Chapter 4

               Esbon is a small town located about more or less six miles to the directly east of Lebanon, Kansas, and a little bit north. Surprisingly, unbelievably, it is in fact, smaller than Lebanon. It was in this location that little Marylou Hemsley found herself stretching her vocal abilities to almost literally their breaking point. As the only child of her parents, and being not a boy, her father had been forced to instruct his little Mary in the art of being a son. She was in the process of digging a well in the back of their farm house shortly before she began to scream. She would be the first to admit that it seemed strange to be digging a well when they had plenty of running water and since wells hadn’t really been used in years; but she wasn’t one to argue with her father. At least, not when he wasn’t around, because, let’s be honest, what’s the point in arguing with somebody that isn’t even around? Marylou was not one to scream very often, but she did at this point. As she struck her shovel into the ground, it struck something hard and clinky. As she bent down to look at what she had hit a strange, dark, thick and sticky goo spit out of the ground and into her face. Her eyes really, were the only thing that were gunked, and her left ear. Spluttering and gasping she reached to clear her eyes only to find her hands stuck in the strange goo as well. Stumbling about she tripped over her fallen shovel and pitched head first into her well, screaming as she fell.

                If some unhelpful bystander had been unhelpful enough to have witnessed both of these unfortunate occurrences, that of poor Mary, and that of strange Samuel, they would have been very perplexed, primarily because of the duration of the screams; in both cases as the subject in question fell into the hole that each had symbolically created their scream should only have lasted mere parts of a second. Neither hole was particularly deep you see. The reality was though that their screams lasted many seconds, and faded with every one.

                Samuel passed out some number of seconds into his fall, because sometime after he had landed, he woke up, already on the ground. He was lying on his back, on something hard that made his head throb. He tried to sit up and open his eyes, but they were still full of thistle. Without thinking about it, he scooped up some sand and rubbed it into his eyes. It ended up being cat litter, but it worked. With his vision cleared, and his head foggy, he looked around to try to figure out what was going on. Quickly realizing that he was never going to accomplish that, he gave up and started building a sand castle. He started with a moat, and then the foundations, and by the time he began building the walls, the tide of some sea began lapping at the edges of his defenses. Quickly the citizens of the new kingdom began to throw up defenses to save their new home. Not vomit, but literally throwing handfuls of sand up into dikes that would hopefully split the oncoming waves and repel them around their new sedimentary abode. They successfully repelled the first and second waves, but succumbed to the third and after with terribly high mortality rates. Little more than a sand pile now and quickly disappearing out to sea with its doomed denizens, the unfortunate kingdom ceased to exist. Being thoroughly disturbed by the consequences of just wanting to build a stupid sand castle, Sam cautiously backed away from the beach, eyebrows raised, eyes wide, and nostrils flared. At that point he realized that he was actually missing an eye, which was extremely confusing. Glancing around, he spotted it in the sand next to the impression that could only be the place he had landed. He walked over to it, spit on it go get the sand off, and popped it back into his head. That’s when he heard something strange. It sounded like a mix between a mountain lion, a peacock, and a gerbil, but was in fact a strange girl stuck in a strange tree a ways down the strange beach where the strangest things seemed to keep happening. Samsam approached cautiously, because he had grown wary of his surroundings. Stupid thistle. He called up to the girl and asked her if she was real. When she screamed down to him with a uniquely well rounded vocabulary that she was “real enough to break his scrawny little neck” he realized that he probably didn’t want to help her down at all. He did though, sort of. At that moment the strange vines that were holding her airborne in the tree slithered away and she fell, landing on Sam. Gasping, wheezing, coughing, groaning, and covered in ants the two removed themselves from each other. After a few moments, and a weak ‘thanks’ Marylou introduced herself to Sam, and then recognized him as the kid from school who was always covered in gum, and groaned even more loudly. They didn’t talk much for a while; they were both very perplexed about their dual situation. They would occasionally ask each other pointed questions about what had happened, and how they had come to find themselves in this predicament, what they had been doing before they fell, and eventually had a pretty clear idea that they would never understand what had happened. They went back to not talking. In fact, there was so little going on at all that even the ants decided leave, which is a pretty big deal, because ants don’t get bored easily! Plus I’m pretty sure they thrive off of awkward situations, so . . .

                The two had no idea how much time had passed, but it seemed like maybe a lot, they both began to wonder what they should do, but didn’t want to bring it up to the other. The place in which they found themselves was an interesting one to say the least, it was a beach, and there was an ocean, the sand was not like the sand in the sandbox in there elementary school, which some kid told them came from the ocean once, but like nothing either of them had ever seen before. Also the trees were none that they had ever seen, even in movies or pictures. There were also a lot of very strange noises in the jungle behind them, even though it wasn’t what you’d think of for a typical jungle. As they were sitting there, they had just begun to discuss the idea of walking down the beach instead of just sitting there, when they saw a small white and red rabbit dragon hop out of the trees. They stared at it curiously, and it stared right back, just as curiously, but also secretly hungrily too. It played up its rabbit characteristics the best it could, big, wide, watery eyes, playing coy and fragile and not freaky. Even it was pretty surprised that it worked, really. Marylou was instantly in love! Sam was instantly disgusted, but curious. Neither of them was scared though, which is exactly what little Scaleybear, as Mary immediately named it, was hoping for. And so, Scaleybear in arms, and ignorant of any danger from the cute little monster, they began to walk down the beach to look for something else. They weren’t really sure what sort of a thing they were looking for, but it made about as much sense as just sitting and not doing anything, plus they were going to have to find someplace to sleep eventually. They quickly discovered that they were on a very very very small island. It took precisely 10 minutes for them to walk all the way around the beach, although it hadn’t seemed like they had walked in a circle, they had been walking straight the entire time, sure the beach curved a little, but it wasn’t a circle either. Sam knew where they were though, because there were the remnants of his unfortunate sand castle. He shuddered as he remembered how terrifying that had been. At the sound of a loud and surprised ‘yelp’ Salmon whipped around to find Mary holding her bleeding finger, and Scaleybear in the sand whimpering. Scaleybear had apparently gotten a little too comfortable, fallen asleep and bitten Mary in its sleep. Sam wasn’t sure why she was defending it so vehemently, or why she had made up such a convenient excuse for the thing, but all he could do was look at the pair of them with pursed lips and one raised eyebrow. Hopefully the thing wasn’t poisonous. It had quickly gotten rather dark, so the trio sat down next to the fire and Sam tended to Mary’s finger. It wasn’t a bad bite, it didn’t even really bleed, but Sam was concerned about infection, so he spit on it, rubbed some sand in it to make it a little muddy, and wrapped it tightly in a long skinny leaf. Never having learned any kind of first aid, he wasn’t sure if this was a good idea, but he wanted to look capable. With nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and nothing to sleep on but the inflatable mattresses they had set up around the fire, they decided they would just go to sleep and wait until morning. Luckily neither of them was really hungry. As Sam was lying there, he suddenly realized that absolutely nothing made sense. WHERE THE HECK DID THE FIRE COME FROM??? The mattresses made a little more sense, but he was so confused about everything else that had happened that day. Tired of thinking, he fell quickly into a restless sleep.

                Sam wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep; it couldn’t have been very long, because it was still dark and the fire was still going mysteriously strong. He also wasn’t sure why he had woken. He sat up groggily and looked around, trying to sort through the events of the previous day, he saw the ocean, the beach, the trees, the fire, Marylou lying on her back, eyes open wide staring blankly into the sky above, Scaleybear lying next to her, her arm in his mouth almost up to her elbow, and back to the ocean again. Realizing what he had just seen, he jumped to his feet, fell over his mattress, nearly landing in the fire, jumped to his feet again, and ran to Mary’s side. Mary seemed to be in some kind of a trance, unaware that she was slowly being eaten by her newly found pet. Sam had no idea what to do. It looked like Scaleybear had attempted to swallow Mary whole, he seemed to be stuck and completely incapacitated. He looked sheepishly at Sam, and it almost looked like he shrugged his shoulders too. Apparently Scaleybear had indeed been poisonous, though not fatally. Sam considered whether or not to try to remove the leech, or if it would just cause further damage, he decided to remove it, failed, and decided it might be best to leave it on. Having positively no idea what to do, Sam resorted back to his rudimentary first aid skills. He ran to the ocean, grabbed some water, mixed it with some sand, and poured it in Mary’s eyes. Definitely not the best idea. Though, admittedly, not the worst either. She didn’t wake up. Then it hit him! He moved around to her other side, because it was weird to have the helpless Scaleybear staring at him all the time. He carefully smoothed out his clothes, mentally preparing himself, wiped his lips on his sleeve, closed his eyes, and slowly bent towards her. He really should have waited to close his eyes, but she was next to unconscious, so it was fine. His aim was off a little, and their noses collided a bit, but being somewhat familiar with the anatomy of the human and more specifically the female face, he knew where to find her lips. He softly kissed her, hoping there was enough passion to break whatever spell she was under. There apparently wasn’t though, and after about 2 full minutes, he realized that this probably wasn’t working. He sat back, maximally embarrassed, and super grateful that there was nobody watching. He wiped his mouth again, did a small cough, and feeling more ridiculous than he ever had before, decided to just go back to sleep, he had done everything he could.

                Sam woke when the sun creeped up and touched his face from above the trees behind him. Mary woke up at the same time, and yawned. She was very concerned about the events that had taken place the night before, except for the ones that Sam didn’t tell her, like the, um, kiss. Also, when she asked about how she had gotten so much sand in her eyes, he pretended not to know and said something cryptic about it being windy. Scaleybear looked at him with knowing squinty eyes. They could think of no way to remove the little guy from her hand, but quickly discovered that they probably didn’t need to. She was completely functional with the parasite attached; as she moved her fingers, his body mimicked the movements she made; her thumb moved his front left leg, her first finger the back. Her middle finger moved his tail, and her ring and pinkie moved his front and back right legs. It was as if she was wearing an awkward and disturbing glove, but it worked. She had some problems with dexterity, but could maintain a firm grip on anything as long as she could get a hold of it. Sam just laughed at how ridiculous this all was. They quickly stored their meager belongings in the back of their Jeep and set out on their way. It was a beautiful day for a drive down the beach, the breeze blowing through the windows and tousling their hair. They had both developed considerable hunger pains during the night, but unlike Scaleybear, they didn’t really have many options. On their 7^th or 8^th loop around the island, Mary spotted something from the window. Sure enough, there in one of the trees, hanging from multiple weary branches, were fruit baskets! Sam had no idea how he was going to reach them, because as they approached the tree they discovered that it was completely entangled in some botanous form of razor wire. He thought about it for several moments, he considered kissing the tree for about 2 milliseconds, then in response to that, threatened himself if he ever came up with that idea again for anything. Finally, decided on a plan of action. It was rudimentary, and not likely to work, but he didn’t have anything else to do. He walked up to the tree, found a spot free of sharpness, and punched the tree with every ounce of strength he had. Approximately 37,298,323 flies popped into existence with a deafening explosion! Sam did not hear it however, as his brain and eyes were still flashing from the pain of his arboreal encounter. Mary however was completely thrown off guard, first by Sam’s incredible stupidity, then by the bang, then by what looked like thousands of flies pouring out of the hole that Sam had created in the trunk of the great tree.

                When Sam finally came too, his hand looked like 2 lbs of ground beef, and felt as if it had been mistaken for unground beef a short time ago, and was fed into a grinder. He walked over to the tree and broke of large razor blade and adeptly scraped the beef from his hand. If Scaleybear had not been otherwise occupied, Sam likely would have fed the beef to him, because Sam felt guilty about unnecessary wasting. Cleaning the remaining cow from his hand with some wetwipes that Mary had given him, Sam studied the hole he had created. Putting his mouth close to the hole, he spoke to the tree. “Hey, ya dumb tree! Give us some of those baskets of food, ok?” He had decided that this was the kind of tree that would respond best to controlled intimidation. It didn’t care about nice, and it obviously didn’t like bullies, but it could see clear enough when it was in the presence of a superior being. After a small hesitation, the tree shuddered in response, and then let loose a particularly large basket that just happened to be hanging directly above Sam’s unconvincing head.

                15 minutes, that’s how long Mary said he was unconscious for. She had dragged him back to their jeep and sorted all the fruit into their respective ROY G BIV ubication. Sam was not having a particularly good day. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take of this. Oh, and of course, now the fruit was all crawling away, obviously it couldn’t have been real fruit, it had to be crabs that looked like fruit when they were all curled up, not only that, they had to be vindictive crabs that felt like they needed to attack them. He couldn’t deal with it; he started muttering nonsense to himself and just went and sat on the hood of the car. He just sat and watched them chase Mary, they weren’t fast though, and she easily outran them. He just kept muttering to himself, trying to dismiss everything as normal. Mary quickly came running up from behind and joined him on the hood, panting. She was saying something angrily about leaving her, but he couldn’t be bothered. So she slapped him. Right across the face. Unfortunately, she used her Scaleybear hand and knocked him backwards off the hood. He was immediately seized by the entire cast of crabs. He writhed and wriggled and rolled to try to get the stupid little crustaceans to let go, but he was largely unsuccessful. Via his peripheral senses he was able to ascertain that Mary was in some kind of trouble too - oh, yes very much in trouble. It seemed that after she had knocked him off the jeep, she had been attacked by the swarm of flies that he had released. They were actually carrying her away with them? Really? He paused for a moment in his struggling to stare in disbelief at what he was disbelieveingly staring at. As he sat staring, he saw a large part of the swarm detach itself from the rest and speed towards him. It was immediate darkness of the most disturbing kind, the sun and all of the hope, love and peace that it emanates were entirely gone in an instant, and then the crabs were gone in an instant, and then the sun was back in an instant, but the crabs were still gone. They were protecting him? The flies? Helping him? Flies? Him? He was not at all surprised when a sinkhole opened up directly underneath him and he fell into wet Lebanonian darkness.

Chapter 3

Mr. and Mrs. Ickison were in their car, driving, which was not unusual. They had just left an underground dogfight. It was, in fact, underground. The place had been built by bootleggers from the prohibition, anticipating that there would always be a need for their particular talents. They had built a subbasement under the normal basement with a secret entrance for anyone interested in a little recreation. It had been a good night. Mr. and Mrs. Ickison were very happy, they had gotten lucky. They had been unwise and bet against the champion, the underdog having looked promising. Another man had been unwise with his winnings and Mr. Ickison walked away with four hundred dollars profit on a losing dog. As he drove away, Mr. Ickison congratulated himself on his sheer brilliance. He had just done so for the third time since getting into the car, and was about to do so again, when he became annoyed by an oddly audible noise that rose above the sound of the truck. It took him a minute to identify the sound, and when he did, it was with disgust. It was the sound of an ice cream truck playing “we three kings of orient are” several blocks down the street. He hated ice cream trucks and their awful songs, but this was just inappropriate.

At that same moment, Mrs. Ickison gave a scowl of death, and almost literally shot daggers from her eyes at a woman who was hanging underwear on a clothesline in front of her house, but was distracted when she too seemed to register the singularly out of place song.

At the same time several blocks down the street, a one eyed blathering hobo prepared to have his dinner. He lived under the porch of an abandoned burned down church, the porch being all that was left. He had discovered a nest earlier in the day with several eggs in it that he was determined to have.

At the same instance, many miles away, Samuel had just tackled a giant Thistle, fallen backwards over it and finally sat up to admire the large hole it had left, when multiple things happened simultaneously. As Samuel sat staring in shock and wonder at the hand in the hole in the garden of their house in the very center of the United States, several flies “popped” into existence again, for the second time in less than a few minutes. It was as if by setting his eyes on the severed hand, a dam had opened in his mind allowing flies to pour from it without his control. Several of those flies came into being inside the cab of his not-stepparent’s truck.

Anyone watching from the street at that moment, for instance, the woman carefully masquerading her family’s unmentionables on the front lawn, would have thought that Mrs. Ickison had stuck a finger in an electrical outlet. She began to scream, and flail and convulse and writhe throughout the cabin of the truck. Mr. Ickison was nearly knocked unconscious, and very nearly blinded by his wife’s incontrollable seizure. That same anyone that might have seen Mrs. Ickison’s unfortunate breakdown, would have also seen what Mr. Ickison did not: a very strange man in a black paperboy’s cap and red blazer with obscenely large glasses, running knee-highs across the street.

At the same moment down the street, the unfortunate hobo also decided to run across the street flailing as if he was being attacked by a flock of ravens. He was, although it was just the one, the one whose eggs he had tried to steal. Sadly, another small swarm of flies had appeared in the cab of the ice cream truck, and the driver did not see the man, or the raven. Orphan raven babies, that would be an awesome band name!

Several blocks further up the street a self conscious and awkward teenage boy driving his embarrassing old family car discovered that the girl he had had a crush on for grades was crossing the same intersection he was, but in the opposite direction, and in his embarrassed terror he humiliatingly ran into her. Coincidentally this accident had nothing to do with the odd occurrences at the other end of the street, but it is strange that three crashes occurred on the same street at the exact same time. The poor young man wished that they had both died in the crash, but since they were only going about fifteen miles per hour, he had no such luck. This young man’s name was Scotch, which was the only thing his father would drink. The girl’s name was Miranda.

                SammyK sat staring in stunned sepulchral silence at the skeletal severed hand. He was completely unaware of the terrible events that had occurred many miles away from the recently vacated dead-thistle hole. Finally, after what seemed like at least thirty-seven seconds, he blinked. That was a bad choice though for his first move after regaining full consciousness, because he was all covered in dirt, mud and thistle down, which all fell into his eyes as he blinked. With both eyes clamped firmly shut, with his nose crinkled to provide every possible ounce of pressure, he was effectively blind. He was about to rub his eyes with his hands in an attempt to clear them, but had the sense of mind not to, since his hand were also filthy, feathery, and sappy. Then, sitting there with his eyes closed and face contorted, he wondered why his hands were sappy, because, well, the thistle had been dead and shouldn’t have had any sap. Then, with that thought, the more practical side of his brain slapped him and shouted “excuse me!?!?!? That really isn’t that important right now!!” So he promptly put it out of his mind. He needed to think of what to do. He had to get to the house in order to clean his eyes, or maybe a hospital, but it wasn’t going to be easy stumbling around in the labyrinth of the not-garden with his eyes full of thistle. He got to his feet and slowly took a step forward with his arms outstretched like Frankenstein, or a mummy, or someone pretending to be one of those things, or pretending to be blind, or like someone that was trying to find his way without being able to see. He should have moved his hands around though while he walked, because the trunk of another mammoth thistle just happened to pass right in between his outstretched arms and collided solidly with his face. He bounced off of it backwards, reeling from the pain and the irony. Whereas he had kind of known where he was and in what direction he was going before, he was now completely disoriented. He tried desperately to regain his bearings, but was very unsuccessful. He started to move forward again, a little more carefully, towards the house; he promptly fell into the hole. He screamed as he fell.

                Miles away from the unfortunately uninviting faux-lighthouse Kinkaid residence, someone else screamed too.

Chapter 2

Sometime in the early summer of some year that was already hotter than it otherwise should have been, in the early, late afternoon, or the late-early afternoon depending on how you look at it, Samuel Kinkaid put on his work clothes and got ready to work in the not-garden. Other than his occasional sculpting, Samuel had many kinds of unique talents and abilities. He discovered them all on accident and had never told anyone about them. As has been mentioned, he has a powerful mind. He discovered that if he concentrates on something for long enough, he can make things happen. For instance: if he focuses on the red stop light by his house for long enough, it turns green! If he stares at the birds in the yard with enough intensity, they will eventually fly away. If he stares at the puddles on the driveway after a rainstorm with enough patience, they dry up and disappear. Some other less obvious skills include his power over his not-stepfather. When his not-stepfather is watching television, Samuel likes to climb into the tree outside the house with a pair of binoculars and stare at his false ferrety father figure. If he stares at him and thinks calming, soothing thoughts, the man quickly falls asleep. If he stares at him and thinks angry or annoying thoughts, the man becomes quite uncomfortable and has to step outside for a smoke. He didn’t smoke, but that’s what he called it. You see, the Horrible-Hapsburg-Hawk in the house would hatch a dinosaur on her husband’s head if he ever farted inside; he had only made that mistake once, shortly after they were married, though he had done it many times by not mistake, just to spite the old harpy. Nicknames were actually another special gift that S.Kin had discovered that he had been blessed with. With super human cerebral agility he could manufacture nicknames that both stunned and awed. He never shared them with others really, so they really only stunned and awed him, but they were stunning and awesome nonetheless!! He also had a strange power over women, but at this point in the story of his journey, in the early summer of that uniquely hot unspecified year, he had not yet discovered it, but he was to uncover that he was a chick magnet!! Also, interestingly enough, he was also a gum magnet. If there was ever a piece of premasticated chewing gum anywhere in the vicinity of young SK, he would find it. In his hair, on his shoe, his hand, his pants, his back, or in between his toes, it was his undoing, his arch nemesis. His only other as to then discovered nemesis, was clocks. Also, the pervis at school that always seemed to get all the ladies. He couldn’t justifiably call him a pervert simply because he was successful at wooing all the chicas, but he could speculate, I mean, c’mon, why else would he need a different girlfriend every other week?? Perhaps the most mysterious gift he had discovered was one that he entirely didn’t understand. Whenever he became especially emotional, angry, sad, depressed, frustrated, scared, happy ect. he would momentarily see a black spot in his vision, and then with a lightly audible “pop” a fly would pop into existence. This strange occurrence did not occur very often, because he usually didn’t have emotions, but it had happened, and was about to happen again, very shortly.

                As he had been tending the garden the day before Samuel had discovered that one of his not-stepmother’s giant mammoth thistles had met its untimely death and would need to be removed. The question was however, how do you safely remove a thistle 1.3 times taller than you and about half as wide? Safely being the key word. After lengthy consideration, he decided that his best option might be to wrap himself up tightly in one of the large down comforters that his not-stepmother kept around for the winter. Once securely enshrouded in the feather suit of armor, he would then march right up to the trunk, wrap his arms around it, with his back straight, knees bent and pointed out, and lift it straight out of the ground like there was someone that he loved and he had just seen them again after a long separation and was about to spin them around while staring magically into their eyes like he had seen in the movies. He hoped that it would be woman. His not-stepparents had gone out for the day, so there was no one to tell him he couldn’t use the blanket, no one to force him to do it with no protection. It didn’t work. The blanket prevented 72.9% of injury, but the stubborn thistle had refused to move. He had cuts and scrapes all over his face and arms, hands and legs, from where the blanket had slipped. He had broken two shovels, a rake, a broom, a wagon, a lawn chair, a frying pan, and the neighbor’s lucky machete, and nothing had worked. Finally in desperation and exhaustion, he took off his left shoe and threw it at the monster. He had been expecting his shoe to ironically be the final touch that would have sent the weed toppling, after he had put in so much effort. It didn’t do anything, but he had then lost his shoe. As he set his foot down, it naturally struck home and landed in someone’s gum. At that moment, three flies popped into existence circling the fluffy dry crown of his opponent with a single distinct “pop” as his vision cleared, he began to search for his shoe. It took him only 5.3 minutes to find it and after removing his sock and applying his shoe once again, he decided to give it one more try. With trepidation he once again swathed himself in his puffy thermos and attempted to prepare mentally for the challenge. He hyperventilated to try to give himself the best chance, he stretched, did a couple lunges and a few sparring dodges back and forth to prepare himself. Then with a cry of fury, he charged at the thistle. Just before making contact with trunk of the otherwise immoveable foe, he realized that tackling it was a bad choice. Too late, he collided with the trunk of the thistle with his face and a sickening crunch. He stuck to the weed as if he were one part of a Velcro strap, the weed the other. Then, slowly, they both tipped over and fell to the ground.

                It took Samuel about 20 minutes to extract himself from his thistly-duck down cocoon, which required him to wiggle backwards out of the oven-like tunnel. When he finally emerged his t-shirt was pulled up over his head and tangled around his arms and face, as he stood up and tried to untangle himself, but stepped backwards, tripped over the trunk of his vanquished enemy, and fell backwards to the earth once more, both shoes flying from his feet in opposite directions. He laid there in the dirt, eyes twitching a little, and began to laugh. He laughed so hard! He was crying, he had stitches in both sides and he could barely breathe. Slowly, wiping the tears from his eyes he sat up trying to catch his breath. He discovered as he did so that he was sitting at the rim of an interestingly large hole in the ground that had been vacated by the falling thistle. It was a lot bigger than he thought it would have been, but it explained why it had been so difficult to excavate. The hole was about 3 feet in diameter, and about two feet deep, and there at the very bottom of the hole, in the very center, was a hand.

Chapter 1

          Samuel Kinkaid Ickison was a man, a young man, a boy really; in terms of features and stature, intellect and age. From the day of his unfortunate birth he was young, and every year he seemed to be just too young. At the age of three, still too young, he was adopted by his stepmother and stepfather, who were in fact, his real parents. They didn’t like him much though, and so they decided that life would be easier if he believed they were not his real parents. If they were not his real parents, they would not need to feel badly about not caring for him, and he in turn would be less likely to care about them. This seemed to Mr. and Mrs. Ickison, like the best plan of action. They told young Samuel Kinkaid that his real parents had been wonderful people, until they had him and went insane. They died tragically one night as they were trying to escape, to run away from the awful burden that he was; that or that they had moved to the jungles of the Amazon, somewhere in Africa. 

          Samuel Kinkaid was a talented but peculiar boy. He loved to sculpt! His medium? Food. He loved to sculpt and shape his food into different masterpieces of different styles and persuasions. This usually resulted however in is intolerably cruel not-stepmother walking behind him and shoving his head down into his newly finished work of culinary masterpiece. So he didn’t do it very often. He also liked to do his chores, actually, he didn’t, but he was a positive-unfortunate-too-young, young boy. He had a powerful mind, and since there was no way of getting out of his chores, he pretended to enjoy them, which infuriated his not-stepparents. His favorite chore that he didn’t like was tending to the garden. His not-stepparents had entrusted him with the care of their singularly magnificent garden, watering it, tending it, cutting off all of the unfortunate “flowers”. Mr. and Mrs. Ickison did not like flowers, they attracted bees, and they did not like bees. They had great pride in their garden, it was not a garden though, in the classic sense, and they actually held no pride in it at all, they just enjoyed making Samuel tend the noxious weeds that grew rampantly in the backyard. In truth, they had several potential award-winning specimens in their not-garden, giant thistles taller than an average man and anyone shorter than him, dandelions that looked more like sunflowers, and enough clover to house an entire country’s worth of leprechauns.

          His not-stepfather was an attractive man, if you were attracted to that kind of man, He was average in every possible way; height, weight, stature, hair color, hair length, shoe size, ring size, hat size, hairline, tolerance levels, intellect, talent, sense of style, and sense of humor. Actually, he was perhaps a little below average on his sense of humor, as it should really be referred to as his “scents of humor” which were generally much more than average, but gave him such pleasure, and caused him to laugh so hard. He didn’t have many friends.

          Samuel Kinkaid’s mother was an unreasonable woman, by all accounts. Her favorite thing was the smell of bleach. In fact, that was about the only thing she liked, in fact it was the only thing that she liked. She had many levels of things she did not like though; there was a wide variety of things that she did not like, most to be honest, there were many things that she hated, several things that she despised, a few things that she loathed, and a couple that she absolutely abhorred!!! One of those was toe-jam, which is why she NEVER wore socks. Then, there were the things she feared. Her husband generally fell in between the categories “don’t like” and “hate” usually managing to remain in the former. She needed him though, because although there were extremely few things she feared, the dark was number one!! She needed him to keep her fear at a reasonable distance, usually just beyond his greasy thinning hair. Since she was afraid of the dark, naturally she was also afraid of flies, dark little bits of night that were normally found flying around dead things or else sticky messes! That, by the way, was another one of the things that she abhorred! Sticky . . . may as well just cut off her fingers!

          The Ickisons lived in a relatively rundown, spindly home that could have been mistaken for a lighthouse if it had been anywhere near water, or if it had a light on top, or if in fact it had ever had a quality that would have invited anyone to come closer, their house did not though, and was therefore never mistaken for one. Geographically, they lived in the exact center of the United States; Lebanon, Kansas. From their house on the corner of Grove Ave. and Walnut St. it was only a six minute drive to the monument that marked the location. Samuel had never seen it. His not-stepparents were less than interested in such things. In fact their only forms of recreation that they enjoyed were 1) Watching illegal dog fights. 2) Watching Samuel work in the not-garden. and C) Shooting cats with an air gun that they kept under the front seat of their old Ford Pickup. They typically tried not to leave their house, but when they did, though infrequently, it was a BIG occasion, for them, not for Samuel. His not-stepparents would pretend like it was the going to be the most wonderful event, just to try and make him jealous, then they would both dress in their “finest” clothes and be off. They weren’t fine, and they weren’t clothes. Ok, they were clothes, but they were tacky. This particular day they were going out, and their lives would continue on afterwards as it had before, as it always had, as it always would. At least, as it always would have . . .

Forward

        Life is an interesting journey, full of people. There are other things of course, but they’re less important, or less interesting, or lame, or so mysterious, terrifying and incomprehensible, that they are too often, though justifiably, overlooked. This is a story about none of them. This is a story about a boy and his singular journey. In order to understand anything in life about something other than yourself you must first understand about those things that are not. Not about something other than yourself that is. That is to say, that you must understand things that are not about something other than yourself. You must understand you. You must get to know you. You must become you. That is not to say that you should ever settle for or identify yourself by what you are, but what you wish to become. So, in an attempt to stimulate self evaluation, please consider the following deep philosophical questions. Number one: if you were to one day be walking down a beautiful country road surrounded by rural America, when you were supposed to be at home tending the garden, but your lying, fake stepparents had gone out for the afternoon and you had decided for the first time in your life to outright disobey them, and you got lost on the way and ended up having to try and survive on your own in the wilderness and had to give yourself a new more awesome name, what would it be, and why? Alright, that’s a little ridiculous, but it was all one sentence!! Pretty impressive huh? World Record Longest most Pointless Question!! Seriously though, about the other stuff. Now, something about a story about a boy . . .