THINGS THAT GO CRUNCH IN THE NIGHT

Crrrunch! Nolan smirks at the image his mind paints of fluidic muck and fragmented shell beneath his right shoe; always the right shoe because right is might, as if the left shoe will somehow remain ignorant and therefore absolved of such malice.

“Take that you slimy little fucker!” he says, and lightly swirls his right sole atop the manicured grass that borders his flower garden. He carefully follows the stone path back to his patio and turns to gaze upon the austere beauty of his little tenth acre, each plant, each unique decoration, every solar light and sprinkler head offering irrefutable testament to his need for order and clarity.

“Here, I’m God!”

He pauses for a moment and wonders just whom he’s informing of this self-ordained status? He stoops to remove his shoes and places them toes-first on the bottom shelf of his gardening bench, then goes inside to construct yet another tidy, eight-hundred calorie brown-bag meal for work.

“Five three Juliet, Mugu Approach, how do you hear me?”

“Uh, five three Juliet’s got you loud and clear approach.”

“Five three Juliet, roger. It’s crowded out there today and it’s in your best interests to stay awake. Five three Juliet turn right heading zero-five-zero, vectors downwind.”

“Roger approach, five three Juliet turning left zero-five-zero.”

“That’s RIGHT zero-five-zero, a right turn heading zero-five-zero for five three Juliet.”

Jesus Christ, what a fucking moron! Nolan had endured and perhaps saved countless pilots who were well behind the situation, but lately his tolerance for incompetence was almost nonexistent. Nolan often wondered if he’d make it to retirement without a total meltdown beating him to the punch. Survival, survival, survival! His mantra at the finish line of a career he didn’t choose. Strange how the fates throw us around in this life, he thought, even as he continued to control and pre-empt the small calamities blossoming on his radar screen.

“Hey Nolan, you ready for a break yet my man?”

“ I’m beyond ready Freddy. Stick a fork in my ass, I’m done!”

“Okay ya old fart. Let me take a leak and I’ll be right there to bail you out.”

“Sure Freddy, take your time.”

Nolan ejected this last declaration rife with sarcasm. Relief time was three minutes ago dude, that “leak” should already be in the archives. And it bothered him immensely that Freddy probably thought he would indeed be bailing Nolan out of things beyond the older controller’s decaying abilities. Hell, no one else in the room tonight was even twinkling in their daddy’s loins when he first became a controller, so fuck them all.

After his shift ends, Nolan drives home in a somnolent stupor. Darkness remains as he pulls into his driveway. “Damn it!”, he spits out angrily. Those motion lights he’d installed last week were already fucking up, another piece of life moving just outside his grasp. He lets his head thump heavily into the steering wheel and sighs in resignation. He lets it come this time, no energy to resist this thing that keeps showing up. Okay, okay he thinks, let me have it, let’s just get this shit over with...

Nolan lies in a field of wild flowers and tall grasses leaned gently by a smooth breeze succulent with aromas of warm vanilla and brown sugar, of mom and her kitchen. Sunlight gleams and illumines everything in an unfamiliar yet pleasant fashion. He relaxes and revels in its warmth, feeling safe even as something unforeseen approaches.

Snails everywhere. Giant snails that slide towards him like some mucous-born army. Atop the biggest and closest rides his mother, no longer ten years dead, radiant and smiling, the Snail Queen. As the circle of giants closes tightly around him, she raises her right hand and they stop.

She beams her approval down at him, just like the time he showed her how smashed lightening bugs continued to glow on his skin, like she had when he won third place in the fifth-grade science fair, and when he scored the first and only basket of his lumbering basketball career.

“Hi Mom,” he shouts into the onslaught of her approval. “How you been?”

No answer save her smile and strange fury of endorsement. As Nolan luxuriates within his mother’s aura he begins to spin, weird and wonderful vibrations of light and tenderness pulling him apart molecule by molecule. He observes, quite happily, as he becomes nothing and everything…

Nolan pulls the new day into view and rubs his fingers across the groove etched into his forehead by the steering wheel. First light winks seductively at him from just behind his neighbor’s roof. His mouth sticks together, and the dry taste of poodle feces comes to mind.

“Holy crap!”, he gurgles as he forces his body from the seat and into the vague semblance of a man walking calmly towards his door, as if he always slept in his car. He’s still muddled and has trouble fighting the key into its lock.

Inside he stumbles to the kitchen, sets up the coffee, then opens the slider leading to his self-imposed sanctuary. Dew bejewels everything, and his hands move a small torrent to the edge of a garden table. Water cascades over the edge and falls upon a snail making its way across the vastness of his patio to some hidden place and agenda.

Nolan crouches to examine the agonizingly slow advancement, the delicate silver ribbon, the dogged certainty with which this small creature does its business. He could take his right foot and quickly end its trials and tribulations like he’s done so many times before. He should.

Now a sudden accomplice, Nolan gingerly picks up the snail and grins as it quickly withdraws into its narrow perception of safety. He strides across his perfect lawn and laughs at the crisp footprints that mark his passage. And ever so gently, he lays the snail beneath an azalea, among all the dank secrets, into the elusive aroma of warm vanilla and brown sugar.