As the splendor of Project Rock’n’Roll peeled itself like an onion before the hungry eyes of Brian S’pense, his college buddy and principal nemesis, Carlo Shlemmer, popped the clutch and threw the ’72 Toyota Safari into reverse. The jeep teetered for an instant on the tree stump, then jammed itself, with a disheartening shudder, three wheels spinning in the air.
It was in almost that same instant that the drumbeats first reached Shlemmer’s ears. Wanda Ases forgot, momentarily, her ire, and turned anxious eyes to him.
“What’s that?” She asked. Shlemmer hoisted himself out of the driver’s seat, stepped down, and sank nine inches into the soft mud of the riverbed.
“Sounds like your old boyfriend has finally got his project off the ground,” he said. She made a move to get out, but he put out a hand to stop her.
“I wouldn’t move just yet,” he told her. She noticed that he seemed to be exerting himself awfully hard. “I seem to be sinking deeper.”
“Quicksand?” she wondered, a little too loudly. Carl had both his hands clutched round his left calf. He heaved mightily, but only succeeded in driving his right leg deeper; almost to the kneecap.
Wanda leaned across the driver’s seat, to reach him, but the movement caused the jeep to heel away from Shlemmer and she herself was almost pitched out.
“You know, Wanda,” he continued, an unfamiliar edge turning his usually sedate voice brittle, “I think there’s probably a rope in the toolbox in back of the seat.”
Wanda turned around as the jeep heeled further. She grabbed at the toolbox just as it started to slide away from her. Her fingernails scraped painfully against the paint and she lunged a second time.
The exertion sent the jeep over on its side and Wanda fell out into the matted grass that lined the riverbed. “Um—” she heard Shlemmer mutter, “I’m still sinking.” He was now completely invisible behind the derelict jeep, and Wanda scrambled after the toolbox, which had fallen into the mud and was also sinking.
“Carl,” she said, as she grasped the handle of the toolbox, “I meant to tell you something…” If Shlemmer answered her, she didn’t hear it above the sound of her own grunting.
“I mean; it’s about Brian and me.” The toolbox came up with an ugly sucking sound and was followed by bubbles of sulfurous gas. “I might have told you before, but I wasn’t sure myself. And, and anyway, it never seemed important enough.”
She opened the clasps and dumped out a tray of assorted wrenches. In the bottom of the box lay a coil of frayed hemp rope, no doubt twisted by some of Shlemmer’s own Salidans.
“And I’ve really been happy here, on balance. So it wouldn’t have mattered.”
She fumbled with the rope and freed an end. The coil unwound as she stood up, and she heaved her end over the jeep so that Shlemmer could grab it.
“But all these years, and in spite of my own best efforts,” She started to circle around the crippled vehicle, testing each step to make sure the footing was solid. “Even now. I still can’t get Brian out of my mind. You know? And if—”
She finished tying the rope off to a tree and peered around it’s other side. “Carl?”
In the mud on the other side of the jeep, only dark sluggish ripples remained where Carlo Shlemmer/Archard Venango had stepped down in the Buena Salidan jungle.
Main photo: Anonymous free wallpaper.