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.