Display a printable version
The Enthusiast
A Guest Quarters story
By
Ann Dyess
 With a surgeon's care and precision, Lionel Hutchins returned the knight to his place in front of a king on an ornately carved throne. Satisfied, he backed away with a proud smile.
Roger Briggs, his neighbor and self-appointed nuisance, shook his blond head in bemused wonder.
"I don't see how you have the patience. You dust every piece?"
"Once a week," Lionel confirmed, moving left to a purple dragon with a castle in his talons.
Lionel's glass-fronted cabinets were the stuff of neighborhood legend. Not because they were magnificent to behold, not because he had crafted them himself, but because there were so damned many of them. Glass-fronted cabinets and curios lined the walls of the foyer, the living room, the den, both bedrooms, the dining room, even the lavatory. Lionel had mounted some of them on walls, others stood on the floor. Some had feet, others had wheels, and some rested flat on the carpet. There were cherry, oak, walnut, and particleboard cabinets. The only characteristic the cabinets had in common was that they all had glass doors. Plain glass, etched glass, beveled glass, and even one stained glass.
But if Lionel's taste in cabinets was inconsistent, his selection of figurines was eclectic at best. Gargoyles, elephants, frogs, knights, dragons, angels, fairies, teddy bears, dwarves, horses, trolls... and of course, a few people. The list was endless. Lionel placed each piece precisely as he wanted. Battles waged eternally, lovers spent weeks, months, centimeters from one another's embrace, others spent their lives perpetually surprised.
During the last two hours, Briggs had followed Lionel from his foyer, to his living room, and finally his den, where Briggs had helped himself to a highball glass of Glenlivet on ice from Lionel's wet bar. Not that he had needed it. Lionel judged from the stench of his breath when he arrived at eight thirty that morning that he was still fairly soused from the night before.
Briggs reached over Lionel's shoulder and plucked a three-inch pewter model of the Grim Reaper from the case. His upper lip curled in what could have been either disgust or contempt, but was probably a mix of both.
"Please put that back, Roger," Lionel implored. Briggs regarded Lionel with a curled lip, took his time downing a long draft of scotch, and extended his arm back over Lionel's shoulder, placing the figure back with exaggerated care.
"You're obsessed," Briggs sneered.
"No, I'm not," Lionel murmured, moving on to a dancing gypsy figurine, frozen mid-pirouette. "I'm a collector. An enthusiast."
Briggs harrumphed loudly and collapsed into a tattered tartan couch. He put his feet up on an equally tattered tartan ottoman.
"You're not a collector. My wife's a collector. Collects dolls. Porcelain, you know?" He swung his long arm around as he talked and came dangerously close to spilling his highball. "She used to do Beenie Babies. We sold 'em on e-bay for a profit. A profit! For those stupid little stuffed pieces of shit. That's collecting. This..." He waved his arm around and splashed a few drops onto the arm of the chair. "I duh know what this is. It's obsession!"
Lionel suppressed the urge to shake his head. He knew from experience that any hint of disbelief or disapproval of Brigg's words would lead to a confrontation involving plenty of drunken logic that left him with his head swimming. The problem with Briggs wasn't that he was a drunk that made no sense. It was that he was a drunk that made just enough sense to confuse the hell out of a person.
Lionel put down the gypsy and moved on to a glass fairy.
"I have an idea," Briggs barked. "Why don't you buy one of those spray cans of air? You know, like people use to clean out computer keyboards? You'd be done with your dusting in half an hour. Tops."
It wasn't the air of smug superiority that perturbed Lionel. It was his knowledge that Briggs would never understand. The time he spent dusting his figures was his hobby, his passion. A can of air would deny him the ability to touch each piece, to smile at their beautiful frozen faces, to remember how each one came into his hands. The slow, methodical removal, the caress with the cloth, the careful placement, it was what he lived for.
Especially now that Tracy was gone.
He'd never forgive himself for that. God, how she'd wanted children, and he believed he'd done everything in his power to help her to get them. He even suggested fertility specialists, but she wanted to try a more natural way... And now she was gone, and he'd let it happen. He'd just stood by and--
"You know, if you'd stop spending money on all this crap, you might could afford some decent furniture." Briggs swung his pale, chubby fists and delivered a blow to the arms of the chair, triggering a wobble dangerously close to collapse.
And if I had a grain of rice for every piece of unwelcome advice I've gotten from you, I could feed all the starving people in Africa, Lionel thought. He pulled the door of the case closed.
"Done?" Briggs asked.
Lionel nodded.
"Which room next?" Briggs asked, unfolding himself from the chair and striding to the bar for a quick refill.
"Same as last week, Roger," Lionel sighed. "Same as every week."
"Bedroom!" Briggs bellowed, leading the way, highball raised like a guidon. Lionel followed, dragging his stepladder.
Briggs assumed his usual position on the edge of Lionel's double bed where he could watch Lionel's every move, all the better to criticize him. Lionel set up his stepstool before the first cabinet, mounted it, and pulled the glass door aside in one easy motion. Briggs reclined onto the mattress and expelled a lungful of alcohol-tainted breath so potent Lionel could smell it from across the room. Briggs' eyes darted from cabinet to figure-packed cabinet.
"Man, how can you sleep in here with all these beady little eyes starin' at you?"
Lionel paused, considered the question, turned, and faced Briggs.
"With my eyes closed," he replied serenely.
Briggs sat up as if he had been shocked, and Lionel supposed he probably was. He didn't kid often. Briggs' response when he did typically bordered on hysteria. As Lionel expected, Briggs coughed his braying laugh and slapped his thigh hard enough to make Lionel wince. He gasped the words, "Eyes closed..." and nearly composed himself, only to erupt in laughter just as Lionel was certain he was about to settle down. After about five minutes, Briggs finally settled into his usual state of smug arrogance.
"See, Hutch? That's what I'm always telling you," Briggs began, although Lionel could not recall any one topic Briggs commented on more than another, other that a continual recount of Lionel's numerous faults. "You need to joke more. You're a funny guy when you want to be. You spend too much time acting all serious. It's probably why that wife of yours left you."
Lionel stiffened at the mention of his wife. Tracy was a delicate subject, and therefore Lionel was certain he had asked Briggs never to broach the topic again--ever. Under any circumstances. The pain of her loss was still fresh, even after six years. Briggs obviously didn't care, or he'd been too drunk to recall Lionel's request. Probably both.
Lionel put down the glass panther after a brief brush with the cloth and backed down the stepladder. He felt a bit like a jungle cat himself, a cornered one, angry and hungry. He was tired of Briggs invading his home, week after week, for hours of criticism and put-downs. He was tired of having his feelings and wishes ignored. All that, however, he could have forgiven. What he could not forgive was Briggs bringing up Tracy. Lionel knew that if he did nothing now, he was setting himself up for week after week of reminders of his imperfections: his lack of humor, how he was too much of a puss for any woman to date, much less stay married to. He had not meant to... well, remorse was futile. It was too late to change things now. Part of her would always be with him. Always. And then there were the children to think about.
Lionel walked toward the nightstand and withdrew the drawer. He rummaged through its contents, a man in no hurry.
"Roger, do you know what? They say that what a person collects is actually a part of that person, a physical display of how one views oneself."
"Then you must be one schitzoid motherfucker!" Briggs scoffed. He sat up and watched as Lionel shuffled through the contents of the drawer as if anticipating a chance to mock whatever was withdrawn.
"So Lionel, tell me. How do you pay for all of these little trinkets of yours?"
Lionel, still rummaging, replied, "I don't."
"What? You mean you stole all this shit?" Briggs' voice bordered on respect.
Lionel withdrew a branch in the shape of a voluptuous woman that, judging from its appearance, had been carved years ago. She held her slender wooden arms over her head, and they tapered into a gentle, rounded tip. Her mouth was petrified in a permanent "O."
"I only paid once--very dearly--for this," he said. He directed the tip of the woman wand to the cabinets. There was the sound and feel of a static charge, and one by one, the creatures inside the case blinked, stretched, and came to life.
"How in the hell?" Briggs gasped. Lionel smiled, and pulled aside a door. A kilted figure of Rob Roy MacGregor waved at Lionel and leaped from his perch, where he began helping other effigies from the shelf.
As Lionel waved his wand at the other cases, a mob of tiny creatures descended from cabinets and flew, walked, rode, or swam in unseen waters in Briggs' direction. A tiny archer drew a porcelain arrow from his quill and shot him in the knee.
"You are fucking--ow! Mother of God!" Briggs screamed. A minuscule knight stood before one of Briggs' toes while the rest of him hopped around in a panic holding his severed foot. The knight smiled a knowing, malicious smile, and it was the most chilling thing Briggs had ever seen.
Lionel had disappeared. In the distance, Briggs heard the crackling sound of the wand as Lionel waved it at cabinet after packed cabinet.
"This is the craziest thing I have ever--stop that!" he barked at a dwarf who had sunk his resin teeth into his ankle. He lifted his leg and jerked it back and forth until the pest let go. It took a piece of ankle with as it flew across the bedroom.
He hopped carefully across the room, mindful of his bare, mutilated foot in a room of advancing, breakable statuettes.
"Lionel, call off your troops. I was wrong. You're not schitzoid, your little friends are!"
All he heard was the distant crackle as Lionel waved his wand in a distant room.
"I am not seeing this. I am not seeing this," he muttered, but a quick trip around the corner from the bedroom revealed that not only was he seeing this, it was worse that he could have imagined.
Countless creatures, all under a foot tall, had emerged from their glass prisons and, without a word, were rallying for attack. A glass Indian brave rode the back of a porcelain dragon. A colonial American soldier pushed a cannon alongside a sorcerer in a red robe and hat. A princess with a conical hat rode on the back of a horse behind Lady Godiva.
"OK Hutch, this is cool and all, but this ain't funny anymore! Tell them to back off!"
No answer except the sound of hundreds of tiny footsteps slowly converging. Lionel's absence made Briggs uneasy. He hadn't noticed before how many of the figurines carried tiny weapons. He wasn't scared of wood or resin weapons, but after the incident with his toe, he wasn't ready to take any chances.
"Hutch!"
The tiny cannon exploded like a firecracker, and he felt the pea-sized cannonball hit his cheek hard enough to draw blood. Briggs glared at the soldier with the cannon.
Ok, he thought. That's it.
He drew back a foot and kicked a glass fairy, who, incapable of righting herself, shattered against the wall. The advance hesitated, and Briggs would have sworn he heard the sharp intake of a thousand tiny breaths.
A thousand tiny heads swiveled and faced a glass statue of the Lady of the Lake. Briggs found himself following their heads, wondering why they stopped. Maybe all they needed was a reminder of who's the big guy around here, he thought.
The Lady's eyes narrowed so thin Briggs could tell she was pissed even from where she stood a dozen feet away. She seized Excalibur from its place where it dangled just before her, and plunged the blade into her fragile feet. Briggs watched, incredulous, as spider webs of cracks worked their way up her body, all the way to her beautiful head. She exploded into hundreds of razor-sharp shards. He watched her head fly off and shatter on the tile. It never stopped looking angry.
Suddenly, every creature was of a single mind, with a mission to destroy Roger Briggs as quickly and efficiently as possible. The remains of glass from the Lady of the Lake shuffled through miniature hands, reaching him with a rapidity that was terrifying. Statuettes raced for him with
chunks of broken glass.
Someone was screaming, and it only took Briggs a second to realize it was him.
He tried to run, but there was nowhere to step that wasn't covered in resin, glass, pewter, or porcelain. His bare feet would be torn apart if he moved, and he feared that then he would topple into their hands. He tried to shuffle his way through, but the tiny bodies resisting him were surprisingly strong. The best he could manage was about four inches at a step, which meant the front door was far too far away. His feet would be reduced to hamburger. There was a murderous gleam in even the wooden eyes.
He trudged on, intent on the door the way a man in the desert struggles toward the salvation of a mirage. He kicked aside as many as he could, but their replacements were swift. They tugged at his pant legs, bit at his ankles, and cut chunks from pants, and eventually his legs with bits of glass.
He never could stand the sight of his own blood, and the sight of his legs as they were torn apart below him brought up every drop of the Glenlivet. The last thing he saw before he collapsed was the sight of blood and flesh, his blood and flesh, as it pooled and formed into what looked strangely like wood, glass, and resin. *** Lionel smiled at his new figurines. His favorite was the carving of the hobo clown with a beer can in his hand. He looked to the glass doors of the surrounding cases, all of them closed once more.
"Good job, guys. Really good job," he said. He thought he sounded like an actual parent.
He held up for the wand so she could see as well, but her face remained as frozen as the statuettes.
"I don't know if you can see this, Tracy, but you've given us seventeen more children," he murmured. "I think your fertility spell worked after all." END
 Holly Dyess was born in St. Joseph, Michigan, and has since called Arizona, South Carolina, Georgia, Germany, and Alabama home. An avid reader, she has had a few short stories published in various small-circulation magazines. After the birth of her son, she chose to focus on her novels more than the short stuff. She loves gargoyles, spiders, and black cats, as well as anything that makes you laugh while checking your closet for critters with teeth.
Story by Holly Dyess, Copyright 2007
Image by Rory Clark, Stopped Motion Photography, Copyright 2007 |
