Thesis Bites
(Part 1)
Two-car congestion
“That wasn’t so bad, just a little busy,” said McKellar, as he eased the car off of the ramp and onto the surface streets. Emily opened her eyes for a moment, glimpsed the city traffic, then released her grip on the door handhold and made a vaguely affirmative noise before lapsing into silence. Cars had begun to turn on their headlights in the early-evening darkness, which came earlier this late in the summer.
“It wasn’t so bad, if encouraging me to write up my last will and testament isn’t so bad,” said Filosofia, smiling from her relatively sheltered position in the back seat.
“You talking about I-95 or our thesis meeting?” asked McKellar.
“The thesis meeting. Guys, I don’t have a thesis. Half of my proposal was the hella extended ‘note about the type’ at the back,” Filosofia said, no longer smiling.
“It was a very nice note about the type,” Emily said. “And I liked your type a lot too.”
“And the ideas?”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with a few more. Oh, I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did, and yes it’s true.”
“All right, let’s change the subject,” said Filosofia. “Emily, how’s the online dating going?”
“Great! I just had my second date with Merwyn,” said Emily.
“Merwyn?” asked McKellar.
“You don’t need to get all huffy about it,” said Emily. “You might even have to meet him later tonight, if he calls.”
“Exciting much?”
“Not really, but he’s calm, and he’s single, and he’s not in jail like the last two guys I met from the dating service.”
“So all is hella cool for you then?” asked Filosofia.
“Sort of. But there’s something’s really odd about my apartment. I keep hearing noises at night like there’s some huge rat chewing in the walls,” said Emily.
“Same with my apartment,” said McKellar. “Only it’s more like a huge nail file being rubbed back and forth across a ceramic tile. Grating sound, grinding. There’s a lot of tension in it. It’s not supernatural, and it sounds like it’s coming from the sidewalk outside my bedroom.”
“Guys, I think it’s nothing much. I haven’t heard anything like that, and I’ve been sleeping pretty badly lately,” said Filosofia. “This thesis stuff is just getting to me.”
“Oh, Filosofia, don’t let that happen. It’s summer. Enjoy your summer. Then the semester rolls around in September and you’ll feel like you’ve been dropped right back into a burning vat of hell-oil.”
“Vat of hell-oil? You’re getting weirder… But I do love your oddness,” Filosofia said. “Speaking of oddness, what was that?!” Filosofia added suddenly. She rolled down the window and put her head out, searching the sky and ignoring the traffic whizzing by a few feet from her ear.
“Uh, are we talking about big flappy thingy with teeth and wings? ‘Cause you know I don’t like big flappy thingies,” said Emily from the back seat. She could see nothing but had developed a fine sense of the sort of thing her friends saw when they leaned out of car windows and looked upwards.
“There! Look! Above the KFC sign!” said Filosofia, pointing excitedly.
They looked through the windshield. The KFC sign glowed smoothly, but above it in the darkness, silhouetted against the last traces of the sunset, a long shape pushed its way through the air. It moved clumsily, dropping downward and then flapping bat-like wings to regain height. The wings held aloft a barrel-shaped torso, like a woman’s body but cut off at the waist.
“Guys, this really sucks. I’d rather be home trying to ‘make things,’” said Emily.
“Go, McKellar! Follow that — that thing,” urged Filosofia, still craning out the side window. “It’s turning onto Olney Street. Or anyway, it’s sort of flying over Olney Street, so you should drive there.”
McKellar pulled off onto the side street, zipping between three cars and a mail truck to a fuge of angry horns. They followed it up the hill, guided by Filosofia’s directions, almost losing the scudding shape in the trees but regaining it when the car caught up. The flying thing moved hardly faster than an easy run, and the task become one of observation rather than clever driving.
The flying thing heaved its way into the sky over Waterman St. and McKellar pushed the car into a sharp left turn — and immediately had to stop for a line of halted cars blocking the road. “Damn Providence drivers!” McKellar muttered, slapping his horn a few times so that he would not be left out. Filosofia popped her door open and ran forward beside the stopped cars, still following the flying creature which, even with its unsteady gait, was now opening the distance between itself and its pursuers.
As Filosofia reached the tie-up at the head of the line, the creature disappeared over an apartment building roof, fading into the offing. Emily arrived a few moments later.
“Lost the creepy flying thing?” she asked. Then she noticed Filosofia’s gaze, directed at the back seat of one of the cars nearby. The leading two cars in the line were stopped side-by-side in the roadway, undamaged, engines running. Their drivers stood on the pavement pointing in various directions, screaming at one another, in an apparent disagreement over whether the street ran in one or two lanes. Most of the nearby motorists and a few pedestrians had joined in with their own shouted contributions to the dispute, but the driver of a nearby Subaru wagon still sat in her seat, drumming her fingers on the wheel.
Filosofia walked toward the Subaru, peering more closely into the rear compartment. Then she pulled open the back hatch, and several body parts and bags of ice tumbled out onto the pavement. The Subaru driver looked back quickly, then slammed her car into gear and, with a roar from the engine, took off across the sidewalk and down Hope St., leaving a trail of body parts behind her.
“Damn Providence drivers,” said McKellar, who had arrived in time to see the Subaru’s hasty departure. The other drivers, briefly distracted, returned to their argument. The two-lane crowd seemed to be winning, mostly because one of the camp’s more fervent advocates was illustrating his points by waving about a tire iron.
Far-away human voices
The argument between the drivers had continued into the evening, with more cars pulling up to join the dispute. McKellar had tried to drive along the sidewalk, but the routes forward and to the rear were blocked by more contentious-minded motorists. The police arrived and soon, the patrolmen, bored of watching the evidence technicians, began to play connect-the-dots by stringing crime-scene tape from tree-to-tree. The mess grew when a local news crew showed up.
Eventually McKellar parked the car and the three of them left on foot.
Filosofia evidently preferred the company of the dead to the quarrelsome living, and led the group through a cemetery.
“Oh my God, that’s like two totally different creepy-crawlies we got here tonight, plus that mess of people arguing about how many lanes there are on Waterman St. — I could kill ‘em all, almost,” said Filosofia. “We’ve got the big flappy thing with the wings and no legs, up in the air. Then we have a hella-big surplus of legs in a Subaru on the ground, not to mention an excess of hands, hearts, ears, brains, and some grey squishy things that must have been livers.”
“Yuck. But the driver looked alive enough,” said Emily. “I think she even glared at me for blocking her path onto the sidewalk. Only a living Providence driver would glare at a pedestrian for walking on the sidewalk.”
“Which one do we want to focus on? The flying creature or the Subaru leaving a trail of body parts?” asked McKellar.
“I say Subaru. It doesn’t fly, and it has hella high ground clearance,” said Filosofia. “McKellar — can you look into the local papers again, you’re the only one of us who can stand reading the Providence Journal. Emily, you get to check the Phoenix, only don’t get too caught up in the sex-shop ads. You never know what you’ll catch.”
“And what will you do?” McKellar grumbed.
“Dunno. Maybe I can call up Subaru dealerships and ask them if someone’s ordered their dismembered-body-transport-option lately. No, I’ll just be curled up in bed in a fetal position crying about my lack of thesis. Not that I’m bothered or anything.”
“I think she’s being sarcastic,” Emily observed.
“I’m really starting to worry… . McKellar, stop playing with the flowers on the graves, it isn’t nice … anyway, this whole thesis thing just feels way too big for little me.”
“I’m not playing with the flowers. I’m looking at the flowers. And look at this — a mound of new flowers, a mound of fresh earth, but the date of death on the stone is last April,” said McKellar, offended.
“Oh, that’s, like, different. Can we say wacky total creepilitude? I think I can guess what our Subaru driver has been up to. Off-roading, sure, but grave-robbing is a little too extreme even for the Outback, wouldn’t you say?” said Filosofia. Then she stopped. “I totally don’t have anything to say. Oh God. What am I going to say in our seminar next fall? Oof, thesis, thesis, thesis…”
“It’s okay, Filosofia, you’ll figure out something …” Emily began.
“Please stop talking about thesis!” Filosofia wailed. She looked around frantically, then ran off toward her apartment.
Emily and McKellar picked their own way home, talking very little.