The sun was blotted out by clouds, and the townspeople stayed in their
homes; even the rats knew to avoid the unholy field. The town's
darkest secret lived there.
Mikey was in the third grade, and
Susie was in the second. However little of the world they had seen in
their young lives, they both knew evil when they saw it. Lesser men and
women would turn to drink, would cower in their basements, would hide from
the world for a lifetime to escape this evil that could not be
touched; but, the eyes of children must face what their parents
could not. The dread god Cthulu lived in that field. A homeless derelict,
perhaps, but a homeless derelict soul-annihilating demon with the
madness-inducing tentacled head of a squid - not to mention a nasty case
of indigestion. Cthulu had a stomach virus. The vomit of the
terrifying, hideous star-god was eating away at the world. It came out in
chunks, chunks of orange, chunks of green, chunks of red; Cthulu threw up,
and the entire world shivered.
Timmy waited on the bus. He was in fourth grade, and he believed that men
could not sit idly by while elder gods with giant bat-wings ate the souls
of other men. He believed in a world where children still played in fields
and birds still flew in the sky without being instantly vaporized by the
stench of demon vomit. People believed in Timmy. He was a noble kid,
and he was putting together a resistance movement that would some day turn
the tide.
Mikey, on the other hand, was a rough-and-tumble kid from the wrong side
of the suburbs. He was good at video games and his only vice was the
occasional comic book. Susie wasn't listed in any price guides, but she
was worth a million bucks all the same. Mikey thought he had it all
figured out. He'd had a crush on Susie in the past, and she'd had a crush
on him, but he thought he was over all that. He was wrong. Of all the
lousy kickball games in town, she had to walk into his.
The engine was running. The school bus was about to leave. That bus was
going to take Timmy far away from here. He'd make contacts. He'd
spread the message of freedom. He'd save the town some day. But there
wouldn't be a town left to save if someone didn't stay behind. The
field was filling rapidly with the vomit of the soul-annihilating
demon. Someone had to take a stand.
Someone had to stay behind and burp Cthulu.
Mikey: At recess we said a great many things. You said I was to do
the thinking for both of us. Well, I've done a lot of it since then, and
it all adds up to one thing: you're getting back on that school bus with
Timmy where you belong.
Susie: But, Mikey, no, I... I...
Mikey: Now, you've got to listen to me! You have any idea what you'd
have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we'd
both wind up spinning in eternal horror before Azathoth, the writhing
nuclear chaos at the center of the universe.
Susie: You're saying this only to make me go.
Mikey: I'm saying it because it's true. Inside of us, we both know
you belong with Timmy. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him
going. He's real good at kickball. At running, too. He can run far. If
that school bus leaves the parking lot and you're not with him, you'll
regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not 'til
Thanksgiving break, but soon, and for the rest of your life.
Susie: But what about us?
Mikey: We'll always have that field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry. We didn't have, we, we lost it until
you came to school today. We got it back at recess.
Susie: When I said I would never leave you.
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The doors of the school bus creaked open for one last time. Soon, the
doors would close and the bus would leave, leave this place forever,
forever until the next school day; a little boy and a little girl stood in the
field, and the dream of a better world awaited only one of them.
Mikey: And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where
I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part
of. Susie, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see
that the problems of three little kids don't amount to a hill of beans in
this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's
looking at you, kid.
Tears in her eyes, Susie boarded the bus. Mikey turned, his eight year old
body composed of nothing but determination to do what was right. Taking
Cthulu in his arms, Mikey burped the incontinent elder god. Cthulu coughed
up the souls of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and an ad executive from
Kansas. Mikey watched the school bus recede into the horizon, and then he
turned back to his charge, who already had the shivers again.
For many people, a better world lay just ahead.
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(photo: AP, dialogue adapted from "Casablanca")
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