CRAIG’S WORLD c ’
Jade Bové
raig woke up with his head on a rock in the middle of the woods. It was getting dark, and there was a small fire in front of him. His head was foggy—he couldn’t hold on to a memory for longer than a few moments before it blurred into obscurity. The name “Macy” kept echoing in his brain, along with an unknown symphonic that he could only half-hear, like the remnants of a dream. Each time the name reverberated against the walls of his skull, his chest tightened and his eyes moistened. There was a strange taste in his mouth and an afterimage of crimson. He looked down to check for injuries. He stretched his legs and flexed his arms and scratched his behind. His hands were dirty. A rusty brown substance stained the wrinkles of his hands and lined his nails. He hated dirty hands. Everything else seemed to be in order. He looked around for a water source so he might freshen up. He was wearing his favorite suit, the one with large shoulder pads and the sleeves permanently rolled up to his elbows. It was wrinkled. He hated wrinkly clothes. The ash grey of the suit and salmon pink of his shirt betrayed his sense of fashion. Despite this small flaw, he was attractive by anyone’s standards. He reached up to wipe the sweat from his forehead and found he was wearing a helmet. He took it off. It was a football helmet wrapped in aluminum foil. “Why the hell am I wearing this?” he thought. As he looked at it, something inside his chest started punching at his ribcage; something else was pushing the boundaries of his skull. Panicking, he shoved the helmet back on his head, and the stress subsided.
Craig gazed at the dancing flames and tried to remember. Several minutes passed. He decided to wait here—wherever “here” was—feeding the fire with his thoughts, and possibly some wood, until morning. He was so busy thinking about his situation that he didn’t notice the Administrator had shown up. The Administrator was a short man, gnome-short to be precise, and round like a plum with beanpole thin limbs. He emerged from the bushes dragging a small soapbox behind him. He swore mightily as his conical red hat became tangled in the shrubbery. The little gnome stopped across the fire from Craig, stood on his little soapbox, took out a little pipe, took a few little puffs, and cleared his little throat. “Ah-hem!” Craig’s shrill scream took all of the birds and squirrels in the trees above him so completely by surprise that they simultaneously loosened their bowels upon the quaint campfire and its immediate area. Craig didn’t want to think about the cost of dry cleaning. “Hmmmm, yes. Thank you, Craig. I have had better introductions, but that will have to do,” said the Administrator, wiping some berry- and nut-scented goo off his shoulder. “You don’t exactly have all the time in the world.” Craig’s nice suit now looked like a baby-sealskin dyed orange from the firelight. “Who are you? What am I doing here? Where am I? Who’s going to pay for my suit to get cleaned?” The gnome, irritated by all of the questions, exhaled a small cloud of smoke. “I am the Administrator. I greet new travelers in this land. My name is Seamus O’McMally. Everybody who comes to this land stops here at my campfire first. I help them figure out how they got here and which way they need to go to get home.” Craig wrinkled his brow, and tugged thoughtfully at his ear. “What are you? Some kind of elf or fairy or something?” “No!” the Administrator replied hastily and rather defensively. “The elves are a bunch of stuck-up pricks who think that just because there were a couple famous plays written about them that they are hot shit. We prefer to be called Supernaturally Endowed Vertically Impaired Mineral Workers. Jerk-offs, like you, would call us gnomes. To be precise I am a Rather Plump Rolling Hill Gnome, of the Hill Rolling clan.” “What does that mean?” asked Craig. “It means that me and my kin are rather plump,” he gestured to his midsection, “and in our spare time we take great pleasure in rolling down hills. Try it sometime, if your anus ever unclenches.” He paused. “The name really says it all; most things here are named literally by what they do and what they are. Honestly, why do you mortals insist on complicating everything with meanings? May I continue?” Craig nodded, taken aback by the gnome’s annoyance. “Good. Now according to protocol we need to find out what it was that led you here before we can send you back to whatever world it is that you came from.”