The Best of Electric Velocipede (21 page)

Notes on the Dissection of an Imaginary Beetle

Jonathan Wood

T
he graduates enter the examination theater a quarter phial after the zenith. A quarter phial subsequent, I take my place on the stage. The specimen Imaginary Beetle is laid out before me. My white hands, manicured to specification, grip the scalpel as tightly as the beetle’s pincers crush the life from its prey. Sweat spreads beneath my starched collar.

Behind me, an examiner stands rod-straight. His skin is stretched tight over his face, purple-thin below his eyes, his cheek bones poised as if to tear through the papery surface. His breath comes in staccato bursts from nostrils rimmed red by ether vapors, as is the approved style.

I grasp the beetle lightly on either side of its carapace, fingers placed so as not to disturb the position of its legs. It is the length of my middle digit. I turn it over. It feels full of paper: rustling, insubstantial.

My scalpel punctures the first layer of its exoskeleton, marks a line down its thorax. My movement is steady, controlled. I have practiced for days, curled up, fetal beneath my bed, marking lines in pen along pebbles of similar size and shape. I measured each line, punished myself for each fraction I was over or under the prescribed length. I practiced until I could no longer grip the pen, until, in desperation, I tried to reproduce the line with the blood from my open fingers.

Behind me, the examiner observes the cut I now make. Before me, a second examiner scrutinizes the movements of my eyes. I keep them fixed upon the cut. The movements I will make are etched into my memory, carved into my frontal lobes, they strobe through my dreams, appear to me in the conjunction of tram lines on the city’s maps, but I must not shift my eyes from the movements of my hands, from the body of the beetle.

As I peel back the right flange of the beetle’s outer shell like the cover of a book, I begin the litany.

“The Imaginary Beetle lives under stones and at the top of trees, though never both at once. It resides in solitude and upon meeting a fellow member of its species will proceed to perform a three-day ritual of movement, circling, and purging before the older beetle commits suicide through the voiding of an otherwise superfluous poison sac, colloquially referred to as the “Imagination” of the Imaginary Beetle, located at the junction between head and thorax. Its methods of procreation have yet to be elucidated.”

A third examiner stands to my right. He holds a stopwatch and counts each syllable and vowel in order to ensure that I obeyed the rules of syntactical correctitude when creating my speech, that I enslaved it to the appropriate dictums of meter. A fourth man lies beneath the dissecting table watching my legs, ensuring that I do not tap my feet to keep time, that I do not have a metronome taped to my thigh. I feel his exploratory hands even as I extract the first of the miniature organs.

“The Imaginary Beetle is prized by nations of the Violet Continent, due to the stories of Victor Mahoun, who, while under the influence of a local weed, declared it to be proof of the divine hand in creation. Mahoun was decried by domestic ministers and vilified by many reputable news sources. He died wealthy and in the company of many women, all intimate with his proclivities.”

I exerted myself more than most in the preparation of my litany. The library became my second home. I spent days there without eating or sleeping. When my strength failed I ate the pages of selected books, only to regurgitate them later. I took choice phrases from each master, made sure each canonical litany was represented. Tolbert merged with Quillert’s Epic of the Folorn, which, in turn, led into the opening lines of Troad’s Quintessential Essays. I struggled for days to find a place for Torrence, tearing at my hair and screaming at bookshelves before fitting it snugly into one (only one!) of Falwell’s classic statements as a parenthetical clause. I am told I have whispered my litany in my sleep. Now I speak it loudly, adopting Mellick’s oratory style, tapes of which looped incessantly during my research.

“The beetle only leaves its nest to feed once a cycle. It clambers from under stone or down from treetop to tree root where it will fasten its mandibles around the neck of the Porcine Bird. The subsequent battle is predictable and long-winded. The flightless Porcine Bird is twice the size of the relatively weak Imaginary Beetle but lacks the ability to remove the beetle from its jugular and the foresight to prevent it from getting there. However, the Porcine Bird has great fortitude and little use for higher brain functions, and so it can take over three phases for the Imaginary Beetle to kill its prey.

“The beetle will then drag the bird’s body back to its nest. Due to both the wide-ranging nature of the Porcine Bird and its speed, as well as the lethargy of the already-starving beetle, this trip often takes over six phases. During this time, the beetle’s prize is subject to the voracities of many carrion creatures, as well as the detrimental processes of decay.

“Invariably the corpse collapses before the beetle achieves its domicile. In desperation, the beetle collects twigs, stones, and other surrounding detritus then binds it together with its dense, tacky spittle. It then hauls this simulacrum home, and proceeds to pick at it with disappointment and indifference until the Porcine Bird’s migratory patterns once more bring it close to the beetle’s nest, one complete cycle after the initial contact.”

The organs of the beetle are spread out on the blotting paper to my right, its most intimate juices seeping outwards in ever more suggestive patterns. I push the tip of my scalpel into the dark recesses of its neck space. My eyes do not waver. My hand twists in the practiced manner and I withdraw the scalpel.

A tiny, purple bead floats on the edge of the blade. It is approximately the size of a salt grain. While its contents are usually only encountered in a watered-down form, the poison sac of the Imaginary Beetle is potent enough to lay waste to cities.

I hold it there and wait.

It is not exactly a noise that gives me my clue, but a subtle shift in the air behind me. It is him. My examiners are adopting the third position.

I twist sideways and the scalpel blade of the rear examiner slices through the air where my neck was. Even as I move, the examiner exploring my thighs for temporal devices grips my particulars tightly, and twists. I do not let out a sound. There must be decorum.

Silently, fixed in my seat, I spar with the man behind me. The poison sac of the beetle spins in the air, hopping from blade to blade as our scalpels parry and thrust. It glistens, still wet, in the beams of the footlights.

The blade of the examiner flickers in quick, precise movements. He fights in the style of the Sheltered Guard. It is a complex technique, requiring minimal movement behind the wrist. My own style is a flawless reproduction of Parson’s fight of ’23. It is perfectly adapted to the needs of fighting over my own shoulder and of keeping my top hat—crafted at my request by the school’s haberdasher so as to be exactly one size too small (thereby promoting exemplary posture)—in place. I move carefully, trying to minimize the appearance of unsightly wrinkles.

I hear the rustle of the examiner’s cuff against the fabric of his suit jacket, the soft noise of his cufflink catching momentarily, and I recognize the first of the traditionally provided openings. I flick the poison sac high into the air. The examiner lunges with his hand, fingertips extending to the maximum allowed by their restraining joints. I let his blade come and parry at the last possible moment that I dare. His grip is at its weakest now, and his scalpel flies up, shifting suddenly from horizontal to vertical.

The flat of his blade slaps into the descending poison sac, sending it hurtling towards his own face. It impacts against the red, damaged, porous skin at the base of his nose and splits open like a week-old corpse. Its contents splash over him. Only an infinitesimal amount will be absorbed, but it will be enough.

My opponent lets his scalpel fall. The neurotoxin has not yet had time to reach the muscles of his arm, but there is no point in continuing our opposition. The examiner beneath the table releases me, the other two step back.

Trying to master my breathing, I turn to the graduates and await their judgment.

Silence echoes through the theater. The audience avoids my gaze. Gloved hands remain in neatly pressed laps. The only movement in the chamber seems to come from my own heaving chest. Nails biting into my palms, I calm even this, until everything hangs in stasis. And still there is nothing.

Nothing! I gave them everything. Every classic moment reproduced in exactness for them and they give me: nothing. I want to scream at them; claw at their skin; thrust their eyeballs back into their brains with wet, viscous explosions; gnaw their ears from their skulls and spit the ichors and gore back between their broken and bloody teeth. But I stay where I am, stock still, breathing slowly, as is required.

The apprentices appear from stage left to remove my opponent. My eyes follow them to their goal. As a final mockery, I see that the poison has taken him differently than is intended. His body is twitching, his face in spasm. There will be no quiet death for him, no silent slipping into the waters of the Fountain. Instead there is this other thing. This travesty.

In its demise, my opponent’s body has thrown off all its formalities and rituals in one monumental shrug. All ceremony has been abandoned and forgotten. His movements are uncultivated, feral. His tongue lolls and a stream of guttural inarticulations spill from him. His eyes roll sightless, uncaring. His body has become exploratory and inventive. It has become improvisational. It has become something I have never seen before. It is carefree. It is wild, unkempt, inexplicable, triumphant, celebratory, depraved, and fantastic. It is new beyond my imagining.

This shame on my examination stage.

As his form finally slumps into stillness, the audience raise their hands and begin to applaud.