Tumble Gnome

I started with one figure, and began to carefully carve it out of wood. I reminded myself of the instructions given to me with this present. I thought about carving an elephant out of marble. I would far prefer, I thought, to carve a classic elephant slide out of plastic, were Fisher Price not still the holder of whatever patent or trademark gave them ownership of the elephant slide idea. I had looked into this before and been disappointed, having simply wanted to recreate a favorite toy. I had been similarly disappointed when I looked into attempting to create my own version of a plastic toy camera that I had owned when I was younger: with a simple pull of a small lever, the field of view or the lens changed colors. I often made the whole world red. It seemed better to me, somehow, when all the world looked red through a small viewfinder adjusted with a small red piece of plastic. Green and blue were fine looks for the world as well, but the slight darkness of the rest truly called to me. I shook my head. I needed to remain fixated on my carving: I knew what this first figure must look like: I focused on removing everything that did not look like the picture of the Gnome Protean that had been depicting in The Emperor of Nothing. I carefully carved out sullen, wooden eyes, and made sure every knot and twirl of world looked like the wrinkles of a very old, very wise being.

Sure enough, Protean began to take form before me. I worked to the rhythmic grunting of the two women on my floor. The voice did not seem to be possessing Llorena any more, having fled with the beginning of an honest passion. But Llorena did seem to have trouble remembering with whom she was engaging in sexual activities. She kept calling out Lily Cox’s name. Perhaps in the heat of passion that is who she believed she was with. The heart is more honest, it seems, than many things, and though Llorena later confessed to her lover, she was welcomed back home with much adoration-- especially when I elucidated on this point. It did not matter, it seems, to the two officer’s, what each did, as long as they remained committed to making a life with each other. I have seen many lives and relationships ruined because those in the relationship did not understand each other so well: my own first marriage, quickly to end after our escape from Nevermore, being a very good case study. We had never truly communicated, and as has been pointed out, I entered into the marriage more out of a desire for status, to own someone, than to truly collaborate in the creation of something astounding.

In that moment, however, I was mostly focused on bringing Protean to life. I began to carefully sew little clothes for him, of the kind usually and stereotypically associated with gnomes and other gnome-like creatures. I gave him a little cap, made out of a deep blue fabric, and a matching blue one piece suit, that covered up everything from the feet I had carefully carved, splinters and warts and all, to his hands. His arms and legs now did not come to actual hands and feet, but to weird little triangular points. I set him down next to me, and began to carve another Gnome, though I did not know this one’s name. It did not matter. I followed the same procedure, carefully carving out all the features that were not gnome-like, and leaving only that which proved that the figure I was indeed creating was the most gnomic of figures. I dressed the second gnome up in a red one piece, much as I had dressed Protean up in the blue one piece. Then I carefully carved a third gnome, made sure to meditate over every detail: I was tranced out. I could no longer care not pay attention to anything that went on around me. My third gnome was given yellow clothes. The fourth gnome was clad in orange. And the last gnome I clad in black.

I had created my new toy, but now it was time to test out the secondary property I had hoped I imbued in these little gnomes. I started my first test, finding a little slanted piece of wood. I tumbled each gnome down the wood and watched it merrily fall-- all of them falling, all of them tumbling-- into a merry little pile at the bottom. This was my toy. This was my salvation. This was the work of Nevermore. You have probably seen these toys before. They are simply called “tumbling gnomes”, and they come in various sizes. All they do is tumble. But that is the point: like marbles or other little games that are essentially pointless, the small joy in the way these things fall down everything is beautiful and reassuring in the simplicity.

Knowing I had made what I set out to make, I grabbed each of the gnomes, and rushed back up the stairs, leaving Llorena and Jacinta to their own private action. As I raced upstairs the voice tried to stop me, tried to tempt me back, tried to promise me that it really would give me control of the world.

“You can rule it all, make everyone do exactly what you want. You can be everything you wanted to be. Just let me help you there.”

“No!” I shouted, as I burst back into the attic. There was the doppelganger version of myself, large breasts and wet pussy, grinding up and down on Roman’s cock. That version of myself, which ad previously been the chef Artur, was happily sucking on Robert’s penis, which was thrusting in and out of his mouth.

“Yes. You want this,” they all turned to me at once, and with one voice, guided by the voice of that shadow, “You want this level of control. You want to be the desired object and the master of people’s desires.”

“This is true,” I said to the shadow, for I perceived that my friends were no longer cognizant, if they still existed at all. “I do have a need for control. Everyone wants to run the world. We all want it to revolve around us. And I was ripe for you to worm your way into my heart. After all, I had control. I was the leader of this household, of this team. But it wasn’t a team. It never will be. It was just myself and the hangers on and people I couldn’t see for human beings I surrounded myself with.

“I’ve been a toymaker all my life, but what I was really trying to make was a world where I was in control.

“But trying to control things is what makes things not very fun. We can’t be in charge of everything. The trying isn‘t bad, but the failing is more important. We can reach out for the stars as children and accidentally catch fireflies. They’re not the same thing, but that’s what we need to learn: nothing needs be exactly as we want it. We have to learn to make do. We cannot capture the whole world, we cannot own it.

“That’s the point of this toy. It’s not a toy you can control. Not an R.C. Helicopter, not some little tiny town where each person gets to make up stories about the inhabitants. These toys that I am holding are about chance. They flop and fall down. And they do it a different way every time. They tumble over each other, and tumble down things.”

“This cannot stop me, this cannot stop the control,” the voice said. The shadow appeared again, above the version of my reflected desire that had formerly been Artur. It seemed that Robert and Roman had been released from the grip of its control. I nodded at them. THey looked at me blankly, as if they both did not remember where they were or what they had been doing.

“Get out of here, find the others, run. Get in the patrol car and go back-- back to town,” I instructed. It took them a few second to register my command. At first it seemed that they would not listen to me, but when they looked at the shadow floating above them, they quickly jumped and began their flight down the stairs. I had to call after them to check in my study and drag Llorena and Jacinta with them. “I’ll meet up with all of you when I get back to town. At the Cup O Stars.”

“See,” the voice said to me, booming as the thunder still clapped all around me, and lightning still struck down-- this storm had been going on for hours, it seemed, possibly for days. I was very tired indeed. And I did not know, not at all, how long I had been awake, and how long I had been stuck in the visions that the shadow had insisted upon inserting into my way. “See how you have to control them, how you send them away, and they listen to you. You can have that power and more. You can change the physical world. Like him, here.”

At this, the voice changed the version of myself ripped from my erotic story back into Artur. He looked rough, weathered, and beaten. He looked like he had been struck repeatedly with the lightning that still encircled and caged the house. He fell to his knees. I reached out towards him, wanting to help, but that stern spirit still guarded him, still hung about. I could not really move forward: I was very frightened, if I am being honest. I had never really stood up to anyone or anything before in my life-- everything had come so easy until this point. And now, I felt that this confrontation would make or break me.

Artur looked up at me with defeated eyes. He looked very old indeed. He opened his mouth and tried to speak. At first it seemed like he would not be able to say something, but then the sound of his voice squeaked out his sentiments rather pathetically.

“I-- I didn’t tell you all of it, what happened to me.”

“What-- what do you mean?”

“I didn’t tell you what I said when you, I mean the shadow version of you finished inside me… I said… I said I would give the voice whatever it wanted if I could feel like that forever, I wanted to have you.”