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“Always pick up when nature calls!”

With Sono’s eyes attached like a squashed bug to his flip-flops, Edgar picked up the pace and hobbled hastily behind the dome he called home, out of his sight.

The toilet was no more than a hole in the ground behind his home, a seemingly bottomless one, since he’d not once during all the years he’d lived there cleaned it, nor had it ever overflowed; or so he claimed at least. Sono didn’t like to use it, partly because it felt like he was on display. Even if he defecated into an aged plastic box lined with a garbage bag, whose disposal was far more graphic than what his grandpa had set up, he was used to the confines of a bathroom, often with his flashlight as only companion. The vast eye of the concrete unnerved him. If Edgar would put up a partition or something, perhaps he’d reconsider.

Though the view behind his home didn’t vary much from the front of it, there was one major difference; a large hole in the ground, namely, an Olympic-size swimming pool. On all four sides, as well as the bottom, it was lined with pristine white tiles, a substitute sky below ground level. It wasn’t just pristine, it was twinkling. Therefore, it looked utterly misplaced, with nothing but a domed structure to offset the concrete rubble everywhere around it, the pool was like a porcelain figurine dropped among heaps of gravel.

Edgar had fixed it up himself, telling Sono of how he spent years down there, before he was even born, arduously splitting the chunks of concrete covering the entire bottom into manageable pieces. Once all of the debris was out, he spent close to a year washing it, scrubbing and polishing it into perfection.

It was a refuge, albeit an incredibly small one, for the displaced spirits of the poisoned seas. According to Edgar, they roamed the planet aimlessly in the millions, if not billions, forced from their homes, while the seas increased their contents of chemicals and other hazardous substances, marking their return farther and farther in time. Though nowhere near home, it would feel less hostile than the space above sea level.

Three

Edgar’s mouth was suddenly pulled apart, with thin saliva strings bridging his contorted lips, before he stooped sideways and then brought a caring hand to his caved chest.

“What’s wrong?” Sono put his hand on the side of his grandpa’s shoulder immediately and leaned forward. “Is it your heart?”

He feared the worst. Putting the other hand on him as well, he squeezed both of his gaunt shoulders firmly and thrust his face up close to his, jiggling the pull tab necklace that seemed to weigh him down.

“Grandpa? Quit fucking around!”

“Thverm vale.” Edgar pushed out gravely through his saggy lips. “Thonic voom.”

Sono winced slightly, but remained with his hands on the shoulders of his grandpa, heaving from his laborious breathing.

“What? Does it hurt?”

With his head perfectly still, Edgar rolled his eyes upward. His left pupil was the size of a needle prick, granting his gray iris an unearthly mass, while his right pupil had swelled so much that it overtook the iris entirely, leaving only a faint gray halo behind. Sono looked back and forth between his left and his right eye, stunned by the disparity of his vision, on one side an almost tangible, unfurling bulk, and on the other a condensed, gleaming abyss. Even though nothing but the size of the pupils had changed, he didn’t know what he was witnessing.

“Grandpa? Are you all right? Say something.”

His grandpa took a deep breath, rousing his entire body. “I’m fine. Did you feel it?”

Sono straightened himself and removed his hands, still clutching a mismatched resolve.

“I haven’t felt it this strong…before…must be close.”

Edgar swiveled his head around deftly, searching the ceiling for something. Sono looked up as well, at the vaulted ceiling above them, but all he saw was the unsightly smoke diverter and bland concrete around it.

“Feel what?”

His grandpa was smiling; though battered and weary, it was a smile nonetheless.

“Majestic.”

“Grandpa? Look at me; what are you talking about?”

“The sea. Have you seen it?”

Sono stared sternly into the aged soul trying its best to hide behind the dazzlingly glazed eyes, now back to usual size. “On video.”

“Have you seen it lately?”

Sono shook his head to a question he really didn’t understand, but his grandpa didn’t seem interested anyhow, continuing his aerial search. “So you’re all right?”

Edgar brought his head down with an accompanying frown. “Stop worrying,” he said firmly and licked his lips before once again looking up at the ceiling. “There are spirits all around us Sono. They live among us, inside us. They’re everywhere. Have you ever felt them? Or heard them?”

Edgar, leaning forward slightly, gave his own thigh a controlled pat, as if standing by to catch its evanescent reverberations.

“It’s fascinating. The sea is an outstanding being. It’s still the oldest and even the biggest life form on earth. A creature just like us, and what a creature. What a creature…have you ever listened?”

Sono didn’t really know where to look; at the ceiling, his grandpa’s face or his thigh? His eyes skipped about erratically. “Listened to what?”

“Just listened.”

Sono now kept his eyes on his grandpa’s, precariously moored to the storm rumbling in the confines of his vivacious eyes.

“No...”

The amplified feeling of concern, like so many times before, was dragged through the dust, scraping up a feeling of resentment ingrained in his flesh, inevitably prodded by the exasperation his grandpa’s cavalcade of outlandish remarks brought about.

While Edgar swept the domed gray ceiling with an amorous gaze, giving ample opportunity for silence to entrench itself, perhaps because of his resentment being tinged with melancholy, or that he left his eyes to float freely across his grandpa’s shoulders and torso, Sono realized something very peculiar; it had been the first time he had felt his grandpa’s flesh in a very long time, apart from fleeting touches. Even though it was draped with an oversized, dust-bitten skin, the few muscles left on his gaunt frame were spirited. Sono smiled at his own soppiness, and then drew a deep breath.

“Did you ask about my heart?”

“Uh…” Orienting himself first and foremost, Sono then had to think hard. “Yeah, I did…I was worried. You still have the original old sack hanging there.”

“Barely. Come see for yourself how precariously it’s hanging.”

Sono didn’t move a muscle.

“Are your nipples doorknobs? I’m still quite fond of you, Grandpa, so I’ll pass on splitting open your chest.”

Edgar brought his own hand up to his chest, to caress it. “I can feel it deteriorating. It’s bad.”

“Showoff…you’re gonna outlive us all,” Sono remarked tenderly.

“No, and I’m not gonna go around looking for an upgrade, or even a fresh one. When it fails, so will I.”

Sono, pretending that his grandpa’s impromptu obituary had passed him by, had never heard of anyone either selling or owning an upgraded heart, or a fresh heart for that matter. He struggled to come up with something to say in the midst of his confusion, something neither asinine nor slighting, and quick. Did he actually think there were fresh hearts to replace the old ones with? “I guess it’s, uh, like everything else around here,” Sono offered fumblingly, his diplomatic ambitions slowing him down considerably. “The prices keep going up…but not the quality.”

“Prices went up again?”

On the same muddy path, his head between his knees, upside-down, laboriously wading through the smelly muck that by now reached up to his stomach, Sono simply kept going, unaware of the direction. He no longer had any idea what they were talking about anyway.

“Just a touch. A smidge. But I don’t want another scare, so I’ll keep the numbers to myself.”

“You’ll get constipated.”

“Yeah, I prefer that over a visit to your sinkhole throne…”

Edgar tapped him on the side of his head. “In here.”

“Oh. Nah, don’t worry; it’s already constipated. It keeps my brain cushioned if I fall, and best of all, it does so free of charge.”

Edgar looked at him questionably, and then tilted his head to the right at a severe angle, his cheek touching his shoulder. Sono found the sight very disquieting, a lopsidedness almost defying a human’s range of motion, and looked away.

Isolation did him little good at present.

“Have you heard the story of Dio the fool?” Edgar asked contemplatively.

Sono tilted his head back slightly, and inhaled as he watched his grandpa’s downcast gaze.

“No…but you’re gonna tell me anyway, aren’t you?”

“Don’t you want me to?”

“Aren’t you kind of giving away the whole story with the title?”

“What if it’s ironic?”

“What if it’s boring? Huh? How do you like your own medicine? Manners, Grandpa, manners. Don’t answer with a question.”

Edgar smiled widely, a rare benevolence buffed by the gleam in his narrowed eyes.

“All right, just start. The curtains are parting, and your one audience member is alive and listening.”

Sono parted his hands theatrically and then slumped down onto the grainy blend constituting the floor inside his grandpa’s home, smelling of smoke and aridity.

“A long time ago…there was a human being named Dio. One day he found himself on a different planet, a long, long way from home. Basically, he was as lost as you can get out there in space.”

Edgar pointed a cagey little index finger at the ceiling.

“Moo, says the alien.”

“Shush. Listen.”

Sono bent his ears toward him with the help of his hands, but Edgar didn’t look.

“It reminded him of Earth, except that the sky was riddled with objects he had never seen; strange celestial bodies that reminded him of a full moon, but they were visible in broad daylight and hundred times closer. He could almost jump from one to the other. Almost. Imagine jumping from planet to planet, like you do on the concrete.”

Edgar assumed a peculiar expression, something between amazement and deviousness, as if an extremely complex ruse had unfolded perfectly in his mind. His facial leaps were far more interesting at the moment than his story or the concrete. Sono was mesmerized by the minute shifts in his bleak face.

“After only hours of wandering around, he stumbled upon the inhabitants of the planet. Fortunately for him, the inhabitants were friendly, and though he didn’t understand a word they said, they understood each other surprisingly well with improvised sign language. They gave him water and some strange snacks, which restored his energy immediately. Now, structurally, they were not much different from himself. The only thing that really set them apart was that wherever he had hair, they had fur. A thick, golden fur. Think golden lion tamarins.”

Sono had no idea what he wanted him to think of. It sounded like an instrument.

“And all of them had beautiful, long manes, a perfect strip of luscious hair, starting at the top of their heads, and going all the way down their backs. Also, none of them wore any clothes.”

Sono nodded in feigned astonishment, because he could not shake the golden glimmer of the strange instruments lined up before him.

“They brought him to their village, which wasn’t far. It was a treeless field with about a hundred huts and a few larger structures. After a nice meal and an alcoholic beverage that softened him, he got a cot in the home of a family of five, the chief’s daughter and her family. Dio quickly settled in, his surrogate family feeling like his own. He hunted with his new village friends, slept alongside them in the wild, built huts with them, gathered tubers and giant eggs and participated in their traditional celebrations.”

Edgar turned to Sono with an ambiguous squint.

“As the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, Dio walked around completely naked just like them. The hairless creature. He had burned his clothes; threw them in a ceremonial bonfire lit for the couple getting wed. Slowly he even began to learn their language, and they in turn learned some phrases of his. And as the notion of him only being a spectacle to them faded, he found himself thinking less and less of his home planet. Enamored with the good-natured creatures with manes, he felt ever more inclined to start building a life among them.”

Edgar furrowed his eyebrows and dropped his gaze to the floor.

“There was one problem though. They shared the planet with hideous monsters, smelly big creatures with unquenchable appetites. They often attacked them senselessly, even killing and eating a great deal of the creatures with manes. It was terrifying. When he heard of this from the elders, Dio set his heart on protecting the creatures with manes anyway he could. So, with a few of the villagers, he devised a plan to attack the monsters. The idea was met with joy by everyone, and a feast was planned before the attack was commenced. Naturally, Dio was in ecstasy; by showing his aptitude on the battlefield, they would accept him more easily. He liked the idea of himself as the savior foreigner. But it didn’t take away from the fact that he would easily give his life on the battlefield for the creatures with manes. His gratitude toward them was that immense. As the day of the feast finally arrived, Dio was clothed in ceremonial garbs, as were the others who would fight with him the following day. Every part of the village was adorned for the celebrations, and spirits among its inhabitants were high. Dio’s spirits were high as well; he had never before felt such camaraderie, such belonging. He loved it there.”

Edgar nodded contemplatively to himself.

“But, Dio was a fool. The creatures with manes suddenly overpowered him, tied him up, stuffed a variety of local vegetables in all of his orifices and roasted him over the fire. Oh, and they drained him of blood too, as he hung over the fire. Slit both his ankles and drank it.”

They stared at each other in silence, Edgar the only one sticking to the expression he went in with, while Sono’s gradually darkened.

“The end? All right, nice story.” Sono sat himself up and cleared his throat. “And the takeaway from that is what? That you’re a great liar?”

“You think that’s a lie?”

“First of all, humans haven’t traveled to any planets where the life forms are bigger than a booger. And he did it in the past? How dumb is that? That’s lie number one. Lie number two…” Sono shook his head dismissively, finding it useless to try and organize the discrepancies assailing his mind. “It’s all a lie, the entire story, start to finish. You just yanked the whole thing it out of your ass. Schlick.”

“That makes it a lie?”

Sensing a trap, Sono decided to test the waters.

“Well, no, I guess technically that makes it a pile of shit.”

His grandpa didn’t respond, or move for that matter. Feeling like he for once had the upper hand, and aware that he had to make use of it fast, he plunged right in.

“Have you heard of the invisible people called Pillipows?”

“No. No I have not.”

“There you go. Want to hear a story about them?”

“I’d love to,” his grandpa answered enthusiastically, casting aside his solemnity.