Drabblecast 499 – Nowhere

By Kay Vaindal

The blue men live where they put John Brown’s corpse, which is to say, Nowhere. Nowhere is a cave under Charles Town, West Virginia, which used to be Charles Town, Virginia. The (West) Virginians who presided over John Brown’s execution told the newspapers this: His corpse would ride to New York with a noose still around his neck, in a wooden box nailed shut, and the train that carried the coffin whistled to the mothers of the north that this was a preamble to a whole lot more coffins.

Really, the box was empty. They put the corpse in the cave to feed the blue men.

But the blue men in Nowhere didn’t just eat John Brown’s corpse.

They picked it apart and used it for all sorts of things. His hair became a net for catching scrawny, eyeless fish in the pools of Nowhere. His flesh fertilized fungus gardens, and his bones became tools, and his clothes adorned the kings of Nowhere for generations. I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose, said John Brown before he was hanged. John Brown’s noose, which they did leave around his neck, became six rungs in the rope ladder to the crack that went up the cave wall, winding toward the surface.

One century after the deposition of that first corpse, the rope ladder made from nooses toward the crack in the sky dangles near completion. The newly elected king, John Brown VI, remembers their lost brothers, as is customary, in his inauguration speech. What isn’t customary is that he promises retribution for all blue men.

His election, of course, wouldn’t be possible but for the writings of John Brown I, whose death sustained the people with tiny eyeless fish, tools, fungus, rungs, etc. The least the blue men could do was read the texts shoved in his pockets, scrawled on his hands. The kings of Nowhere would be democratically-elected henceforth, decreed John Brown II, the first blue John Brown, in honor John Brown I.

“Are we men?” asks his Scribe after the speech.

“Of course,” says John Brown VI.

“The writings say men up there have dangly-things,” says Scribe, “Which hang from between their legs. And women don’t.”

“We’re women, then,” says John Brown VI.

“Women up there have round bits on their chests, with buttons in the middle.”

John Brown VI looks down at his chest, flat and blue under the tattered remains of his brown John Brown shirt.

“This is why they hate us,” says an ancient blue man, who was there one-hundred years ago when the first blue man was slain.

“They hate us because we came here from there,” says another blue man, pointing down.

“It doesn’t matter why they hate us,” says the first, “Only that they do.”

“For which we’ll have our retribution,” says John Brown VI.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter to you that we need another rung,” says Scribe, elbowing him. “Anything to get you elected, eh, John? What would John say?”

John Brown VI only smiles.

The early days of John Brown VI’s presidency proceed with sleepy normality among the blue men. Scribes read and write. The ancients complain. Fishermen catch scraggly eyeless bundles, which they dry in the crescent of light. They’re careful not to let the crescent touch their skin. Some of the most ancient ancients carry burn scars from the old days, when there was an opening at ground-level, and the dabbled light of the forest reached into Nowhere. When the fish dry, they cut them open with fingernails and rusty bread knives.

On the fourth day of John Brown VI’s presidency, he approaches Scribe while the others sleep.

Scribe snorts awake from his spot on the floor.

John Brown VI hands him a knife, and holds out his arm.

“What is this?” says Scribe.

John Brown VI says, “The final rung.”

Scribe laughs.

John Brown VI says, “My blood will do vastly more towards advancing the cause I have earnestly endeavored to promote, than all I have done in my life before,” which is what John Brown I said, before they killed him.

For many centuries, Nowhere’s exit led to a hillside pine grove. Kind outsiders used to deliver fish (with eyes) and bushels of maize to the blue men, their cousins who couldn’t step into the sun. The kind outsiders stopped coming after apocalypses unfurled across the land like rugs, disease and explosions and screams that carried deep into Nowhere. Piece by piece, the apocalypse came for the forest, too.

Then, somebody poured concrete around the opening in the woods, and built a bakery on top. The baker, a skinny, pale man with a thick moustache, intended to use the cavern as a cellar. When he found it occupied, he wasn’t angry. He dropped cupcakes into the cave some days, which were the sweetest things the blue men ever tasted. Other days he dropped baskets of books and newspapers about all sorts of things, mostly God, and Chester Town, and the Civil War, and the apocalypse before it which the new outsiders celebrated each year, twice a year. Once in a while he let white men dressed in gray trudge into the basement, and they’d push inside the opening the bodies of men wearing blue, full of holes or wearing nooses, which became rungs.

One night a blue man, young and brash, snuck up out of the basement, into the bakery and onto the street, and the town roiled in disgust. They chased him down and beat him with sticks and rocks and shoved a bayonet in his chest. They pushed his swollen body through the hole in the bakery, and the baker’s body, too, bruised and bloodied in exchange for keeping such a disgusting secret. The state (West Virginia, by then) also knew of the hole under Chester Town, and the blue men inside it, on account of its fantastic use as a corpse disposal shoot for folks whose bodies might otherwise get martyred, or incite riots. We have heard the reports of a sexless blue humanoid, said West Virginia, and we assure the people of Chester Town that it was a Halloween prank. Then, West Virginia sealed the hole with bricks.

The bricklayer was sloppy. Sometimes mortar falls into the cave. Sometimes from holes between bricks spill crescent-shaped prisms of light, illuminating fungus gnats and steam. Sometimes it lasts for hours. Sometimes only seconds. This opening, the blue men are sure, can be widened with fingernails and bread knives. If only they can reach it.

Scribe approaches John with the knife. John Brown VI squeezes his eyes shut, clenches his fist, prepares to feel his arm separate at the shoulder joint.

With a slice, Scribe cuts off John Brown VI’s tattered, honorary, sacred John Brown shirt.

John Brown VI snaps his eyes open. The cold damp air tickles his chest, which had grown used to being covered.

Scribe holds the shirt. He says, “I can turn this into rope.”

The next time a tiny crescent appears on the floor, the rope is finished. Scribe ties the shirt-rope in place near the crack in the sky, dodging the incoming light. He descends back to the cave floor, eyes watery and red.

Thirty-three blue men, which is all blue men, scribes and stone-masons and fungus gardeners and fishermen and ancients, stare at him. “What was it like?” says a scribe.

“Bright,” says Scribe.

“Bright,” says a fisherman, whose mouth moves like he’s sounding out one of the harder words in the texts, dexterous, or phosphorescent.

Scribe laughs. “Alright then, John,” he says. “Up you go, yeah? Let’s see some of the retribution, why don’t we? Bring us back a human corpse or two.”

The others chatter in agitation. A human corpse! someone mutters to someone. Like the old days. We won’t have to fertilize the fungus with our waste a minute longer, says a fungus gardener. John Brown VI smooths down his brown John Brown pants and puts his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder.

“Now hold on,” says an ancient.

John Brown VI stills. Scribe rolls his eyes.

“We ought to wait till the light’s gone,” says the ancient. “We can’t risk our John Brown burning through-and-through so soon in his tenure.”

Murmurs of agreement spread through the crowd. Scribe hears other scribes giggle, and his cheeks feel hot, purpled with blood.

“Besides,” says another ancient. “We shouldn’t be after human corpses. We should be after cupcakes.”

Even John Brown VI feels drool pool under his tongue, so long on fish and fungus that he barely remembers the taste of anything else. Beside him, Scribe rolls his eyes again. Scribe was a tiny blue baby when the state sealed the hole to the bakery. When cupcakes arrived, they were distributed based on seniority, as with all things in Nowhere.

Scribe, who has never had a cupcake, says, “If I may ask, respectfully, kind sir, where is the retribution in cupcakes?”

The blue men grow agitated. Cupcakes vs. corpses becomes the topic of the afternoon, and no one gets any work done. The fungus thirsts for urine. The fish swim uninhibited in clear, still pools. John Brown VI announces, after hours of argument, that there will be a vote.

The blue men sit crisscross on the floor. They close their eyes and bow their heads. John Brown VI tells the group, “May he who desires corpses raise his hand.”

John Brown VI counts sixteen hands.

“May he who desires cupcakes raise his hand.”

John Brown VI counts sixteen hands.

John Brown VI announces sadly to his constituents, “We are at an impasse.”

Scribe jumps to his feet. “It occurred to me, while we were voting, John,” he says. “Why don’t we do both? You and I can go up. I grab a corpse. You grab a tray of cupcakes. Everyone’s happy!”

The blue men, still seated on the floor, murmur. Is that democracy? someone asks. What would John Brown I say? Can we do both? Should we do both?

Scribe stomps his foot. “I have studied the texts!” he says. “Our lives and freedoms are not at stake—Of course we should do both!”

Another scribe frowns. “I’ve studied the texts as well, friend,” he says. “And I think democracy might mean one or the other.”

A third scribe nods. “We should vote again.”

The blue men vote again, and again John Brown counts sixteen hands and sixteen hands.

“The next thing we ought to do,” says a scribe, licking his finger and paging through the texts, “Is we ought to have a debate. That’s a process by which each side tries to convince the other side why his side is right.”

“Right,” says another scribe. “That’s exactly it. Each side should elect a minority leader.”

“But how do we know which side is which? Democracy needs to be anonymous.”

“That’s right, isn’t it?” says the second scribe. “Democracy does need to be anonymous.” He pads over to the texts, and then he says, “Scribe?”

Scribe rubs his temples. “Yes?”

“We ought to blindfold ourselves somehow before we divide into sides, don’t you think?”

“What if John votes?” says Scribe.

“What?” says the scribe.

“Johns don’t vote, I know. But what if this once, we make an exception.”

The scribe pages through the old, tattered books. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Just this once,” says Scribe.

“It’s not in the texts,” says another scribe, squat in front of a book.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it,” agrees another. “Johns aren’t supposed to vote.”

The blue men hold a vote.

John Brown VI says to the seated blue men, heads down, “May he who desires debate raise his hand.”

He counts the hands.

John Brown VI says, “May he who desires making an exception, so that on this occasion and this occasion alone, I, John Brown VI, might cast a vote on the question of cupcakes versus corpses, raise his hand.”

He counts the hands.

John Brown VI says to the blue men, “There shall be a debate.”

A scribe stands up. “Did we settle the question on if the debate ought to be anonymous?”

John Brown VI motions for the blue men to lower their heads again. May he who requests an anonymous debate raise his hand, he says, and may he who requests a non-anonymous debate raise his hand, and he counts, and he decrees, the debate will be anonymous.

The blue men move with their eyes squeezed shut to either side of the cave. Cupcake-voters move right, toward the fungal gardens. Corpse-voters move left, toward the crystal pools. Scribe, eyes squeezed shut, arms outstretched in front of him to avoid collisions with his brothers, makes his way left. John Brown VI watches it all, frowning in a way that he thinks might emulate John Brown I, age twelve, watching a young man get beaten with a shovel. This conflict, he is sure, has capacity to end life as blue men know it.

“John!” shouts someone from the right. “We ought to disguise our voices, right?”

“We know that’s you, Fishman, you cupcake-lover!” shouts someone from the left.

The blue men laugh.

“Yes, I suppose we ought to disguise our voices,” says John Brown VI.

Scribe turns his voice scratchy and low, and says to his fellow corpse-voters, “It’s really all about the retribution, isn’t it? A blue man for a human. Simple math. They put a bayonet in our brother and we never got revenge.”

“Simple math, yes,” says someone who’s turned their voice shrill. “And it would be good for the fungus.”

“Aye,” says someone else. “We do have to think about the fungus.”

Both sides structure their arguments and elect a speaker, who stands before the group with his eyes pressed shut. The cupcakes focus on nostalgia, sugar, the kindness of the baker and his sweet soft hands, and how he died so young protecting them, and how he ought to be remembered in this way, cupcakes, forever. The corpses focus on vengeance, on their brother who had the courage to wander into their world and was slain for it, speared through his bare chest, and that they ought to spear a human through his chest just the same with the sharpened bones of their John Brown I. The utility of it, certainly, is nothing to scoff at either—corpses sustained their cave for decades after the apocalypse, and might do so again, if they were sneaky about all this. The cupcakes rebut with a point on how they haven’t had a corpse in one-hundred years, and they’re doing just fine. The corpses rebut with the needs of the fungus.

It’s a lively day of festivities and with their eyes squeezed shut, the blue men don’t see the crescent light blink away the hours. No one catches fish, and no one tends to the fungus, and as the stomachs of both sides grumble, Nowhere seems to get hotter, and hotter.

Once both sides have made their points, John Brown VI holds a second vote.

The blue men move with their eyes shut back to the center of the cave, and sit crisscross on the floor. They bow their heads. John Brown VI tells the group, “May he who desires corpses raise his hand.”

John Brown VI counts the hands.

“May he who desires cupcakes raise his hand.”

John Brown VI counts the hands.

John Brown VI announces to his constituents, “We are at an impasse.”

Eyes fly open and blue men jump to their feet, lips moving, shouts echoing, fists shaking toward the crack in the ceiling.

John Brown VI says, “Easy! Easy, folks!” and the blue men’s shouts turn into whispers.

Scribe stands beside him, hands on his hips. “We ought to just do both, John,” he hisses.

“We’ve talked that through, Scribe, and it’s not the solution,” says John.

“Well, what now, then?” says Scribe.

Another scribe, still seated, stands up. “I’ve looked through the texts, friends,” he says. “It appears at this point, we should consider other methods of settling our agreement.”

“What other methods?” scoffs Scribe.

“Well,” says scribe, avoiding eye contact.

“Yes?” says Scribe.

“War,” says scribe.

The blue men snap their eyes to the front of the room, where John Brown VI stands and frowns at the rope-ladder, dangling from the roof of the cave watching them, passive like a ghost, old rungs colonized by little green mosses where the crescent of light sometimes touches. “War!” shouts someone excitedly. “War?” says someone else, aghast.

“This seems a little much, John,” says Scribe in John Brown VI’s ear. “We ought to exercise caution. We aren’t many and true war, as I have read about it, could devastate us.”

John Brown VI stretches his jaw. Then he says, “Caution, Sir! I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice!” which is what John Brown said, once.

The blue men make fists and raise them toward the ceiling. They turn to their neighbor to strike, and don’t, and then toward their other neighbor, and lower their fists, and then they look back to the front of the cave. A scribe says, “I suppose it ought to be not-anonymous now, huh? We’ll need to know who to fight.”

An ancient waves his arms in the air. “Hey, hey! Everybody! I don’t want war.”

“Oh!” says the scribe. “Oh, my. Oh, gosh. So sorry, sir. I just assumed—We ought to vote on the matter of the war, shouldn’t we, John?”

John Brown VI nods. “Certainly,” he says, lowering his palms parallel to the floor. “Certainly. If everyone could sit back down.”

Above the cave, it’s raining. A Jersey Mike’s employee on break in the boiler room stamps his cigarette out on the floor, and beside it he spots a funny little hole in the foundation, shaped like the moon.