"Yellow Submarine" by Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara

Here is an excerpt from "Recovering Ruthless" the third book in the BryonySeries Ruthless triology by Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara.

The main character is Ed himself, who is a time-traveling dyslexic Irish vampire with Deep Time Psychosis and a wild imagination. As a real human (as in a person you could actually meet), Ed really is dyslexic, and he delivers newspapers in the middle of the night. As a vampire character, Ed also delivers newspapers in the middle of the night... with the help of his brownie crew, led by brownie Ramon.

His sidesick is Glorna, a defiant and disobedient wood sprite (Ed says imp) and former changeling who reverted back to wood sprite status when his human part John-Peter died. As a changeling, he was in love with his best friend Karla (although he realized that too late to act on it - a very human mistake). Glorna spent way too much time watching Ed's spaghetti Westerns and fancies himself a cowboy (he's not).

Cah is you the reader.

The mission: a vampire named Susan Betts has escaped Lake Munson in the fictional fishing village of Munsonville in Northern Michigan, and is rumored to be somewhere deep in the ocean near Greenland.

Ed wishes he had a submarine - and that's where our excerpt of literary nonsense begins.

Think of it as Lewis Carroll for adults.

Enjoy the ride!

CHAPTER 14: YELLOW SUBMARINE

 

 

What the hell, Cah, is this? Yes, I know, it’s a very large box…too large to put in my van and it’s marked with my address, unit number, and name. It’s left there outside the common doorway because it wouldn’t fit in the hallway, but it’s tossed beside the walkway as if the delivery driver had enough of the thing. The brown cardboard box has a plastic wrap attachment large enough for a paperback text book.

 

Please tell me this isn’t the nuclear submarine I was advised to imagine. But to my chagrin that’s pretty much the way the label reads.

 

“WARNING: RADIOACTIVE AND FLAMMABLE”

 

“WE-ALL-LIVE-YELLOW- Nuke Sub. is the very latest nuclear submarine technology and fun for the whole family! You will be warm beneath the storm! Under sea or ice, see any octopus’s garden or hide where bill collectors or Jehovah witnesses can never find you. Comes in seventeen different shades. Some assembly requited.”

 

I’m groaning as I open the plastic bag. It’s a book entitled “Nuclear Submarine Construction for Dummies.” I’m groaning some more.

 

Cah, you know me by now. Can you see why I’m not to happy with my Deep Time Psychosis right now? My mental disorder isn’t supposed to work this way. The way it’s supposed to work; if I can imagine it, then it is real… not just to me, but to everyone else.

 

You don’t get it, do you? You think that because I was to imagine a nuclear submarine and one came through the mail, that everything is status quo. Look, my imagination is supposed to be powerful, but it was never convenient or cooperating. Now, it’s also lazy. I used to believe that my imagining created a thing. So, maybe I’ve been wrong all this time and my “dreaming things up” was really just stealing things from another time/place, all without letting the rest of me know. I could live with that, as long as the rest of my mind can reasonable assume I came by the imagined thing on the up and up. But now this!

 

 Is the way it’s going to happen this way now? One might expect that if I imagine something, at least my mental illness would go to the right time/place where such a thing can be found, acquiring said thing as the imagination of a Deep Time Psychotic traditionally do, and deliver to the place and time as specified by said mental image. This time, my imagination merely went on-line to some distance future website and selected yesterday delivery. Let this be a lesson too you, Cah: if you need something from the future, go to a future showroom and buy (or steal) it off the lot.

 

Suddenly, I realized we weren’t alone.

 

“Glorna! What are you doing here! Go hide in the forest or something so John-Peter doesn’t have to meet half of his future self.”

 

He still looked the part of a western film actor, minus the long, unkempt red hair and green-tinted skin. Cowboy hat and poncho framed arms and chest: slim, solid, and steady. Long fingered hands rested with ease near the pistols, left and right, in his gun belt. He seemed to nod ever so slightly at his weapons at the ready.

 

“Sorry, Uncle Ed, but I’m on a quest. Reckon I need to be as helpful an imp…er…wood sprite can be. It’s the only way I’ll ever be a …you know.

 

He just stood there with that wide-brimmed hat, leather vest and chaps, hip double hoisters, and that cocky grin you’d expect of any wood sprite trying to be a cowboy. I know, Cah. I had the same thought. He’s not here to help. He’s here to see the mature Karla. He’s obviously dressed for her.

 

“No, I’m not dressed for Karla,” Glorna said, as if he could read my mind, which he can’t. He can only read Karla’s. “I’m dressed to assemble nuclear submarines. The only question is this: how are we going to get it to the right ocean? Now, I reckon we could drive it to some Michigan beach and sail out through the St Lawrence channel into the open Atlantic. I hope we don’t get lost. But I don’t see a trailer to haul it with. Can we drag it with your van? It’s twice as big as to fit in the thing.”

 

I think, which is hard to do with Glorna staring me down.

 

“Maybe we can,” I said slowly. “We don’t have to take it to Michigan if Karla can find the same portal Susan Betts used to escape to Lake Munson. That kind of dragging seems like lot less friction on something that has a nuclear reactor.”

 

I study the box while fingering my beard. I noticed a message on the groundward part.

 

“DANGER: NUCLEAR REACTOR INSIDE!

DO NOT DRAG!

GUIDE CAREFULLY AND GENTLY!”

 

Glorna noticed it too. So together we tried to lift, him grabbing one side and me the other. We couldn’t get it to budge. How did they deliver this thing? Now, Cah, you might be asking yourself, “Why don’t you just transport it or open a portal from here to the edge of the lake?” Well, you see, portals are easy to open, but they’re hard to shut. Besides, any portal that sucks this thing is…well a portal that really sucks… as in every living and undead right along with this heavy inanimate object. The whole village of Munsonville could find themselves at the bank in close – but uncertain – proximity to a futuristic nuclear submarine. I don’t want to have to explain that.

 

As far as teleporting goes, I can’t do that unless I’m holding or carrying the object. Even with the undead strength of a vampire, I can’t carry this. Still, if something alive or undead could lift this off the ground and I were to touch that thing…

 

“Glorna, how large can you become?”

 

“Forget it, Uncle Ed. If you can’t carry it, I can’t get big enough to carry it. Maybe if Karla were watching...” He looked around hopefully to see if she were somewhere near.

 

“Well, forget that. Karla is in jail right now and she stays there till she goes into the submarine. Wait, is that why you’re helping me? You know she’s coming, and you want to make sure the boat is safe so she’s safe!”

 

Glorna touched the brim of his hat.

 

“That’s one theory,” he admitted. “Maybe, I really liked that mushroom stew the merrows served me and I figured I still owed them for it.”

 

“Was it better than your last meal in Trudy’s dream when you were supposed to hang for killing me?” I cleared my throat. “No hard feelings, by the way.”

 

“Well you know what they say about being hung in a dream. Everything is better about a last meal because it’s in a dream. So, no, and I don’t have any hard feelings either about killing you the first time.”

 

“But when you killed me the second time, you lost Karla,” I persisted, ignoring – for now – the fact we were standing next to a futuristic nuclear submarine.  “Glorna, you’ve got to let her go. You’re a wood sprite; she’s a gambler. Do you even know what gambling is?”

 

“I know that when she does it, it has something to do with ‘shooting.’” He pointed to his holsters.

 

“And have you ever shot at anything?”

 

“Are we going to chat all day or are we going to assemble a submarine?”

 

I was out of ideas. So I trudged to my white cargo van and drove it close to the large box. I always keep bungee cords and chains in my van to put out carriers’ vehicles should they slip off the road. Carefully, I probed the box with the steel hooks trying to find a place where I could secure the unassembled nuclear vessel. But Glorna grabbed my arm and said, “Might blow the state to kingdom come.”

 

I added with a smile that Glorna didn’t understand. “Which would vaporize me AND my imagination.”

 

It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve done.

 

At first, I tried to pull the box, but I only spun my tires. The box didn’t budge. Then, I spun my tires with Glorna growing twice in size and pushing the box with all his might. It still didn’t budge. Remember, I live at the top of Pike Street. So we were uphill. So if we could just get the box to start moving, it wouldn’t be impossible to keep it moving. Without disconnecting the chains and bungee cords, I decided to push the box with my front bumper instead of pulling it. No help. We tried with Glorna pushing. No use. We tried with a bungeed gas pedal down and Glorna and I both pushing.

 

And it moved!

 

Fast!

 

Inexplicably fast…

Before I could stop it, both box and van were racing down the hill as if the two were racing each other. While the van got the early start, the box was catching up. Mrs. Marly, who was walking her dog, saw that firsthand; she froze watching the driverless van try to keep up. Her German Shepard Fritz, who was in the box’s way, wasn’t as impressed and took off running, pulling the old lady to the ground and getting her wrist tangled in the leash. I’d credit the dog for saving her life, but he kept running, making Mrs. Marly an unlikely dog sled for the next sixty yards.

 

Soon the box wasn’t just winning the race but overtook the van and pulled the vehicle rear end first.  The vans wheels spun uselessly while the weight pulled downward like a demented off-track train that bounced off of trees on either side of the street. The pair became airborne briefly when the box took out a street lamp, which smashed onto a parked car, giving the pole an incline. No matter. Both box and truck were on solid street again as my van in backward roll approached the intersection of Main Street.

 

Then I did something that could have earned me a ticket. I used my vampire power to teleport into the driver’s seat to follow truck and box in the downward trajectory toward the bottom of Lake Munson. All that meant was, when the spinning red lights came to look for a driver of the sinking van, they’d find me. Had I not done that, I could have teleported in Lake Munson, removed my plates, and hoped they didn’t look for me when law enforcement tried to explain the accident.

 

As flawed as that plan might have been, luck had a better idea. The law wasn’t going to need to puzzle as to who and how. The box, still pulling the van across Main Street, just missed the squad car on its way to the lake. The van, however, didn’t miss at all and found the front wheel diver side of Officer Marsha’s cruiser and kept going, severing the cruiser’s front end.

 

It was an awkward meeting at the edge of the lake. My wheels, still spinning and spewing dirt and grass everywhere, behaved as if they were digging a grave for both rider and truck. The box, now in three feet of water was still mostly exposed but showed no signs of “blowing us to kingdom come,” which would have been my preference right now. Marsha’s cruiser still had the fresh squad car look, back end unscathed with exhaust huffing from the tail pipes. The dome lights worked just fine when Marsha turned them on, as did the driver side door when she stepped out of the cruiser.

 

The only slight problem was that the rear of my van was now where the cruiser’s front had been and that the front end lay bank-ward like some bizarre sculpture by some would-be artist with too many car parts, too much time, and too little artistic aesthetics.

 

With difficulty, I forced the trans into park and shut the van down. If Glorna had half a mind (or a lot less loyalty). he’d have stayed on the hill until the flashing lights stopped flashing, but he was running full steam Main Street, where the crash site was still unfolding. I worried about what Officer Marsha would think of his clearly visible six shooters.

 

Marsha rapped on my window.

 

“Mister Calkins, how are you today?” Her voice was less than pleasant.

 

“Uh…er…that is…ah…”

 

“You need to do better than that. Let’s see your driver’s license and proof of insurance.”

 

Is there such a thing as a driver’s license for the undead? Cah, help me out here. Do I have a driver’s license? What about insurance? Can the undead get insured? Insured of what? Being dead? I’m not very good at conversing with angry cops but I do know what I always tell them: “Uh…er…I…ah…that is…”

 

“How many tickets do you think I should write you?”

 

“Um…er…I think…really, I’m very sorry.”

 

“What is in that box turned ramrod that almost killed six people?”

 

“Six? I only counted two. One cop, one old lady – and a frightened dog.”

 

“You’ll have plenty of time to count, Mister Calkins. Just answer the question.”

 

“Er…well…you know…that submarine that I was going to imagine. There it is.” I was grateful I didn’t mention that it was a nuclear submarine.

 

“And why, pray tell, did you not imagine it on the bank like a good vampire should have?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“You don’t know,” she repeated waiting for me to say something else. I couldn’t think of anything. What about you Cah? Can you think of anything that will make this less…unpleasant?

 

“And since you don’t seem to have insurance, how are you going to replace all the property you’ve carelessly destroyed?” Marsha impatiently tapped her pen against her ticket book.

 

“I’ll pay for it all, eventually,” I promised and then added hopefully, “Or I could imagine it all repaired or replaced.”

 

“You better start imagining a whole bunch of money to pay all the tickets you just earned.”

 

“That never works out well,” I warned her.

 

“I’m calling Sheriff Matt.” Marsha walked to the decapitated cruiser and confirmed that the radio still worked. My enhanced vampire hearing picked up both ends of the conversation.

 

“Are you issuing any tickets?” the despatcher asked.

 

“I don’t have a pad big enough.”

 

“I’m sorry, didn’t copy.”

 

“Disregard. Let me talk to Sheriff Matt.”

 

It was a long, contentious conversation between deputy and sheriff. Marsha kept sighing about all my violations, while Matt insisted that neither her, him, nor the entire Beulah County had any jurisdiction over the undead. Marsha pointed out that the evidence was plentiful, obvious, and laying all over the beach. Matt complained that any presenting of that evidence would draw unwanted attention to Beulah County, the state of Michigan, and, most importantly, Sheriff Matt while he was seeking reelection. He also reminded her that he had a grown up woman in his lockup that was the same person as the teen living in Munsonville; something he’d rather not explain to authorities. In the end, Matt left any actions up to Marsha, who rethought her initial severity.

 

She walked back to my van, tapped on the window, and pointed towards the bank.

 

              “If one hint of this mess is still here at sunrise tomorrow, I’m going to write you so many tickets…”

 

              She never finished. Another squad appeared to take Marsha back to the office.

 

              Glorna was already on top of the box in three feet of water. He had ripped the outer cardboard to reveal a metallic cylinder exoskeleton which had already expanded. When I walked to where he sat reading, he read the title and instructions aloud for my benefit, “Easy-Simple-Live-Yellow Instructions and Diagram.”

 

              Step one: Active the enclosed four pilot drones included to carry your We-All-Live-Yellow construction kit to the nearest suitable body of water.

 

              Step two: Confirm the partially submerged We-All-Live-Yellow construction kit is in at least two feet of saltwater or three feet of fresh water to begin assembly.

 

              Step three: Ensure all 234,503 listed tools and parts are included. Should any tools or parts prove missing, abort construction immediately and inform local health authorities of an eminent nuclear explosion. WARNING: DO NOT DRAG We-All-Live-yellow construction kit under any circumstances. We-All-Live-Yellow inc. is not responsible for any thermo-nuclear reactions due to stupidity or failure to comply with provided simple instructions.

 

              Step four: Find We-All-Live-Yellow-Easy-Simple 26 page construction map and simply assemble parts as shown in Easy-Simple map’s 142 diagrams.

 

              Step five: There should be no parts left over. If any parts remain after construction is complete, inform local health authorities of an eminent nuclear explosion. IMPORTANT: In the case of a thermos-nuclear reaction, We-All-Live-Yellow inc. or its associates, affiliates, mental health providers, or contractors cannot be held liable for the incompetence or stupidity of its customers.

 

              Step six: Enjoy exploring the undersea with the whole family. Take the trip from which you never have to return. Everything you’ll ever need is supplied in your brand new We-All-Live-Yellow-Nuke-Sub. Thank you for your business.

 

              “How far in the future is this submarine?” Glorna asked me in a very this cowboy-is-concerned but still very macho voice. Of course, I have no idea. Then he asked. “Do they sell this thing to their customers, or give them away to their competitors?”

 

              It was a disturbing idea.

 

              The Easy-Simple construction map wasn’t any of those, but it was 26 pages of very small print. Quickly, we quit trying to make hide or hare of the diagram map and turned instead to the “Nuclear Submarine Construction for Dummies,” which let us know that if we paid attention to our pre-kindergarten caretakers, we’d know all this already.

 

              The sun was setting by the Glorna and I sat on the nuclear submarine exoskeleton to which we had not successfully attached one included piece. If this was an assembly nightmare, its assembling team was even worse. Can you think of a worse case than a dyslexic vampire and a defiant wood sprite trying to or refusing to follow instructions? Every time we thought we understood what the book told us to do, either Glorna, who rebelled against being told what to do, did the opposite or I did the opposite, thinking I did the reverse.

 

              “How about this,” I finally asked Glorna as daylight disappeared from view. “I’ll do all the reading, and you do what I tell you to do.”

 

              “But you read so poorly. Everything you tell me will be backwards or upside down. Wait, that way I do the opposite…”

 

              I nodded my head, beaming.

 

              “But if I let you read, and I construct, I’ll be doing what you told me to do.”

 

              Damn!

 

              Suddenly we were surrounded.

 

              “Who’s there?” Glorna called out, in his cowboy-is-concerned-but-not-macho-anymore voice. In fact, he squeaked more than spoke, but he did draw his six shooters.

 

              I was alarmed as well.

 

              “Why Steward reading book? Work time. Steward and lazy wood sprite should make metal underwater log.”

 

              It was Ramon and company. Ramon is a brownie from my vacation imagination Tara. What was he doing here, Cah? I asked him, but I’m sure I know the answer.

 

              “Brownies want more brownie points!” Ramon demanded. “Brownies put metal underwater log together. But Steward has to give this many brownie points to each brownie. (He showed all his fingers.) and this many more to Ramon.” (He showed five fingers.)

 

              “Ten brownie points to each!” I complained as if the asking price was outrageous. Since I’m the one that makes them and I’m the one that keeps track of them, ten was no more to me than one thousand, but I had to haggle to keep the idea of “brownie points” a valuable commodity.

 

              “I know a river nymph that would do it for half that,” Glorna bluffed loftily.

 

              “River nymph not do as well as Ramon’s troop!” Ramon cried indignantly.

 

The brownies, standing in formation behind him, nodded solemnly.

 

              I said nothing. Glorna said nothing. Each moment of silence seemed to reduce the brownie troop’s confidence. Finally, Ramon spoke.

 

              “Brownies put together, but Steward give this many to each brownie and this many to Ramon…” (He showed one less finger than his previous offer). “…but brownies get to steal this many babies from humans (three) and Steward no make fun of brownies…no funny pretty words!” (No limericks mocking brownies.)

 

              Glorna looked at me, expectantly. He wanted to take that deal,

 

              “How about brownies get as many brownie points as Ramon said before (nine) and brownies get to steal baby’s weight in honey, baby’s weight in butter, and baby’s weight in beer?”

 

              The troop cheered, but Ramon looked skeptical.

 

              “How brownies find so much honey, butter, and beer?”

 

              Just as he asked that, pots of honey, tubs of butter, and jugs of beer materialized on the bank in the agreed upon quantity with the bonus in reusable ceramic pots and jugs, along with the tin tubs that exceeded the packages weight of three babies.

 

              It was already dark when the submarine was finished with no parts to spare. The pots of honey, tubs of butter, jugs of beer, and the lakefront sculpture wreckage of a squad car all disappeared with the brownies. A small, wooden dingy took their place on the bank, where the squad’s front end had previously lain. Also, from where I stood, I could see the streetlamp that had been a launching ramp for the submarine assembly kit now standing straight and delivering adequate amounts of light. Did I imagine repairs to all the damage, Cah? Do you remember me imagining? Or did I just imagine that I never did anything other than what the instructions required?

 

              With only Glorna, myself, and a lemon-yellow nuclear submarine as clues, I’ll never really know. Asking Glorna or anyone else wouldn’t produce knowledge worth the cost in my credibility.