Pelmont
an excerpt

Chapter five

His ego was luminescent as he entered the hall; hearing him speak was unnecessary. It was an aura about him. It diffused from him into the air and made people mildly irritated.
He was superfluously tall. Filthy-blond hair, long from neglect rather than intention, wadded around his head. His eyes were narrow and never stopped moving. He had large, thick hands and feet. His voice, when he spoke, sounded like a poorly played oboe.
Helen, a conspicuous foot shorter than him, led him in. Her disdain was visible to all but himself. He acknowledged that he was disliked by many, but had had simpy not considered the possibility that any but those who envied him might dislike him.
At the moment, though, his attentions shifted from himself to the rickety creature in the corner that lifted its head and perked its ears as he entered.
“My God,” he said. “It’s… it’s magnificent.”
“Yeah,” Helen said, monotone. “She’s pretty great.”
He snapped out of his reverie and swooped in on Enid, who backed into the corner and smoothed her ears back on her head. He grabbed her head, which fit easily in his hand, and looked back at Helen.
“Where did she come from?”
“Adrian down the hall. He reanimated her.”
His eyes got less narrow. “Is he here now?”
“I don’t think so.”
Helen regarded the enormous form hunched over the small, terrified puppy. She had thought she would take pleasure in seeing Enid unprepared for scrutiny; in seeing the owner of the cheerful voice that had so often plagued her get some comeuppance. All she felt now, though, as she watched the small animal too scared to speak, which would just excite him more, was a pitying indifference.
“And you say there are others?” he asked, not taking his attention away from Enid, who he had already begun prodding at.
“Yeah. Chad and Artemis. Artemis is in a box in that room,” she jerked her head, “unless Tony’s lying. I don’t see why he would. And Chad’s probably in the basement, or first floor. There are more rats there, because none of them make it to the top because Chad gets them in the basement or on the first floor.”
He stood up, holding Enid. He displayed no revulsion to her. He held her up unshaken, and full of scientific curiosity.
Enid was full of nameless terror and confusion, but he didn’t know that. It didn’t occur to him that motility might imply emotions.
It hadn’t been difficult to entice him to the apartment: the faintest scent of a biological anomaly was enough to get him to do nearly anything. This quality in him had been taken advantage of many, many times, but he was never mortified, so it wasn’t long before it was widely acknowledged that making him look stupid wasn’t any fun if he didn’t feel stupid.
Ron Keigel had never felt stupid in his life. His existence was spent in a state of perfect egoism. He lived in an impenetrable bubble of self-assurance, of conviction that he could do no wrong. As a result, he was extremely happy, and those around him were not.
Enid looked at Helen, who started to wonder if she should kill herself.
As Ron pulled on one of her feet, Helen mouthed to Enid, “Don’t say anything.”
Enid tilted her head and said, “What?”
Ron instantaneously dropped her and recoiled. Enid yelped. Ron shouted some things very, very loudly.
Within a second he had recovered and cautiously started to creep towards Enid again, who was testing her limbs to see how badly damaged they were.
He looked up at Helen. “You didn’t tell me it could talk.”
“I thought you wouldn’t believe me,” she said, flatly. She looked at her shoes, rather than Enid or Ron.
Ron looked at her for a moment longer, confused and slightly horrified. He then looked down at Enid, and gradually grinned.
“My God,” he said quietly.
Enid looked up at him, anguished. He didn’t notice. He didn’t see a living creature in front of him, he saw science. And he wanted it.
Enid waited a while to see if he would ask if she was all right, then said, “My name’s Enid. What’s yours?” Her usual cordiality was forced and almost sarcastic.
“Ron, Ron Keigel,” he said, absently. He was too busy staring at her in awe to actually listen to what she said.
“Who—um, who are you, exactly?”
Ron snapped back into reality. He was like a child nodding off: perpetually sliding into his mind and then catching himself. He jerked himself back into reality and said, “My name’s Ron Keigel. I’m a friend of Helen and Deidre’s—from college. I’m working on a Master’s in zoology.” He trailed off as a realization unknown to either Helen or Enid made much easier a process forming in his mind that was also unknown to either Helen or Enid.
“What?” Enid finally said, wary.
“I can ask you questions!” he said to no one in particular, or possibly himself.
Enid wasn’t sure what to make of his exclamation, so she did what she always did when she was nervous: she spewed from her mouth whatever would come.
“Zoology? That means studying animals, right? Of course, zoo like zoo and ology like science, that’s always what sciences end with, except chemistry and physics and probably some other things; I don’t know much about science, which is funny because it’s why I’m alive instead of dead, which I was until Adrian made me alive again with science. I should learn more about it, that would be fun. Then I could know why things happen, which I don’t now. I just know they do, or sometimes not even that. If I studied science I would, and it would also make Adrian really happy because he doesn’t like that I just sit around talking to people and watching old horror movies and sleeping all the time. So that’s another reason I should learn science, because I like making Adrian happy.”
Ron watched her in bliss, which slowly eroded into irritation. When she paused for breath, he said, not hiding the edge in his voice, “Can I ask you some questions?”
Enid’s ears went back and her tail went between her legs: she was mortified. She was doing that thing that everyone hated so much again. “Yes,” she finally squeaked.
“You died, right?”
“Yes. Got chopped to pieces by a… thing with a knife.”
"And then got brought back to life?"
"Yes."
“What was that like?”
“Um,” Enid shifted uncomfortably, “I don’t really remember. I mean, I remember getting hacked apart, that’s pretty hard to forget, and then I remember waking up again, and I know there was some time between those things, and I could tell there was, but I don’t remember what happened then.”
It wasn’t the answer Ron wanted, but there was nothing anyone could do about that. “What was waking up like?”
“I felt like I was coming up from having my head underwater for a really long time. All I could think about was that I couldn’t breath and I had to breath.”
“You were thinking—the way you do now—right away?”
“No. I—well, sort of. It was definitely different than it was before, but I didn’t know how to talk yet. So I couldn’t think with words, like I do now.”
“What was it like before?”
Enid didn’t know the right answer to this question, which was most displeasing to everyone in the hallway, herself most of all. “I guess,” she finally said, “it was kind of like my mind was there, but I could only think one thing at a time and then I forgot. So I never really got very far with any thought because I forgot it before I could build anything on it.”
Possibilities were exploding inside Ron’s skull, and he grinned again. This nervous, awkward creature was not only invaluable to science for being alive, she could also illuminate all sorts of things about human and animal modes of thinking. Ron didn’t know what to ask her first.
“I need to get you to a lab,” he said finally, decisively.
“What?” Enid said, plaintive. “Where are you taking me?”
“A lab. There—I need to get you to a place where I can run tests and form teams and all that. You have no idea what a find you are!”
“I don’t?”
Ron’s excitement was shadowed only by the wistful desire that she could have been a little smarter.
“Wait,” Helen finally broke in. “Science be damned, we’re talking about an intelligent being with thoughts and feelings and all that shit. You can’t just whisk her off to a lab somewhere and do who-knows-what to her if she doesn’t want to go.”
Ron glared at her with unadulterated hatred. If she had been wrong, he would have argued with her, but she wasn’t, and therefore the only thing to do was hate her for bringing the matter up at all.
Helen had no visible reaction to him. She had gotten the look Ron was giving her before, and it had never bothered her.
Without looking at Enid, he said to her with partially repressed anger, “We are talking about the biggest scientific find ever. In the history of humanity. We are talking about the key to immortality, to understanding what makes humans human, to life itself. And while I’m just as compassionate as the next guy, I don’t think one stupid little creature’s mild discomfort outweighs all that, do you?”
“You honestly think you’ll be able to figure anything out from her?”
“Yes, in fact, I do.”
“No. No, you’ll come up with some abstract theories and then run out of tests to do on her. If all we needed to figure something out was the thing itself, we’d be a lot further along by now. You can’t figure out life and immortality and whatever the other thing was from Enid.”
“What do you know? Do you have any idea how pretentious and idiotic you sound right now? You don’t even know anything about this stuff!”
“And you, of course, know everything about it.”
“I know a hell of a lot more than you.”
“You didn’t answer my point, though. If all you needed to figure Enid out was Enid, by now you should have figured everything out, because,” she gestured around her, “here it is.”
“Your failure to understand the scientific process is just…” Ron’s intellectual rage compressed as he searched for the word adequately hateful to express his thoughts, and finally came up with, “ugh! You know how you understand normal? You find exceptions to it. You study those. No, you don’t just need the thing to understand it, you need not the thing. Which is exactly what this is!” he shrieked, his voice rising to an unnatural pitch as he gestured furiously towards Enid, who cringed in a small heap on the floor.
“Um, excuse me,” Enid said quietly, sounding as if she was about to cry.
Ron and Helen both stared at her intensely. She pushed herself further into the carpet.
“Um, I’m willing to go to the lab,” she said. “I mean, if it will help.”
Ron grinned and Helen shrugged indifferently. Ron looked over at Helen triumphantly until Helen said,
“This doesn’t make you right, it just means you don’t hurt anybody by being wrong.”
Ron no longer cared what Helen thought. The sole occupant of his attention was Enid, who he squatted next to. Even then, he towered over her.
It was at that moment that Tom entered the hallway. He looked from Ron to Enid to Helen, who he maintained eye contact with and looked confused towards.
“Tom, this is Ron Keigel,” Helen said with perfect apathy. “Ron, Tom. Ron is studying zoology. He finds Enid very interesting.”
Ron turned his now unwavering grin towards Tom. Tom did not return it and quickly looked back at Helen.
“What?”
She sighed. “I brought him here to try and figure out why Enid exists,” she said slowly, as if he was very stupid, “being a zoologist, he’s interested to see things like talking, undead puppies.”
“Oh.”
Tom looked at Ron and didn’t take his eyes off him until he was inside his room.
Inside said room, Seymour was sitting on the sofa with a cheap notebook and a ball-point pen. He looked up at Tom when he entered. Tom hated the way Seymour looked at him whenever he walked in the door.
“Where were you?”
“I was with Jaron. Stop worrying about where I am all the time.”
Seymour said nothing and looked at his notebook, but didn’t write anything.
Tom took a deep breath and sat down next to him. “What’re you writing?”
“Story.”
“Can I see?”
“No.”
Tom didn’t really expect the answer to change from the countless times in the past when it was “no,” but he felt obligated to ask anyway.
“For school?” he finally said.
“No. Just for fun.”
Tom winced slightly. He had looked at a few of Seymour’s “just for fun” stories before, without Seymour’s knowledge.
Seymour had learned to start writing differently for school, after several concerned teachers. Seymour really didn’t care if his teachers thought his stories said alarming things about his psychological status, but after Tom had sat him down and explained why it was imperative that Seymour not provoke his teachers to demand a conference with his parents, Seymour started doing what they wanted him to. He understood.
Seymour understood a great many things, which also alarmed his teachers, because they weren’t things like division and why plants are green. It alarmed Tom too, but he was used to it.
Tom could think of nothing to say to the child who was now writing away, so he mussed his hair a little and started pacing around the room.
Five minutes later, Ron exclaimed some meaningless syllables, then said, “What the hell is that?”
“That’s Tom,” Enid said, “or actually his guitar. I don’t think people can make that noise.”
Helen had vacated the hallway by this point and left Ron and Enid to an extensive interview. She also heard Tom’s guitar, and yelled to nobody, or else everybody, “Shit!”
The only person who heard was Deidre, who had been staring at a book written by a middle-aged man who lived in a wet, gritty hut in Germany several hundred years ago, and thought he knew exactly what it was all about. She welcomed the exclamation and its cause, as they both startled her out of her imagination, which was working busily at what sort of unforgivable crimes Preet may have committed. Unfortunately, neither made the book any less ridiculous.
Most directly affected by the sound was Seymour, who was not expecting it any more than anyone else was. He clenched his pen hard enough to make his arm shake, counted to ten, and tried to relax.
The guitar drowned out the sound he had been listening to prior, which was a regular, muted clacking from the next room. He had no idea what might be making it, and was rather enjoying speculating on the matter.
The jarringly electric roar coming from other room precluded all other sounds, however, and Seymour tried to shut out all sensory input and apply himself mind, body, and soul to his fervent writing. His handwriting was peculiarly idiosyncratic; it didn’t look like the charts that typical adorn the perimeters of elementary school classrooms. That didn’t mean it was very good, or even very legible.
On the other side of Seymour’s bedroom wall, Tony was still able to hear the clacking sound, though only barely. Considering that he was sitting directly in front of the object from which the sound emanated, he sighed and put his head in his hand for a moment. Like most irritations, it was extremely funny, though Tony didn’t laugh. Tony didn’t laugh at most of the things he found funny because most other people found them sad. He did too, but that didn’t mean they weren’t hilarious when looked at a little objectively. Sad and funny were the same thing, really.
After taking a moment to reflect on how perfect it all was, in an ironic way, Tony resumed making his typewriter clack rapidly. The box beside the desk was still thumping from time to time, but the guitar covered it nicely, and Tony had learned to ignore it besides. He had asked Helen the day before what he should do about the ferret. Helen had informed him that it was named Artemis and it was a similar class of being as Enid, though less intelligent and more bloodthirsty. She suggested he keep it locked up indefinitely. He complied.
He really couldn’t have picked a better place to live. A more perfect confluence of the bizarre existed nowhere, as far as he knew. And he hadn’t even talked to most of the tenants yet.
Tony’s desire to talk to people came not from a desire to speak but a desire to listen. Unfortunately, the people he usually wanted to listen to were the ones who had to be prompted to speak. Those who would spill their guts without a little prodding weren’t very interesting.
The sound also startled Preet. The safety of the gun she was holding was on; had it not been, she would have fired a bullet directly into Phil’s room, as the walls were thin and would provide little obstruction.
It would have passed several feet behind Ron, who had recovered quickly. The guitar reminded him that he didn’t want to be in the apartment in the first place. With no warning, he picked Enid up and started down the stairs.
“Where are we going?” Enid chirped. She had ceased to be scared of Ron, and now liked him quite a lot, just like everyone else.
“A lab,” Ron said. “We can see how you work.”
“OK!”
The moment he crossed the threshold of the apartment, Enid fell limp.