Hollow Springs

Hollow Springs

Written by Fynn

Chapter 1, Episode 1: Pops

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

I mean, obviously…

Believing in dragons is ‘bout as dumb as training nuts to hunt for squirrels in a cuckoo’s nest.

At least that’s what Pops’d say if he was still around to see the shit show that Hollow Springs has turned to ever since the rumour of dragons in the Valley thing got spread to the whole g’dam world as fast as the clap at Bob the vicar’s tea party.

That’s another one of Pop’s famous sayings, except sometimes instead of cuckoo’s nest he’d say the word brothel or sanitarium.

Instead of vicar he’d say politician.

Or Robert. Rob.

Bob.

Bob the vicar was Pop’s childhood best friend before he became the town vicar and then the mayor. This was before he turned the whole g’dam town against Pops for what didn’t happen that day back in the big war.

Anyways.

This is all besides the point.

The main thing you need to know right now is Pops was always changing up the words in his famous sayings like this. And nobody can tell 100 percent if this was deliberate or if it was because he had fish brain memory problems like me.

According to Ma, this was a sure sign to tell he was hitting the bottle again, although, according to the whole town of Hollow Springs (population 867 and declining) and except for Bob the vicar, everyone says Pops was getting a lot better at remembering he’d quit the booze all those years back.

For the record, all of this stuff I’m telling you happened after my uncle Peta got disappeared and never came back.

This is also why Pops keeps forgetting he stopped drinking.

And the only reason I’m telling you any this personal family stuff is ‘cause it’s important for you to know I’m not a liar.

But, you also need to understand that all of what I’m telling you, these are all hand me down stories.

Pick me up scraps of broken telephone memories people don’t really want to talk about that I’m trying to make into some kind've completed puzzle inside my head. Fish brain memory and all.

And this is the honest truth even for the parts I’m directly involved in, ‘cause, thing is, I can’t even be a 100% sure on anything that’s going to happen ever since the day I got back from being disappeared myself.

The big difference is I made it back.

Me and Jo. We’re the only two known cases that didn’t get disappeared for good.

And Pops.

This our speculation anyways.

Me and the rest of the gang, we’re trying to prove Pops was the first one to swim through all the underground tunnels down at the Hollow Springs Caves.

This is why I need to start with the whole history of everything and how this all goes back through every single one of our family stories.

Yours, mine, and the whole g'dam world's...

All the way back to the day the faeries hid the changelings on the ship that ended up in Hollow Springs (population zero), thousands of miles from any ocean in any direction you can piss a kidney stone, and the same for everywhere else on earth when the ships started sailing for the new world.

Anyways.

The honest truth of it is I don’t much know about the meaning of the word ‘brothel’ or ‘the clap’ or any of Pop’s other famous sayings like how he’d always tell Bob the vicar that cornholing is a term they specifically invented to describe what happens when Bob forces his personality into everyone’s ears after Sunday Mass or on the golf course or anywhere he goes.

Ever since their falling out, Pops would call Bob the biggest mass-turd-baiter he’s ever known, which I think means that Bobs a shitty fisherman. And if you know anything about Pops, this is just about the worst insult you could ever get from him.

He used to say Bob was a thing called a feckin wanker until one day before Mass Bob said what did you call me! and Pops said, a big feckin mass-turd-bater.

I asked pops later what he meant by this and he just chuckled and then he never said wanker again.

Come Sunday, the whole town would head off to pray for their sins and Pops would head down to the church which is what he called the stretch of river he’d go to catch fish.

Anyways.

Pops was the one who taught me how to tie flies for fishing. We’d name them after Django Reinhardt songs.

Django was Pop’s favourite 3 fingered jazz guitar player. Story goes he was from one of the places him and Bob the vicar fought during the big war.

Anyways.

My favourite fly we tied together is called la merde, which Pops told me means the shit in French. It used to be just la mer but one day I asked his view on what fly to use to catch a trout, and he said la mer… and then duh, and then started laughing to himself the way he’d always do.

I always liked how it sounds. La Merde. Even though it’s no good for catching trout.

I keep trying to ask Ma for the meaning of all this stuff Pops used to say, but all she ever tells me is these are bad turns of phrase. And that he was a foul-mouthed old man and that if she ever caught me using his words she’d shove a bar of laundry soap so deep down my throat I’d be shitting bubbles for a week.

But, you got to understand.

Pops. He didn’t make it through the Fall, and if I ever tell you one true thing it’s that he was just about my favorite person in the whole g’dam world, so to tell you the honest truth, ever since he’s gone, I just don’t right know how to feel about almost anything no more.

I tried to explain this to Ma. I tried to tell her that keeping his famous sayings alive was the only way I could think to not forget my memory of him, but she wouldn’t listen.

She doesn’t much listen to anyone anymore, except for maybe Pa sometimes.

Pa says I’ve got to be a man about it and what a man does is he puts his shoulders back and looks the world dead in the eye.

He says, a man never shows his heart no matter how broken up he is on the inside.

All of this got me thinking the other day that maybe Ma is more of a man than I’ll ever be, ‘cause ever since I got back from being disappeared she’s all of a sudden stopped scolding me for always saying things like the honest truth and anyways and g’dam and feck a million times in every sentence.

Anyways.

There was still a time when she’d say to me, FYNN! You keep using those words and the whole town is going to start believing you’re as dumb as you are.

But to tell you the honest truth, Ma’s not so smart herself, ‘cause if she was really paying attention she’d have figured out by now that 50 percent part of the whole g’dam reason I keep saying these words is ‘cause I need her to start scolding me again.

She stopped about the time I started to jumble up my words and forget things. Back before she made me start wearing this stupid feckin helmet all the g’dam time.

And now, the more she doesn’t scold me, the more I’m starting to give up hope that she ever will. The same way she finally stopped telling everyone I’d grow up to be a doctor one day.

Or a lawyer, like Pa used to be before he got dismembered.

Dismembered is what happens when you’re a lawyer and you make up fake reports to stop the government from locking your only son away in a nut house and swallowing the key, so I’m the reason everyone’s life is a huge mess right now.

I keep thinking if only Ma could figure out the reason I’m always trying to find new ways to get her to scold me, then maybe she’d realize I’m not as dumb as she thinks, and then…

I don’t know…

Maybe then we can somehow get back to the time she still loved me…

Back to when I was still going to grow up to be a veterinarian and get married and buy a house. And then maybe Pa will stop having to be so quiet all the time and maybe they’ll make him a lawyer again and we can start playing catch the way we used to before I got back from being disappeared.

These are all stupid thoughts knowing what I know about The Other World. Sometimes I think maybe everyone would just be a lot better off if I’d stayed disappeared.

Anyways.

The honest truth of it is I think maybe I remind her too much of Pops.

I heard her whispering it to Pa in the kitchen the night I got back.

She was saying how she doesn’t even recognize me anymore. That it’s like there’s this whole other person living inside my body.

The problem is if I told her the truth, they’d lock me away for sure.

I mean, I’d just about die from laughing if some kid in a too big motorcycle helmet jabbered on and on to me about how he had to do a reversal on a brain eater to get back from being disappeared.

Someone tells me they eat brains, I’m 100 percent calling the cops for sure.

Now, you’d think shitting out a person would be the same as shitting out corn, but it doesn’t work like this.

It takes a lot longer to work a person through your system, and the whole time this is going on it’s really a case of you are what you eat, which is why Ma doesn’t recognize me half the time.

The doc says I have executive function problems, and this means sometimes I say things I shouldn’t, so I need to make it clear for you, when I talk about shitting out people, this isn’t the way Dahmer shits out people.

Eating a persons brain is more like a complicated thought process. You have to figure out the right combination of sayings to chip away at them from the inside. Pick them apart piece by piece until everything that makes them who they are is gone for good.

Spirit killing is probably a better way to explain it.

Still, it takes a while to shit them out .

Anyways. I was pressed up tight against the kitchen door spying on Ma and Pa that night when I should’ve been in bed sleeping, but I think the spirit I’d eaten must’ve gone bad at some point because I was farting all kinds of bad words like acquisition, merger and retrenchment…

Cash-flow and restructuring and severance.

The honest truth is I just wanted to be prepared in case all of this turned into some kind of hostile take-over.

So, here I was, pressed up against the door fighting a hostile takeover going on inside my brains, and in between all the sobbing I could hear Ma shaking that little plastic bottle full of risperidone tablets the doc says I have to take to keep Pa out of jail.

Ma’s the one who makes sure to watch me take them every morning before I head off to meet the gang.

Except, the jokes on her ‘cause she still hasn’t figured out that I’ve found a way to hide them under my tongue so they’re invisible when makes me open my mouth for her to check.

The reason I stopped taking the tablets is we need them to drug Mrs. Weatherington’s dog, Pipper. This is so we can take a shortcut through town to get to the water tower without Kevin the Hulk catching on to what we’re doing.

The reason we’ve started going to the water tower is to train in secret to hold our breath underwater for 3 full minutes.

This is so we can finally swim all the way through the last of the underground tunnels down at Hollow Springs Caves.

Jessie was the one who came up with the idea of hiding the tablets in a piece of bologna.

But I'll tell you one thing, the way Pipper suddenly transformed into the calmest and happiest dog you’ve ever seen, I sometimes think maybe I should start splitting the tablets with him.

The problem is the last time I took the tablets I found my abilities fading.

First, I stopped being able to tell who were the liars and then The Other World started turning all hazy and then one day it all just disappeared.

There’s no way I can explain how The Other World looks so you don’t call me a liar. Even me and Jo, we don’t agree much on a thing we’re looking at for about 75 percent of the time.

Like, for example, this morning when Jo and me went down in the valley and all of a sudden this big ‘ol tree starts to grow up into the sky from a tiny seed right in front of Jo’s eyes…

… all the way up into the cloud as quick as it takes to cheat in hide and seek…

Jo’s jaw, well, it almosts drops all the way down to the ground and he starts to reach for my arm like a slow motion blind person, saying tree tree tree, but no matter how hard I try to see his g’dam magic beanstalk tree I don’t see not even one single tree.

The only thing in front of my eyes is this gang of construction men building some kind’ve giant rusty windmill they say is for oil.

Truth is, the only thing we can agree on about how The Other World looks is if you’ve ever watched one those Mad Max movies, think of the same, but opposite.

So, I guess you’re just gonna to imagine it for yourself. And if you don’t see nothing with your eyes closed then it’s a sure sign the brain eaters got to you.

The first part they go for is always the part where you can see everything the way it’s supposed to be instead of how it is.

Since I got back, I don’t even have to say one single bad word to make Ma cry anymore.

She just cries all the time now. Nonstop.

Out in the field, in the kitchen, hanging up laundry, down the river or out picking berries in the grove.

But this isn’t a normal sort of crying that you see in movies or when you get your dick caught in your zipper like that time Charlie tried to pretend he was religious for a week after the accident.

It’s the kind of crying that’s real quiet, like when you have tears tumbling down through you on the inside instead of on the outside for the whole world to see.

This is what I mean about Ma taking Pa’s advice about being a man.

And to tell you the honest truth, it’s kind’ve embarrassing for my self-esteem to know my Ma is more of a man than me.

Anyways. It’s been the same for a few months now. You don’t need to be a veternarian to know Ma’s all but left home to go die on the porch in plain sight.

Every night I come home she’s sitting out there drinking her gin & tonic. Her face and arms and clothes all covered in paint from whatever art project she ruined in a fit of laughter and quiet tears midway through.

Sometimes I think Ma is trying to raise me the way she paints. Every morning things start off like it’s the best day ever and then - BAM! – everything turns into a mess of flying paint and brushes and then it's gin and tonic until Pa puts a blanket over her, like some secret he's trying to push under the rug.

Forget that saying about spilled milk. My whole childhood is one big bottle of wasted Bombay Sapphire that I’m not supposed to cry about.

Anyways.

Now that you know about Pa and Ma, and Pops and me I can start to tell you more about The Gang, and Miss Liddy and also, Kevin the Hulk.

Pa says I have a bad habit of waffling on about a thing too much and in circles instead of just getting straight to the point of it, so I’m sorry if its taking a while to get to the big plot twist and action, but you need to understand that me telling you all of this with my fish brain memory and word jumbles is not an easy thing to do.

And also, you got to understand that me telling you all of this is a 100 percent necessary for you to not call me a liar when I get to telling you all about how, right now, this very moment, you’re getting your brains eaten and you don’t even know it.

And also, the reason I’m telling you all of this goes all the way right back to the very beginning of this story and then even further back to the beginning of time.

You need to understand, all of this is to save you.

The squirrels and nuts.

The cornhole vicar.

All of Pops famous sayings, we finally figured out it’s a secret code. So, anyways, I honest to g’dam truth hope you’ve been paying attention to everything I’m not saying.

Episode 1, Part 2: Miss Liddy

Miss Liddy was the nurse at the hospital who cared for pops the time he caught that Pee Tee S.T.D disease during the war, so I know she’s not a liar like Ma who tries to hide the honest truth of it all from me

Old Timers is what they call it, she says, and what a right shame for a mind so beautiful as his to be wasted like that . Jo says it’s a disease you catch on your privates, so I don’t know.

Anyways .

She says, the thing about remembering, is some people forget to remember and other people, they need to remember to forget, and then there’s others like your pops who need to forget to remember more than others.

And this is why he used to drink.

The thing about my own fish brain word jumbles is the doc calls it dysleporasy or dystopia or something like that.

Dislocation?

Like when your finger or elbow gets all twisted out of place in the wrong direction from tackle ball & you keep having to find other ways to pick your nose and all of the other everyday normal things the whole world keeps taking for granted while their brains slowly get eaten.

Well, this is how my thoughts fall out of my mouth when I try to tell a story and it’s the same thing with reading.

Everything is all out of joint and mixed up like when you drink too much orange soda and projectile vomit half-digested apple pie, turkey bits, potatoes and mushy peas all over everyone’s trifle pudding and ruin Christmas for the rest of everyone’s lives for ever.

Pa didn’t even get angry that time. He just sat there staring at me, a slimy carrot chunk sliding down his glasses.

Ma was the one who broke the silence.

Her whole body was shaking & vibrating - like a pressure pot ‘o cow poop soup about to explode all over the kitchen walls – Like Pops would say when he was talking code

A soup diarrhea splatter job exploding all over the ceiling and floor.

Well, Ma.

I don’t think nobody has never seen her vibrate so much before in my whole life or ever since.

But when the vibrating finally slowed into a kind’ve twitching, and she reached across that table and plucked that slimy carrot from Pa’s glasses bout as quick as you pick a tick off a dogs butt, well..

It was all just one big Bombay Saphire art project of yellow pumpkin goop and green pea snot soup dripping down her face and all over her plate.

And I’ll tell you, the whole family was just staring in disbelief when she calmly picked up a big shaky vibrating spoon and scooped a big ‘ol load of gloopy snot vomit Sunday lunch soup into her mouth.

My mistake was I thought everything was going to be ok that this point, but I shoulda known Ma was in artist mode, ‘cause right when everything seemed to be turning all calm again she suddenly pointed that slimy chunk of carrot straight at me and said, real soft, how many fucking times do I have to tell you to chew your food properly, which was a big thing ‘cause ma never uses the F word.

This was about the time Aunty Beth who was bullfroggin the whole time trying to keep her food down finally exploded and the next thing you know the whole family was heaving their guts all over the place, slipping and sliding and falling all over the dining room trying to escape Sunday lunch.

Anyways. The reason for whole puke story is first, so you know to remind me about Miss Liddy for when I forget to tell you about her later.

The second is once you start learning to find the code, you’re going to need an exit strategy to escape all those mandatory family functions. And you can 100% trust me on this. If you ruin everyone’s Christmas lunch forever, suddenly nobody cares about forcing you to go to church or anywhere anymore.

You become a persona non grata, which is Spanish for Ghost, and this is necessary for you to learn everything you’re going to need to know to stop your brain from getting eaten all the way down to nothing…

Episode 2

Charlie Horse was the one who came up with the idea of strapping fake wings on Aligators and spreading the rumour of dragons in the Valley

We need all of the whole worlds media in Hollow Springs for when we blow the lid on this charade…

So, Anyways…

Ok. That’s enough for today.

Now. Breathe. Breath in and out and in and out and in and out. And listen. Listen carefully. Listen carefully to the sound of my voice. Listen and breathe. Breathe in and out and in and out and in. And in a second, I’m going to start counting back from 3, and 2 and 1 and…