Wrighting the Wheel Right

Worlds folded together like pleats on an accordion's bellows. They breathed and pulsed as one--places blinking in and out of focus: schools, farms and pear tree orchards, family dinner tables and college dorms, dances (prom, square, club, and exotic), battles of warlocks and contests of jocks, factory foundries and found object fantasies. A mechanism held it all together. It sputtered with the familiar charm of ancient factory equipment.

At the center of it all, he presided over the circle of life: empty, rinse, rack, repeat. Vessels sorted into neat rows like soldiers, readied to be washed and returned to the world. At times, elbow-deep in others' leftovers, but always knowing how to make things clean. It was an unending flow of old becomes new, dirty becomes clean. Each thing returned to life—to serve, help nourish and sustain.

But something had ruptured, and now nothing was moving. No wheezy breaths of the bellows, no comforting chug of a doggedly reliable old motor.

Wheels of life stopped turning. Worlds began to bleed and groan their way into his, like spokes puncturing a breaking wheel, his whirling rhythm no longer holding them to their place. Mashed potatoes from someone's dinner table morphed into a mutant storm, thick and clingy as an icy blizzard in March, dark wizards brewed curses in the shadows, factory workers fell cold and silent as an empty furnace, while farmers cast looks that withered fruit.

It had been a balanced convergence, now turned all out of whack. The hum of worlds slowed and skewed, warped and melted as a record--off track.

The dishwasher was despondent, directionless. The hub upon which his wheel turned was gone—the pieces that had danced upon it now scattered in disarray, to carry stuff caked under refuse and juice--no use! that now overwhelmed and confounded him. The order that held the process was lost, and the rhythm that carried him so readily as the turn of a wheel...was gone. Each piece felt heavy without the former momentum to shoulder the load.

A wandering mushroom eater happened upon him, gave him some flowers and a hug, then tossed some mashed potatoes in the air with a giggle.

This did not help him.

An exotic dancer swung by, and kept going.

A trucker kept on trucking.

A schoolkid looked at the clock.

And a warlock clocked a jock, and cast a spell to send him to hell--

But it didn't go so well.

The player scored a point at the sound of a bell.

The mushroom eater rolled a joint, and found it all ever-so-swell.

The farmer ground corn, just to show his scorn.

The dancer swung by again, so the farmer would not stay 'til morn (or watch so much...)

A stargazer came by, and did not laugh or add to the gaffe.

He knew the worth of a good wheel, to keep life in motion--though shunned was he by the pillars of earth (their dearth of dreams depressed him). To bring direction to the storm, a form for the chaos, to pick felt epic, godlike, like birthing the starlight.

He gathered like with like, hosed off the mashed potatoes, swept the floor.

Shadows softened, lights grew brighter, sounds of motion began to hum elsewhere too, as each world began to retreat to its proper place. The wizards in dark corners demurred to their role as benign oddities, grumbling about the cost of raising dragons.

And the stargazer and dishwasher went about their work, cleaning life's messes—emptying, rinsing, racking, repeating, whirling and turning in an endless cycle, slowly bringing life to a star.

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10:30 PM, 100 words short, and everything started rhyming. Don't worry, I'll regret it in the morning... but practice will one day make perfect.

If you made it all the way to the bottom of this monstrosity, I thank you for your patience! Horrifying to see that it is, for some reason, posted as the next suggestion after Skyscraping. But I love even my most troubled stories like children--the more warped they are, the more I know it's my fault. So I love them extra.

I can't bear to unpublish it, so I just edit it a little at a time. I haven't had the mettle to even deal with that weird Tom Robbins-like rhyming interlude just yet. But there is something cornily appropriate about it for an after-hours diner at the crossroads of a mill town and a college town. To those who mourn the loss of that wheel in their lives, I hope you find something new and enriching to move things onward.