moved and his hand waved. The rocking chair began to roll back and forth like film animation. Cut lines scurried around the wall’s surface, never changing length or thickness, but showing the figure on the wall as some living figure.
“You didn’t scare us,” I said.
“That’s a-good. Don’t have much company ‘round these parts. Fitto’s my name. I’m Eye-Talian, don’t let this Southern accent fool ya, it confuses the best of ‘em. So what brings you down through this neck of the sure-fire non-woods?”
I said, “We’re just walking down the hallway.”
“I see that. Just passing through, huh?”
Leo said, “We’re trying to get back to where we were before.”
“Isn’t everybody doing that, kitty kat? Like, deep, deep down, down doing that?”
“He doesn’t mean in a metaphor.”
“Meta-what?” said the drawing, “did you say metal floor? My dear boy, this is concrete and stone. English-made. Well, I hope anyway. Say, if you play a game with me, do you reckon I’d let you through?”
“Are you asking us to play a game with you?”
“No, we haven’t got to that-there question yet. See, I’m asking you if YOU think you’d have to play a game with ME before I’D let you through, or, OR, I’d just LET you through regardless, even though I am QUITE a lonely and bored drawing.”
“I think,” I said, “that you would let us through regardless, ‘cause you’re that good of a guy.”
“Me too,” said Leo, “good guy.”
“Well, I’m touched, fellers, really,” said Fitto, “but you’re completely wrong. I’d like to ask a riddle. Are ya’ll game to try?”
“Okay,” I sighed.
“If you answer the riddle, I, in my infinite power over this very finite realm, will let you pass. Deal?”
I have never liked riddles. “Okay,” I said.
“Well shucks,” said Fitto, “okay then, time to spit this one out. I heard this from another drawing a long, long time ago. Wait, no, NO, I came UP with this riddle. Yeah, that’s it. A while ago now. Here we go. You ready? Ahem:
‘If you use it too much, you’ll lose it,
but if you don’t use it at all, you’ve lost it all the same’”
“Well?” said Fritto.
I said nothing.
Leo licked his paws.
I have never liked riddles.
Wish Belly Installments: