Ben Pullar<\/p>\n
The slug on my left wrist made me want to vomit. The trouble was there was no bucket, so I opened up the glove box of my car and vomited all over a 1955 street directory. A pity, a bit of a relic, but sometimes you have to open up your mouth and empty your stomach all over some sort of antique, it\u2019s a refreshing way to live life.<\/p>\n
It was that sort of afternoon, getting headaches, having to deal with slugs all over my body. I was driving my big green Ford along a wet road, feeling very glum, and was just about to give up hope of anything good ever happening again when I saw the strangler fig slide. It appeared in the rainy windshield like a frozen broccoli. Five hundred metres of steaming waterfalls and carpet snakes hissing at wasps, it shimmered with magical life. It kept disappearing behind smears of rainwater, then the rusty wipers would clean the big broad window lens I was looking through and it would pop up again.<\/p>\n
It flickered ahead of me, and for a few moments I forgot about my troubles. Then the wipers broke down, the tree got foggy again, and they came back to me at top speed.<\/p>\n
I was having a bad run. Not just slugs. My parents were making me miserable and my career options were a bit grim. I hated my job with the Danish shipping company, and I didn\u2019t think things could get much worse. I decided to treat myself to a bit of fun, so I pulled into the vast empty strangler fig slide car park and got out.<\/p>\n
The tops of the tree were hidden in a bank of black cloud. I lit a cigarette and noticed the slug still perched on my wrist.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re ruining my life,\u201d I said to it. It barely flinched.<\/p>\n
I wound up the windows of my car and walked through pelting rain to a small entry booth.<\/p>\n
An ancient woman of about eighty-five was operating the till.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s up?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m working. You?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hoping to have some fun on the waterslide up there,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ve just had an altercation with a slug.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman sneered at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cShoot it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I won\u2019t do that,\u201d I said, a bit shocked at her attitude.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoesn\u2019t seem very humane,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSlugs aren\u2019t humane,\u201d said the woman. \u201cThey eat crickets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI doubt that,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFifteen dollars,\u201d said the woman.<\/p>\n
I was staggered at the price. I turned and looked at the tree again.<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty steep,\u201d I said, looking around at the mossy lawns and pavements below the gigantic rotting fig.<\/p>\n
\u201cGee, sorry about that,\u201d said the woman, sniffing very loudly with both nostrils.<\/p>\n
I paid the money, got a ticket, and waved at her as I walked through the turnstile.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave a great day,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t forget,\u201d she said to me, her beady eyes flickering in the dark afternoon light, \u201ccrickets.\u201d<\/p>\n
I bought some togs from the souvenir shop attendant, a squat man named Kenneth who wanted to talk about boat hull problems. I couldn\u2019t get out of there fast enough.<\/p>\n
I stood below the great fig and felt awed by it again. The thing had its own rivers, lakes and groves, it seemed to me. It had its own microclimate. Tiny cyclones were festooned under its larger branches. Its trunks fell to the ground like melting wax spirals.<\/p>\n
I caught a chairlift and followed its wires up the enormous fig\u2019s part wooden, part fiberglass trunk. Thick syrupy water fell from the distant canopy, while bad-tempered frogs peered from caves in the tree\u2019s wet hide. The chairlift rocked back and forward in the rain and I held on tightly. There were a few bad moments, like when the darker gusts of four o\u2019clock rain came washing in and drenched me in wet flowers. There were a few moments when I thought the old wires might break, and I\u2019d be dropped through the air, dashed against the root systems hundreds of metres below.<\/p>\n
But after about fifteen minutes I finally made it to a rotting green-stained pine platform deck near the tree\u2019s top.<\/p>\n
The deck led to the opening of the single water slide\u2019s mouth. It was being tended by an old man. He was sitting in an iron chair under a big umbrella, growling at the weather and, I guess, me. He wasn\u2019t doing all that much tending, admittedly. He was doing more \u201cmoldering\u201d than \u201ctending\u2019, I thought, and his eyes were closed.<\/p>\n
I approached the water slide mouth, trying to be as quiet as I could, but I stepped on a waterlogged flower bud and I knew I\u2019d spoiled all of my sneaky traipsing actions.<\/p>\n
The old man\u2019s eyes flashed open.<\/p>\n
\u201cHalt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere a problem?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d said the old man, \u201chave you checked your height credentials?\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to a sign of a four-foot tall koala bear holding his right arm out at about the three and a half foot mark.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you fit neatly under that koala\u2019s paw you\u2019re too small for this slide,\u201d the old man declared.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ll do fine,\u201d I said, a bit testy by now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m serious,\u201d said the old man. He got to his feet. He was wobbly, obviously a bit weak. The water had seeped into his flesh and swollen his skin up quite a bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou go and stand beside that koala, and if you\u2019re too small for this slide, you don\u2019t get to go on it,\u201d he coughed.<\/p>\n
I sighed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right, all right,\u201d I said. I went and stood beside the koala. I put my hands on my hips. I felt stupid standing there in my togs, my bandy legs looking like cassia stems next to what was a very short koala. Its paw nudged my upper thigh area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell?\u201d I asked after half a minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cHold your horse, boy,\u201d said the old man, \u201cI\u2019m trying to just make sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh for god\u2019s sake,\u201d I said, \u201cthis is ridiculous!\u201d<\/p>\n
I had had enough. I\u2019d had years of having to put up with all sorts of elderly relatives, including my grandfather the colonel, and I was not about to start taking orders from this bozo. I immediately walked over to the waterslide mouth and leapt in head first. I\u2019ve no idea what the old man did. But I have a feeling he made arrangements. Got in touch with his insiders in the fig itself. I have that feeling because I had a really bad time in that fig that afternoon.<\/p>\n
I slid down that dark water tube, over mossy timbers and through green lights and occasional grim afternoon glimpses, and things got faster and faster.<\/p>\n
I quickly got worried about the speed. Then I started to fear the dreadful sounds.<\/p>\n
Strange howling unnerved me. Then there were the weird chuckles.<\/p>\n
Giant red eyes appeared and I started to really get bothered.<\/p>\n
It was the hairy monkey hands reaching for me that finally made me scream with terror.<\/p>\n
They appeared out of vents in the slide walls and grabbed at my arms and legs. Their claws tore great wedges of fat from my back and shoulders. Only my terrific speed saved me.<\/p>\n
Then the snails struck. They snapped at my fingers and toes, spat venomous sputum at me from behind leaves, generally snarled and joked and haunted me.<\/p>\n
They were aided by bats. And spiders. And of course the snakes, who really scared me. I dodged and ducked and hoped for the best, and I think I did a pretty good job avoiding those wretched creatures.<\/p>\n
Then, when I thought I had averted the worst things in that deep dark well of damp timber, I was suddenly wrenched from the slide by a net. I was thrown onto a green-carpeted floor in a cozy fire-lit living room.<\/p>\n
A number of heavyset men stood around me. A whispery voice coughed and said \u201cthat\u2019s all right men, leave him be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The men walked off, and I looked up and saw a small man in a velvet dressing gown sipping tea and combing his black beard.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi,\u201d said the man, \u201cI\u2019m Nesbit. Nesbit the poet. How are you doing, enjoying your afternoon?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, dear. Oh, dear me, that\u2019s not good. Not good at all. Really? You\u2019re really not enjoying it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been awful,\u201d I said. I got to my feet. The poet threw me a towel, and I dried off my hair a bit. \u201cI don\u2019t know why I bothered to come here, really,\u201d I said. \u201cBig mistake. I\u2019m having dinner with my parents at six.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, no,\u201d said Nesbit, \u201cthat\u2019s never fun. A pity you\u2019ve not had time to brace yourself for dinner with the parents. Instead you\u2019re all damp and scratched. Well, I tell you what you should do. You should get back in the slide and go and complain to management, you see. The fellow who runs this park, he\u2019s a reasonable man, but sometimes the direct approach is best. I\u2019m always at him to clean up his act but he ignores me. I\u2019ve had a poetry residency here now for about fifteen years and I\u2019m afraid nobody listens to an ensconced poet much after a while. They might listen to you, though.\u201d<\/p>\n
I quite enjoyed my time in Nesbit\u2019s living room that afternoon. I ate some chocolate biscuits, cooled down a bit, and had a look at some of Nesbit\u2019s poetry volumes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m due to put out a new selected poems edition shortly,\u201d he said, flipping through one of his earlier selections. \u201cQuite relaxing revising things in this atmosphere. Constant sound of running water. Every day\u2019s a rainy day. And on actual rainy days you double your money!\u201d<\/p>\n
I waved goodbye and thanked him for having me.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, don\u2019t mention that, pleasure to have you aboard, so to speak. Good luck, matey!\u201d<\/p>\n
I leapt back into the slide then, and although the rest of the trip wasn\u2019t exactly fun, I survived the monkey hands and the vicious nocturnal snails and the bats and got spat out of an enormous tap root into a snug pool of warm water roughly seven minutes later.<\/p>\n
I clambered out of the pool, collected my clothes from the toilet block I had originally changed in, then stalked through the park, determined to have words with the slovenly park manager.<\/p>\n
But as I walked deeper into the park things got darker and stranger, and I started to wonder whether I should just make a break for it and get back to the car.<\/p>\n
Ferns grew over the paths, cobwebs tangled with phone wires.<\/p>\n
Cedar trees fell down, blocking roads.<\/p>\n
Finally I came to a moss-draped demountable building near a falling fence. Beyond there was thick scrub.<\/p>\n
Rain fell hard now.<\/p>\n
I crept into a water-spoiled room, a sort of mossy foyer covered in lizard droppings. A young woman sat behind a desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi,\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m looking for the manager here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cManager?\u201d she said. \u201cYou mean Rhodes, I suppose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI suppose I do,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo through the door, the one covered in rat dung,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I did as I was told. I walked into a giant burgundy room of flickering red and orange lamps. A fish tank covered one wall five meters to the high ceiling. An old Mozart 78 played on a gramophone next to a drinks cabinet.<\/p>\n
A man in a white hat and a white suit sat behind a vast desk. He was on the telephone.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell them I would do that, but I can\u2019t. I just can\u2019t. All right? That clear? Charmed. Bye now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He hung up the phone and leapt up from his desk. He stormed over to me and held out his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi,\u201d he said, \u201cmy name\u2019s Horsham Rhodes, inventor of the strangler fig slide theme park and assorted other lesser creations. Like Dodgem World, the world\u2019s largest dodgem park. Long closed down. How can I help you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI came to tell you this place needs a bit of renovating,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rhodes laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a joke, obviously,\u201d he said, smiling.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cSomebody will get killed soon. It\u2019s a death trap.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat poet put you up to this I bet,\u201d groaned Rhodes, frowning suddenly. \u201cYou know his favorite meter? Quatrain. I mean, come on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rhodes stalked over to the drinks cabinet, poured us a brandy each, stalked back.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolute bloody berk. Still, nice enough. For an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe advised me to talk to you,\u201d I said, \u201cbut I had already formed the opinion that this place is a death trap. You need to clean up your act or else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rhodes sighed and sat down at his desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, yes, I suppose I do. I suppose you\u2019re right. I guess it is high time things changed here.\u201d<\/p>\n
He lit a small cigarette, offered me one. I took it with all the gusto I could manage.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know,\u201d said Rhodes, sounding very sad and defeated, \u201cthis place came to me in a sort of vision? I was young, hungry, desperate. A bit dyspeptic. One night after a lot of beer, I saw a great green tree filling up the world. Next morning I went and bought an old fig in Perth, started to renovate it. Bought an old secondhand water slide set from Hong Kong, and presto! Easy as that. Still,\u201d he added sadly, \u201cthe years have not been kind.\u201d<\/p>\n
I smoked that cigarette and I commiserated. I could understand Rhodes\u2019 pain only too well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have my own problems, you know,\u201d I said. \u201cThis slug on my left hand. Drove me up the wall this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wriggled my wrist in front of Rhodes\u2019 face.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d said Rhodes, \u201cI noticed that, a bit on the hideously ugly side I thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike a sea cucumber,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd it didn\u2019t just happen, you know. It took years to get this slug on my left wrist this afternoon. I looked down an hour ago and there it was. Awful.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was silence for half a minute. Then Rhodes seemed to perk up.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right then, since we\u2019re both so down in the dumps, let\u2019s help each other. Here\u2019s my advice to you. Put on a glove, hide the slug.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t actually own a glove. I\u2019ll have to buy one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere you go, sorted. Now,\u201d he said, his eyes beaming like ocean liners, \u201cgive me some ideas, what do you have for me, eh?\u201d<\/p>\n
He opened up a notepad, got out a biro, waited for me to come up with something. Anything. I gave it some thought. Was there any way back for a place as moldy and sludgy and old fashioned as the strangler fig slide theme park? How could it ever return to its 1978 glory peak? Then I had some sort of green light flicker up in my head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I know,\u201d I said at last.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell then, dish it out, what is it?\u201d Rhodes\u2019 pen hovered over his notepad like a flying saucer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you. I can only show you,\u201d I said. \u201cCome on, follow me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I led Rhodes to the telephone. \u201cCall up every media representative you know,\u201d I told him. \u201cEvery family friend. Everybody. I\u2019ll do the same. Tell them to be here in two hours for a wonderful spectacle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rhodes was curious, and bothered, but he did it.<\/p>\n
Two hours later we stood in our togs atop the platform next to the water slide tube entrance. Rhodes still wore his white hat of course.<\/p>\n
Below us thousands of people filled the theme park. They clambered on rooftops, in trees, around the warm pool below the great fig. Some were even brave enough to climb the actual fig, though the snakes chased most of them off.<\/p>\n
\u201cRules are simple,\u201d I said, \u201cfirst into the pool below wins the inaugural Strangler Fig Slide Classic. But it doesn\u2019t much matter who wins really. The main thing is we\u2019ll have put on a show. That\u2019s the way to do things, Rhodes. Everyone understands a good show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rhodes looked pale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d I asked, putting out my latest cigarette on a leaf.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat thing about it not mattering who wins,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the most beautiful thing I\u2019ve ever heard a man say.\u201d<\/p>\n
I winced slightly.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you read books, Horsham?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes. More of a pamphlet man myself. Years running a theme park. You get to know the form.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, great,\u201d I said, approaching the slide mouth. Then, feeling bad, I stopped, turned toward him. \u201cBy the way,\u201d I said. \u201cI was lying.\u201d<\/p>\n
We leapt into the slide seconds apart. The night was thick with torrential rain and electricity. The night was full of love and hate, and we had plenty of both.<\/p>\n
The public got a real show that night. The tree lit up with the sights of flaming monkeys grabbing for Rhodes and me. At one point they just about got Rhodes, but he let off a firework, blowing one of the monkey\u2019s arms off, and he escaped.<\/p>\n
But it was a near thing, and the stakes grew with every encounter.<\/p>\n
I led early, but Rhodes caught me up quickly. He knew every stretch of that tree, every dip and straight and groove, and he let the water carry him past me in the seventh minute.<\/p>\n
I hung in there, paced himself, and started fighting back, got within spitting distance a few times, then fell back again.<\/p>\n
Then things got deadly.<\/p>\n
It was the old man from the top of the tree. He started firing his air rifle at us from a hollow deep inside the fig.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re too short!\u201d he yelled at me, his voice cracking out of pure rage. He went on shooting. He got Rhodes in the neck twice, me in the right nipple. Blood gushed out but we kept up the pace.<\/p>\n
At that point the old woman from the entry booth bought into the contest. She threw Molotov cocktails at us from one of the fig\u2019s wet caverns. Both of us dodged them, but they broke against a fig root and introduced glass into the waters. Plus she hurled insults at us.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou call yourselves men!\u201d she screamed. \u201cAnd you,\u201d she yelled at me, \u201cyou had better watch out for that slug! Might mistake you for a cricket!\u201d<\/p>\n
It was that chance insult that saved the night for me. The slug! Of course! I had forgotten it in all the tumult. I looked down at it on my left wrist, vomited, which made things a bit trickier, but the really fantastic thing was the slug was glowing. It had gone all phosphorescent, from stress possibly, and it lit up the wooden slide tube like a storeroom. Suddenly I could see. The dark caverns were dark no more. It meant I could take incredible risks, unthinkable in the dark, but possible now I had a panicky slug to light my way.<\/p>\n
The crowd roared as the action got channeled into the closed-circuit TV screens all around the park. They watched me gain on Rhodes, and they roared at the fun of it all.<\/p>\n
Finally the two of us were very close to the end of the slide. Rhodes was slightly ahead, but two bends from the end he went wide, slid a bit on a snail, and I snuck down the inside into a late lead, one I took with me to the warm pool beneath the great fig.<\/p>\n
The crowd screamed and shouted, took photographs, chanted our names.<\/p>\n
We clambered out of the pool. Rhodes shook my hand, initially very disappointed, but he was surrounded by adoring people telling him how marvelous his theme park was, hugging him and kissing him, and he cheered up quite quickly.<\/p>\n
One of them was Nesbit the poet.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were right,\u201d said Rhodes to Nesbit, \u201csorry about all the insults over the last five years, sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d said the poet, \u201cI made them into quatrains anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a grand night, and it changed both our lives in the long run.<\/p>\n
The strangler fig slide became the biggest theme park in the southern hemisphere after a long time in the darkness, and every night Rhodes would hold water slide competitions, attracting some incredible talent from all around the world.<\/p>\n
As for me, I became one of the world\u2019s finest water slide racers, an acknowledged genius of the downhill swash. I started winning international titles only eighteen months after that night, and my own personal life improved a great deal to the point where I gave up cigarettes in mid-1997.<\/p>\n
And I come back to the strangler fig on a regular basis, usually whenever I am in town and due to have dinner with my parents, who still doubt my life choices. I always like to let off a bit of steam pre-meal, so I drive through the rain and look forward to seeing that great fig, full of people, Rhodes up the top of it directing events. He waves at me now, and I grin back at him. Then I look down at Leroy, my trusty slug, perched on my wrist like a waterproof watch, ready for a night of top-speed slide action.<\/p>\n
I no longer vomit when I see Leroy. You get used to slugs, no matter how repulsive. Now I just feel a bit funny in my stomach, but I generally hold back the vomit.<\/p>\n
I have tried to persuade him to cover himself up, though. It turned out that Rhodes\u2019 idea about a glove worked for me, but only got Leroy off side. He stopped glowing for a few months after I tried that, causing me to miss out on the Geneva five-hour endurance slide. I\u2019ve since talked to him about wearing a cape, but he won\u2019t do it. Wriggles about terribly when I try to put one on. He doesn\u2019t like hoods, either. Or gowns. It doesn\u2019t matter how successful you get in life, sometimes your slug just won\u2019t listen to you on the subject of apparel.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t mentioned robes to him yet, mind you. Maybe in the Spring . . .<\/p>\n
BEN PULLAR<\/b> lives in Brisbane with his family. He has had stories published in Metazen<\/i>, In Between Altered States<\/i>, The Journal of Experimental Fiction<\/i> and other places. He writes stories, radio comedy, novels and songs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ben Pullar The slug on my left wrist made me want to vomit. The trouble was there was no bucket, so I opened up the glove box of my car and vomited all over a 1955 street directory. A pity, … Continue reading