The Sky is Falling

The day started out with Dale holding his arms out like this, with his hands extended, measuring an invisible space, a virtual ruler showing everyone and nobody exactly how long this imaginary space was. He could have been measuring anything. A fictional bolt, the size of his chest, the barrel of a shotgun, but this measurement wasn’t for all of that hooey. This measurement was for Jake, accompanied only by the phrase “this long.” Taken out of context one might seem a little taken aback, and that’s exactly the problem because there was no preface to this story. Just a measurement and a “this long.” Jake knew he was talking about catfish though. Where’d you get it, he says. Farm Pond, he’s told, as though there are such featureless landscapes around here that there is only one pond that could possibly be called “Farm Pond,” and it’s true, because there are such featureless landscapes. This many pounds, he says, but I don’t remember the number. I think it may have been seventeen. No eighteen. No he was rocking the boat. I almost fell in. Taller than me. He snapped my line at the last second. I swear that bastard had nails for teeth. Smelled like oil and fire. Red glowing eyes. Mutated.

The stage was set, if there was such a stage to set in the first place. I put bushings in cable drums and added washers and wingnuts to winches, unintentional alliteration cause I really did all that stuff. I coiled cable and stapled boxes and stuck stickers and packed hardware bags and it was about the time that the clock said ten that there banged a bangy noise on the roof. It’s hail, Dean-o (the fellow too charismatic for a lack of -o) tells me, a sly knowledge of experience under his belt, and then the banging comes a banging some more, heavier, and it’s hail, I think, because what else could it be?

I hold out my arms like his, with my hands out, to tell you a story, and you swear it’s false, red eyes and nail teeth, but I’m not senile.

Outside it’s pure white and I can tell because I’m looking out the loading dock. I think it’s smoke at first, blowing around in a heavy wind, but it’s water, lots of it, pouring down. It looks like smoke, I say, because it’s customary to be current in the face of things that are not work-related at work. People like to talk about the weather. Fish story man walks outside and comes back in wetter. He’s holding a little white chunk the size of a quarter. No a golf ball no a baseball no a softball no a football no a human head no a medicine ball no rosie o’donnel and I walk over there and I see it and I say that sure looks like it could do some damage to a vehicle and the parking lot’s flooded already he says. I can’t fathom how a parking lot could be flooded, flat cement and three-inch curbs but I look out the window at break and it’s a river, our cars little people stuck and struggling against it. Holy freaking god I say but the audience is predominantly Christian I bet so nobody really laughs as hard as I think they should in this place where they laugh too hard at anything. Our car could be getting flooded I think but I can’t see it so I go back to work and later on I’m like Zach we should move our car and then I’m like give me the key and then he’s like NO ME! and so he does and he comes back soaked and says our car is fine and I’m like HA!

And there’s dents in it and paint missing but who really gives a fuck cause it’s old and shitty, you know, and we come home and then our house was buried under 5 inches feet miles of rain, I swear no really! It had nails for teeth and red glowing eyes and it was gonna SUCK ME UNDER but it got away this time.