Attack of the
Flatpack Furniture
In the Blue Corpse
On a slow summer evening, McKellar and Filosofia sat at a table in the back of the Blue Corpse, screaming at each other. Filosofia tried to describe her latest narrow escape. “He was armed with a pressure washer!” she said. “But I took him on anyway. I figure there’s a 3-to-1 chance equipment in this school won’t work anyway. Like, totally okay odds.”
The fog was particularly bad tonight. After the smoking ban had gone into effect, the Blue Corpse’s management, spurred by complaints from patrons who missed the impenetrable choking haze of cigarette smoke, had resorted to spraying a fine mist of water from sprinklers set in the ceiling. McKellar wore a raincoat for protection, and Filosofia sheltered under a particularly large pair of sunglasses propped on her forehead.
Emily walked up, hiding under an open umbrella. “Guys, have you read the Providence papers?” she asked.
“No, that would mean that I would have to spend, like, ten more seconds thinking about Providence every day,” Filosofia replied. “Why would I do that?”
“It takes more than ten seconds. The paper’s typeset in crayon,” said Emily. “But listen, guys, there’s been a series of attacks in the city in the last week. Seven different art students, all found dead in their homes, and buried in piles of furniture. No sign of forcible entry.”
“That’s strange,” said McKellar. “Any common points? Did they all live in the same area?”
“Everywhere. East Side, Armory, even in those lofts downtown. The only thing is, no one from furniture design. It’s all cheap modernist furniture.”
Visiting Gert
The next morning, the group paid a visit to Gert Quadraat, a professor with an office off of the Type Shop. They found him in the shop, measuring wood type with a Schaedler rule, and explained Emily’s discovery. Gert grabbed his cane and led the gang into his office, passing a group of sophomores who were struggling to put out a burning letterpress using a fire extinguisher. “The extinguisher is empty,” he grunted, “That’s the school trying to be saving money. Get water from the sink instead.”
The frantic shouts died away as Gert pulled his office door shut. They crammed around his desk. Orderly rows and columns of tiles showing neat blue windmills covered one wall; the other three walls were lined with book and mouse-eaten student posters.
“Here we have quiet, and we can talk about these strange things,” he said. “Now, there is the matter of your modernist object possession, ja?”
“Modernist object possession? What’s that?” asked Emily.
“According to me, dit is what is happening. Uw heeft furnitures that are flying of their own selves, ja?”
“I think so?”
“Dit is outsteeken! It is modernist object possession, a clear case.”
“But would the possessed furniture really turn this powerful?” asked Emily.
“Let us look at an historical case. It has happened with graphic design too. You were wondering what possessed Tschichold, that would make him give up his asymmetrical typography?”
“Often.”
“Ja, well now you know.”
“What can we do to stop this?” asked McKellar.
Gert shrugged. “These furnitures draw power from a home base. Destroy the base, and probably that will stop you the furniture, ja? At least according to me.”
“I think that’ll give us a good start. We’ll be back tomorrow with what we find out,” said Filosofia.
“No, don’t bother. I’ll be gone the whole week.” said Gert. “I go to Minneapolis for een AIGA conference over het Role of the Occult in Design Education. I’ll have presented a paper over Didot’s evil twin. Did you know that Didot the Bad proposed a thirteen-point-to-the-pica system of type measurement? With 666 points to the yard?”
“A whole week? Big conference,” said Emily, who had learned that it was best to ignore Gert’s research explorations.
“No, just two days. I learned it is best that I take a few days to get sober before I return. Northwest Airlines still remember what happened when I flew home after the last conference,” said Gert.
“Can we call you at your hotel?” asked Filosofia.
“Ah, nein. I stay with a former student of mine. I’m sure you’ll be fine. I might check my email if you have an emergency. Just try not to get eaten. Tot zeins!”
They headed for the elevator, coughing in the smoke as they passed through the Type Shop.
“I’ll be his ‘former student’ is a thirty-eight-year-old whose husband is out of town,” said McKellar. Emily giggled.
“Sshhh! Gert has hella good ears for his age!” hissed Filosofia, herding her friends through the doors.
The Attack at Design Beyond Reach
Emily called Filosofia one night, at ten or eleven o’clock. “I’m in the grad studio, backing up my hard drive,” she said. “Get downtown, quick! There’s something going down.”
“You mean Waterfire? I’m so over that,” said Filosofia. “I tried sinking those damn demonic gondolas and they kept regenerating themselves.”
“No, it’s happening right downtown, by the studio. There’s a lot of police cars at Design Beyond Reach.”
“Yeah, like police cars aren’t unusual in Providence.”
“True, but I just saw the SWAT team marching by, carrying what looked like gigantic hex wrenches.”
“Call McKellar and get him to pick me up. I’ll be in front of my house.”
Filosofia, along with McKellar, who was irritated at being woken up at this hour, drove downtown over the Point St. bridge. Strange music drifted down to the bridge — Waterfire. Farther up the river, several hundred Providence residents milled around by the water, lighting fires in braziers and burning cow entrails, in preparation for the night’s festivities. The four or five tourists gazed happily at the flames and sparks, though none of them noticed the charred bones of the previous night’s visitors.
After circling for twenty minutes, McKellar found a parking spot. He and Filosofia ran toward the Design Beyond Reach store, wincing whenever they heard new crashing sounds. They found Emily standing at the end of an alley, peeking around the corner. They had to shout over the noise of destruction.
“It’s crazy!” Emily said. “There’s furniture attacking Design Beyond Reach. The police tried to beat the furniture back, but then a storm of pictureframes descended and drove them up Westminster St.”
Filosofia poked her head around the corner and saw Visby chair sail through the air, of its own accord, and smash into one of the plate-glass windows of Design Beyond Reach.
“Jesus,” she said. “What are we going to do about this?”
A Stockholm lamp lunged around the corner and tried to impale Filosofia with its shaft. Filosofia blocked the attack, then grabbed the lamp and broke it in half. They turned to run, then stopped. Ahead of them stood seven or eight pieces of square-edged furniture. A particularly prominent endtable moved toward Filosofia, and the other pieces shuffled out into a semicircle, trapping the group against a blank brick wall. Filosofia rolled up her sleeves and interposed herself between her friends and the furniture.
“Looks like it’s time for a little yard sale ,” she said. She lunged, snatched up a chair and smashed it into a table, then put a hole through the broken remains. The other pieces of furniture drew back for an instant, startled, then resumed their advance. More tables and lamps flew in from farther down the street.
“Guys, I’ll try to hold them off. Get out of here,” Filosofia said.
“Hang on. I’d like to try something,” said McKellar. He pulled a copy of Martha Stewart Living out of his bag, flipped through til he found an article on ‘stencilling your minivan,’and waved a picture-heavy spread at the pack of furniture. The various desks and chairs seemed to quiver, then retreated down the alley and around the corner.
“Thank goodness for that,” he said.
“Did you see? Those were all from Ikea!” said Emily, shaking.
“Totally. Let’s look into the New Haven Ikea,” said Filosofia.
Forming A Plan
Several hours later, the group gathered around the kitchen table back in Filosofia’s apartment. Emily pulled her PowerBook from her backpack.
“I did a little reading on this,” Emily said. “Gert left out a few important points. First off, modernist object possession doesn’t happen by itself — someone has to imbue the furniture with life-force, probably by invoking spells. Second, the furniture’s not so much possessed as an extension of the creator’s will.”
“Wait, are you like, saying that the flying desks are working for someone? ‘Cause then I’d have to say that someone hella has it in for wood type,” Filosofia said.
“The person behind this is trying to do something big. It looks like he’s trying to get his furniture to take over New England. There’s one more thing: heavily processed wood is the carrier for this kind of possession. Not solid wood, just reprocessed stuff.”
“Reprocessed stuff like — particle board,” said McKellar.
“Exactly. Demonic particle board, to be specific,” said Emily.
“Em — any idea who’s behind this?” asked Filosofia.
Emily smiled. “I checked … Okay, guys, listen to this: the New Haven store manager’s a man called Eldritch Eames. He was a high-powered designer during the Cold War. He made desks for some secret Pentagon laboratory until someone accused him of selling classified drawer configurations to the Russians. The grand jury refused to indite him — this was back when the fashion ran toward heavy, carved Colonial Revival and they just didn’t understand — but he lost his security clearances and he got fired from his job. Now he’s just a store manager for Ikea.”
“Eldritch Eames, bitter frustrated designer, wants his revenge on the world? I like it,” said Filosofia.
“But he’s just a manager, not a designer,” McKellar objected.
“Yes, but what if he’s using his old skills to modify furniture sitting in the warehouse? And there’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“He runs the New Haven Ikea. I’ll be that almost all that furniture came from New Haven. I’ve been there and was a scary, creepy place, even before they had that incident with the eyeballs turning up in the Swedish meatballs.”
“They never proved who was responsible for that,” McKellar said.
“What about the time when that entire checkout line full of customers just burst into flames?”
“Could have been spontaneous combustion. Ikea does that to people.”
“Then what about the school group that got impaled by one of those little bins full of free pencils?”
Filosofia thought about this for a moment, then looked at her friends, pursing her lips. “That’s too many coincidences. Put two and two together and you get three,” she said.
“Four,” Emily and McKellar said.
“Whatever. I’m going to check that place out,” said Filosofia, as she pocked an extra packet of xacto blades. “Em, you stay here and see if you can find out anything else about this modernist object possession thing. McKellar, you see who else has huge amounts of Ikea furniture.”
McKellar stood up and folded his arms. “No,” he said.
“Look, I don’t need you watching my back. This is my job,” Filosofia said, pouting.
“It’s not that. Your car’s still in the river, and there’s no way in hell you’re going to borrow mine. I drive.”
Emily stood beside McKellar and glared at Filosofia. “I’m coming too. I need to buy a bin. And I need to get out of Providence, even if we’re just going to raid an evil Ikea,” she said.
“Oh, fine, fine, we’ll all go. Let’s all bring back more possessed furniture, that’s just what Providence needs,” Filosofia said.
“Just make sure you chip in for gas this time,” McKellar groused.
New Haven
At one in the morning, Filosofia and McKellar crept from their hiding places and met on the second floor of the Ikea store, next to the closet organization section. The dark, closed store was silent except for a vague throbbing noise that came from the floor below.
“McKellar, where’s Emily,” asked Filosofia.
“Don’t know. Wait, there’s someone moving over by the beds.”
Emily leapt out from between the curtains of a Elsinore four-poster bed, struck a pose, and clomped down the tiles toward her friends. Then she stood there, staring at something far away.
“Stop making so much noise!” Filosofia hissed. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong. It was pretty comfortable in that bed. But I already feel like killing my uncle and talking to skulls,” said Emily. “Although I’m not entirely sure about that — maybe I don’t like talking to skulls. And maybe I should just forgive my uncle — he’s a blood relation after all, and I think that it made mother happier. I just don’t know… I don’t know … and I have this vague feeling that someone wants me to visit England.”
“You okay there, Em?” asked Filosofia. “Emily? Are you, like, feeling fine?”
Emily stared morosely at the floor for a few minutes and then, with a flourish of her skirt, leapt onto a Luleå nightstand and addressed a point somewhere up in the rafters.
“To think that I, with aching back, did seek this ‘cursed bed!” she said, her voice rising with each syllable. “My ill-found doubts this night do burst into a roaring stream.” She jumped down to the floor and flung her arm toward her companions. “Oh, Filosofia! What strife New Haven air now brings into my turgid mind. Shall I act, and poke my uncle with a stick? a sharpen’d stick, with pointy end, that would surely leave a mark? Or do I stand and watch my dearest love descend into the flood? Mffffff—”
She stopped as Filosofia grabbed her from behind. Filosofia clamped her hand over Emily’s mouth.
“Emily hasn’t got a love. We hear about her lack of loving every single night, sometimes for hella extended periods. The poor girl’s, like, lost it. All that I-95 traffic blew her mind,” Filosofia said.
“No, no, it was the bed,” said McKellar. “The bed! Look, it’s the Elsinore four-poster bed. Elsinore, as in Hamlet. That explains her outburst. There’s something about this furniture that’s affecting her. It’s not just ordinary furniture. It’s supernatural furniture.”
Emily slipped out of Filosofia’s grasp. “What sour dismay this bed doth bring! A state of inde—” she declaimed.
Filosofia slapped her hand back over Emily’s mouth. “I don’t know about Hamlet but you’re right about ‘ham’ … and this furniture! It comes in easy-to-ship boxes complete with most of the parts needed for assembly. Hella good. Like, let’s dust this place,” she said.
Halfway across the room, several bookshelves shuffled away from the wall, and a footstool flew up into the ceiling with a shriek.
“Eldritch Eames is growing stronger,” McKellar said. “All of the stock in this building is starting to behave strangely.”
With her free hand, Filosofia tore a strip of cloth from the Tammerfors drapery set and stuffed the fabric into Emily’s mouth. “Let’s go.”
Demonic Particleboard
Filosofia and McKellar, with a squirming Emily in tow, slunk along a darkened hallway toward the first-floor showrooms.
“Watch my back,” said Filosofia.
“But I’m busy restraining Emily. She already tried to jump onto the escalators and deliver a soliloquy,” McKellar complained.
They rounded the corner and saw a huge man standing on top of a coffee table, reading aloud from a spiral-bound book. Small vanilla-scented candles from housewares burned on every shelf, and tendrils of electricity arced along the beams overhead.
“It’s Eldritch Eames,” said Filosofia. “He’s trying to activate all of the furniture.”
“That’s not Helvetica on the title of his spell book, is it?” asked McKellar.
“There’s no time left,” said Filosofia. She stepped out onto the retail floor. “Eldritch Eames! We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either way, you, like, die, so the easy way is totally fab.”
Eldritch turned, set his book down, and showed his teeth.
“There is no easy way,” he snarled, “There is no easy way unless you really can insert fastener ‘C’ into slot ‘F’ while holding the table legs at a ninety-degree angle and turning the screw ‘K’ counterclockwise.”
“You’re a fiend,” said McKellar.
“You’re an insult to designers everywhere. Let’s get this over with,” said Filosofia, advancing toward Eldritch.
Then Emily broke loose from McKellar’s grip and ran down the aisle. She addressed Eldritch.
“You bring disgrace upon a noble Swedish name!” she said, grabbing at a shelving unit and waving a small rack like a sword.
“No, Emily! Get back here!” shouted McKellar.
“Ah, the plaid’s the thing! …” Emily began. She hopped on top of a sofa and waved her shelving-unit sword dramatically. Eldritch spotted the movement, and with a glance from his blazing eyes he gave the sofa a push, sending Emily sailing into a bin full of blue and yellow eggcups. She landed headfirst and did not get up.
“Emily!”gasped Filosofia, who ran over to her friend.
Eldritch moved closer to McKellar, muttering something about hex wrenches. He seemed to grow larger with every word.
“See anything you like?” McKellar asked.
“What? What do you mean?!”
“Anything in here? — read this.” McKellar opened a copy of V&A Guide to Gratuitously Reticulated Victorian Ornament and waved it at the crazed designer. Eldritch gagged and ran for the cover of a flatpack palm-tree display.
“Mortals! You can only delay your deaths!” Eldritch roared, safe from the enervating decorations. “With this evening’s shipment, I have amassed so much demonic particleboard here that you cannot hope to challenge my power! I will build my strength with this particleboard! No one can stop me!”
Filosofia left the unconscious Emily and swaggered down the aisle. She glared at Eldritch, who eyed her in return. A gust of wind nearly swept her from her feet, and all of the two-dollar discount plates toppled from the shelves with a crash. A stray scrap of plastic turf blew between them. Filosofia selected a bright white Malmo torchiere lamp, snapped off the base, and swung it, testing its weight.
“So Eldritch? Like, if you can get so much particleboard, how come you can’t find a better toupe? It’s not made out of sawdust too, is it?” asked Filosofia, bracing herself against the wind.
Eldritch turned, picked up a bedside table, and threw it at her. Filosofia dodged sideways and jumped on top of a dresser.
“This isn’t fake woodgrain, is it?” she asked, as Eldritch sought out another piece of furniture. “It’s like totally ugly. It isn’t plastic—”
She ducked again, as a Ingersol coffee table sailed toward her.
“That’s right, keep breaking the goods — that’s like the best you can do with this stuff, other than use it as firewood.”
Eldritch roared and picked up another piece of furniture. This time Filosofia moved too slowly, and the flying computer desk bowled her backwards and into a mass of folding wine racks. Dazed, she groaned and tried to roll out of the way, but Eldritch hit her with a sidetable and she crumpled.
Satisfied that Filosofia was out of action, Eldritch grunted, and advanced on McKellar. “Join me,” he said. “I can use you. We need new point-of-sales materials. More brochures. Lots and lots of xeroxed fliers. Together we can dominate New England furniture retail!”
“Never,” said McKellar. He thrust the V&A Guide to Gratuitously Reticulated Victorian Ornament into Eldritch’s view. Eldritch drew back, hissing.
“You fools! My minimalist Scandinavian vision is too strong for your pathetic patternbooks!” Eldritch roared. He swung his arm and sent a row of shelves toppling, knocking McKellar to the ground and sending the book flying. “I will crush you! My Scandinavian modern vision will prevail!” he roared.
“Hey big guy! Looks like your peripheral vision could use some work,” Filosofia taunted.
Eldritch whirled around and spotted his opponent perched thirty feet above him, on top of a massive Swedish cooking display, but before he could react, Filosofia shoved at the display and jumped off. The blue-and-yellow labeled jars gave a brief shudder, then toppled forward. Eldritch disappeared under an avalanche of preserves, and when the rumble died away, only the soft sticky sounds of dripping lingonberry jam remained.
Filosofia limped over to McKellar and helped him to his feet. “You have totally got to love something called a ‘lingonberry,’ even if it does come in jars,” she said.
McKellar picked up the book. “At last, the library was good for something, although taking this book out overnight will cost five hundred dollars in late fines,” McKellar said. “There’s still the warehouse and all that demonic particleboard out back. Let’s get Emily and finish this place off before Eldritch wakes up.”
discounts amidst the ruins
McKellar and Filosofia emerged from their cover behind a brick wall in the parking lot, and surveyed the rubble. As the dust from the explosions died away, Emily, lying on her back on the pavement, shuddered suddenly and groaned.
“Emily? You awake? How’s Horatio?” asked McKellar.
“Hor — Horatio? Wh — what are you talking about?” asked Emily.
“Thank goodness, she’s back to normal. No iambic pentameter.”
Filosofia knelt beside McKellar, concerned. “Lambent pentawhatawhata? Is that something I need to kill?” she asked.
“Never mind,” said McKellar.
“What’s going on? Where’d the Ikea go?” asked Emily.
“Um, we had to blow it up,” said Filosofia, brushing the graphite off of Emily’s forehead.
“Wait — you blew up the New Haven Ikea?” said Emily.
“Yeah.”
“You blew up the only Ikea in New England?” Emily asked, sitting up and leaning against the wall. She hugged herself.
“Like, totally,” said Filosofia, flipping her sunglasses back over her eyes.
“I don’t know if I can take this,” Emily said. “Guys, you’ve got to be making this up. Not the only Ikea in New England. It took decades to get here and it’s gotta still be there it can’t be gone it’s gotta still be there I need to buy a bin —”
“Listen, Emily, you were right!” Filosofia said. “There was a crazy furniture designer, just like you said …”
“But guys, I need to buy a bin. You can’t have done it. It can’t be.”
“I’m sorry, Em, we had to. That’s what happens when you make furniture out of demonic particleboard.”
McKellar and Filosofia helped Emily to the car, anxious to leave before the fire department arrived.
Deep in the smoking rubble, a Visby chair flipped onto its legs and growled.