Copyright (c) 1994-2004 Daniel Callahan
Any Coincidence Is
(or, The Day Julia & Cecil the Cat Faced a Fate Worse Than Death)
v9.2 (January 2004)
Daniel Callahan
Copyright (c) 1994-2004 Daniel Callahan This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
This novel can be found online at http://www.eclectic-cheval.net in html, pdf, and zipped text formats.
"I used to do a turn in the army. I was really mad back then… [a] loony! I'd never have any music to introduce me, which was a big deal. Unheard of. I'd hop out on to the stage. It used to take ages. Hop, hop, hop. As I got nearer to the microphone, they'd hear this doddery voice going 'Do do do… do do do.' When I'd eventually make it to the microphone I'd stop and say, 'I must be a great disappointment to you all.' That's it. There's no joke. It's totally irrational. A lot of people don't get it. Still don't." — Spike Milligan
"What will be is. Is is."
— James Joyce, "Finnegans Wake"
1. The Dim Bulb
"If you guys don't listen to me, we're going to end up in that box
again!"
— Davy to the other Monkees, "Head"
The young man (boy, really) played with his fingers in the garish light cast from the lone bulb hanging in the concrete basement. He scratched at an imaginary itch on his right hand (just below his thumb) in order to take his mind off the man in the lab coat who sat across from him at the beaten, scarred, wood table. It didn't work. And whoever this man in the lab coat was, he was insistent about paperwork. He had three inches clipped onto a weathered clipboard which he flipped through with precision.
"Can I offer you a glass of water?" asked the boy's captor in a calm, sensitive tenor.