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How can I

, jealousy and heartache in his

Erik T. Johnson 100 Gatling Place Brooklyn, NY 11209 917-704-4586 [email protected]

Word Count: 3,719

The Drama God

by Erik T. Johnson

I. Bad News and Worse News

The Drama God swaggered into the office of Martin Box, Private Investigator, leaving the door

open behind him in the careless way of deities.

“Please shut the door,” Martin said. “Mortals catch cold.”

The colorful god lifted his hand. The door slammed shut, shattering the diamond-shaped

glass window set in the top.

“Thanks,” Martin said. “ help you?”

“Are you the tentacled detective?”

“A sucker worn every minute.”

“I need you to find the bush this leaf came from,” the god said

voice, eyes indecisively strobing colors like Vegas. “And what bit it.”

“It could co

—

me from anywhere.”

the

et’s start with the

s have their places,

E. Johnson/The Drama God / page 2

He put the foliagen question on Martin’s desk. It

wasyourical

leaf, green with

stem.A

W-shaped bite had been taken out of one corner with fanged teeth.

Martin carefully examined it.

“It’s a leaf,” he said.

“No, it’s an existing ing so it can only come from one place

placeitcomes from,”

the bright god said in the exasperated way of deities.

“Allright, l

Whered you

findit? Why do you want to know?

Who do you think bit it? And the name of the Woman who’s led you to Whatever mess you’re in.”

“God

reasons,theiraccomplices.”

Martin knew it was bad news to get involved with gods. He also knew it was worse to turn

down their offers.

“Okay, fine. I’ll take your case.”

II. Two Lists

After they agreed on terms of payment and the Drama God gav

e Martin an advance, the deity left.

Martin didn’t have much to go on. He wrote them down in his notepad:

1) There’s a leaf on my desk

2) Someone has taken a bite out of it.

3) A god wants to know where it came from.

that’s

7) Figure


4) Gods usually know everything.

5) The god of drama doesn’t.

6) His not-knowing has something to do with the leaf.

out who theoman is

really behindthis god’s

trouble.

He put his pen down and took a sip of coffee. Then he took a walk to the park to think

some more.

He sat at the top of the hill under the flagpole, where he used to sit with his partner Denny,

before the zombies did him in; and before Martin was accidentally shot in the head with a gun from

another dimension, which gave him two tentacles that could appear from anywhere on his body at

his command, a sense of humor, and made him visible and open to business to gods and stranger

entities.

He lazily watched clouds change. Then he remembered that sometimes when a god is

around, small, everyday details take on greater significance. So Martin made notes on his pad about

the clouds every five minutes:

1) To the east, looks like an alpaca and an apricot mating; to the west, looks like an upside-

down crown; to the north, looks like Algeria.

2) Now the one that looked like an alpaca and an apricot mating looks like a slipper; to the

west, the one that looks like an upside-down crown still looks that way; to the north, what looked

like Algeria looks like a duck.

3) To the east, the one that looked like a slipper looks like a cross; to the west, the one that

looks like an upside-down crown still looks that way . . .

s odd.

.

on,”


Wait, Martin thought. That’

III. A Doctor Appointment

Martin made a new list:

1) There’sacloud that is not changing shape

2) It looks like an upside-down crown.

3) On second thought it looks like the same W-shaped bite-marks from the leaf.

4) Figure out what bit the leaf.

5) Figure out what kind of leaf it is.

He went to see the cryptobotanist Dr. Julius Jonsson, who lived in a Baldwin VO-1000

diesel locomotive and a World War II, Type XXI Elektroboot submarine inexplicably half-sunk next

to each other in Dyker Heights golf course’s wetlands. An expert on unknown and obscure flora and

herbs, Dr. Jonsson spent his days and nights searching for specimens in Brooklyn, which hosts more

extraordinary plants than any other borough of New York City. This is because people spend more

time looking down to avoid dogshit than to find cryptobotanical samples.

Martin knocked on the hatch of the Elektroboot, swatting a dragonfly from his ear. A man

in a gray cloak and a living, vinous broad-brimmed hat popped out.

“Havea dandeli

he said, pulling onefrom his white beardand handing

itto Martin.

“Thanks.

bit it

“ sui generis—

nding Jonsson the god-given leaf.

plants

eaf.”

pure

and it grows on top of

son.”

I


“Good for you. Take a bite.”

Martin ate the flower and Dr. Jonsson prepared thistle-tea for them on a kettle over a fire-

pit.

“Do you knowat

this is,” Martin said, ha

The cryptobotanist closedhis eyes and studied it with his hands, because

don’t see

and he always tried to get into the mood of the vegetative world when exploring it. Then he stuck

the stem in his beard and shook his head up and down. He smelled it at a drunken caterpillar pace.

This took a few minutes. When he was done, he opened his eyes.

“Easy,” he said. “L

“I know that.”

“No, you ’t. It’s

the leaf. The leaf. No species,

genus.”

“Is it rare?”

No, native to Brooklyn. There is only one bush—

abandoned buildings where someone is about to commit suicide. But it vanishes after the suicide

takes place, or if they don’t go through with it.”

“Is it edible?”

“Pure poi

“Thank you, doctor.”

“Something’s— don’t know what.”

to

keys.


IV. Suicide Watch

Martin spent the next several days listening to his police radio for potential suicides. Each time he

rushed out as quickly as he could. He saw a few splattered guts, a few close calls, and several

narcissists just making threats. Meanwhile, the bitten cloud hovered in place, but it was hard to tell

exactly where it was situated over the landscape.

Then one night, about to fall asleep in front of the television, his client-god appeared on

HBO.

“How is thee

progressing?”

he asked.

“It’s moving.But have one problem.”

Martin explained what he understood of the leaf.

“Why didn’t you tell

me?”e Drama God said, even though he’d given Martin no way

contact him, as gods never do. “Let me see…right now there are three people about to commit

suicide in Brooklyn. One of them is in their kitchen…hmmn…another is—oh, never mind that’s

done now. Oh, there is a priest entering an abandoned church in Williamsburg—he’s thinking about

going up to the roof.”

“Thanks,Martin said, grabbing his car

The priest’s

bush would look in a

“

“Whoever you are, you can’t stop me,”


V. No Point

The church was set between empty warehouses in the long shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. It

was just an old brick building with a dilapidated sign that read Church of Saint Swithin: Trespassers

Welcome. The door was locked from inside.

Martin stepped around a rat eating a tennis ball and concentrated. Two small grayish

tentacles emerged from his forehead like bull’s horns, and the suckers pulled him up along the wall.

He had to keep tilting his face back to keep from getting his nose scraped off. Soon he’d reached the

roof.

There was a man standing at the edge, looking at a thunder cloud. He heard Martin

struggling to his feet and turned just as the tentacles retracted.

the priest said.

“Don’t worry. I’m notere

to stop you.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

But if youuld just

waitminutefore

jumping that would be great.”

Martin searched about the roof. In a flash of mute lightning he saw the bush. As he ran for it

the priest stepped backward, slipping and hitting his head on the edge of the roof.

Martin examined the bush.It

lookedactly

like a

word

book. There was a tuft of silvery hair stuck to a branch that was missing its leaf. He collected the fur

with tweezers and put it in a zip-lock bag.

eyes were barely open, like difficult pistachio nut shells.

Good luck.”

.”


“Are you okay?” Martin asked.

“Yes…”

“You’re good to go.

“Aren’t you goingry

and stop me?”

Martin looked over at the bush, growing thicker before his eyes.

“No point

VI. Act I, Scene I

The bit of fur looked normal enough, but when Martin put it under a microscope he found that

each platinum strand was coated in a brief theatrical production, a residue left by the Drama God.

Martin wrote down the play in his notepad:

King. So, you are the What Who Eats Gods.

What. Aye, sir. And a gourmet meal they make.

King. Good. A god I have for you, rare as a truffle

And fatter yet by omens and curses fed.

What. Where then this morsel?

King. In yonder garden. Look.

What. I see nothing.


Exit the What Who Eats Gods stage left.

King. Then eat nothing, too. Starve!

(Aside): For your god is the one

Who takes things away, and I am your god, if today is today.

VII. Three in the Morning

Martin put the TV on and made another list.

QUESTIONS:

1) If the bush disappears after a suicide takes place or if it isn’t completed, why is the leaf

still here and visible? I can only think the bite brought some permanency to it.

2) What about that cloud that was not changing?

3) The bite-marks on the leaf and cloud look like a W—is this the signature of the What

Who Eats Gods?

4) Why did a woman’s sandaled foot materialize next to the bookshelf with the bust of

Groucho Marx while I was watching HBO?

5) Cancel HBO.

He turned off the TV and examined the foot. It was a young, healthy foot with well-tended

toes and nails, without nail polish but shiny nonetheless. The sandal was made of gold and blue

stone and could not be very comfortable, though they would make crushing heads easy.

corner of 2

It was Suzan, Martin’s

nd th


I knew a woman was involved, Martin thought.

The phone rang.

contact at the police. No recent suicides and attempted suicides had

taken place on top of an abandoned building in Brooklyn. Acting on a hunch, Martin asked her

about any other incidents taking place in such locations and wound up speeding past bodegas and

auto parts stores to a water tower in Sunset Park.

The foot would have to wait.

VIII. The Water Tower, Act I

A few weeks ago, the police received an anonymous call from someone who liked to watch hookers

with binoculars who said he’d seen two people flying up into the sky from atop a water tower on the

avenue and 38 street. A wolf was flying behind them, and the wolf opened its mouth

wide enough to swallow the moon and at that point he lost sight of them all in the clouds. Needless

to say, this story was not taken very seriously.

Using his handy tentacles, Martin scaled the rickety tower until he reached a small ladder on

the side, at which point he climbed like a normal detective. He surveyed the scene with his flashlight.

Something glinted at him like a bloody star. It was a sharp, triangular, red gemstone stuck in

the metal water tower. The gem was cracked badly and there were little shards and red mineral dust

around too. It took some effort to pull the gem out. He also found signs of a struggle, places where

the tank had been scuffed by what must’ve been incredibly heavy feet and what looked like hoof-

prints dented the floor in several places.

He looked up into the sky—


There was a spot where the tank had been torn as though something had been uprooted—

like a very strong bush.

and saw the W-bitten cloud floating above.

IX. Act V, Scene 4

At five in the morning, Martin got a beer and sat on the couch, thinking and absently tentacling the

bills the god had given him as an advance on the case, and looking at the two feet and one shin that

had now materialized next to his bookcase.

He got out his microscope and put a toe under it. He found traces of a theatrical production

on the nail. The players were similar to the King and the What in the play on the fur sample,

although they looked a little younger. Also, some of the performance was missing as though it had

been rubbed off. Martin wrote down what he could in his notepad:

King. My love, my queen, do not approach the What.

Queen. His jaws are like a summer day.

King. His teeth are like the end of time.

Queen. His gut is gentle rain. I am dry.

What. I unroll the royal tongue for you.

Queen. Oh rain, oh summer!

King. Stop! I’ll grabher

from your grasp!

Queen. Why do you save me? What is over


Needs no protection, what is done no despair.

King. Would I had protected. His bite on your leg

Has poisoned you with permanence,

A wave frozen by unnatural winter.

What. Let me eat her whole.

The scene ended there.

Martin needed to sleep on all this.

X. Making Sense

Martin woke late the next day to a full pair of a woman’s legs standing by the bookshelf. They

matched the feet in vitality and beauty. On the outside of the right thigh was a W-shaped bite

pattern.

Martin went to his office to contemplate the facts. Bitten by the What Who Eats Gods, and

materializing in my room, Martin thought. If the theatrical residue of the drama god on her foot was

any dramaturgical interpretation of true events, then she was a god who tried to kill herself by letting

the What get her, but the Drama God stopped her. However, he was not able to prevent the What

from getting a bite, which was turning her solid like the leaf and the cloud that loomed over the

water tower.

Now things were starting to make sense…

“

my wife. But you’re

“


The door opened and the Drama God stood there, eyes flashing colors like Milton Bradley’s

Simon.

“You canceled HBO,” he said.

“I’m notpartial

to unexpected visits.

Speakingwhich, there’s

the lower half

ofgoddess

in my living room—any ideas who that might be?”

She’s

sharpn, as

men go.m sure

you figured that

out.”

“Whatis she partiallyng

in my room?”

The god sat down across from Martin.

Think of her as an hourglass,” the drama god said. “Whenyou know her face,

you’ll know

your time’s up.”

“Why?”

“Because Ineedu to

stop What

who bitr before

she’s fully permanent, like this

desk, or that pen, or you.”

“Why couldn’t you just tell me this to begin with.”

“Because

gods have their own ways.

As a god,m only allow

ed to reveal a little bit more of

what you already know. That is one of our ways. You knew the leaf would appear where someone

was jumping from a high building, so I could tell you where that building was. And you know your

doom is linked to that woman who even now is coalescing near a shelf featuring a bust of Groucho

Marx. I can tell you no more, for the moment.”


“Listen, trouble just

isn’t worth it over

awoman,” Martin said. “Let’sall

thee off

and I’ll return everything you’ve paid me so far.”

But the god vanished, like sanity when a bomb explodes.

XI. Midtown

TO DO:

1) Find the What (probably still around the water tower—last place seen)

2) Something that smokes

3) Some flexible, hard metal

4) 14.1 ounces of Silly Putty

“I need something flammable that will create a lot of non-toxic smoke,” Martin said to Dr. Julius

Jonsson, who was fashioning a pneumatic apparatus from Typha latifolia and candy-bar wrappers.

“I’ve got just the thing.”

Dr. Jonsson disappeared into the half-submerged diesel train and Martin heard him

rummaging around like a ferret in tap shoes in a washing machine loaded with ball bearings. He

reappeared with half a ream of carbon copy paper. On the top sheet Dr. Jonsson had written This

One; on each subsequent sheet were the words No, This One.

“Gratis,” the doctor said.

Thanks. Another question: do you know any good alchemists?”

Brooklyn, or Midtown?”

th

she didn’t have a


“

“

On 44 street in the Alchemy District, Martin picked up two square yards of Premium Tensile

Argent, a rather expensive, hard metal that could be molded into any shape. Then he bought 30 Silly

Putty eggs at the 99 Cents Store.

XII. The Water Tower, Act II

At night, Martin returned to the Sunset Park water tower.

He brought the materializing goddess with him, leaving her sandals behind because they

were too heavy. She had appeared up to her elbows by this point, wearing a golden dress. He

figured there was enough of her for a What to smell. Arriving at the top via tentacles, he set fire to

the ream of paper Dr. Jonsson had given him, hoping to create a smokescreen to obscure him from

the What.

He hadvered the

goddess in Premium Tensile Argent. Because

head yet,

he used the flexible metal over the bust of Groucho Marx and put that where her head would be. He

then used Silly Putty to take an impression of Sarah Palin’s face from a New York Times Magazine

article and put the Palin-impressed Putty over the Groucho-shaped metal frame to give it some sort

of feminine features.

He placed the goddess near the paper, which was really smoking, much as any paper would.

Suddenly what looked like a firework streamer shot up into the belly of the W-bitten cloud above,

startled Martin off the


then fell down in sparkling letters that said This One, followed by streamers of No, This One that lit

the neighborhood up like a warzone.

The What roared like a thing that has eaten spoiled thunder. It descended from the bite mark

in the cloud, huge jaws open like a parachute to the heavens, the maw shrinking to lion-size as it

neared the smoking roof. Martin crouched behind the goddess.

The What dropped on its scaled behind and pawed the metal ground with steely hooves,

mouth full of the red gem-like teeth Martin had counted on being there. It sniffed with simian

nostrils and twitching antennae, and levitated to the smoke in which the two-and-three dimensional

face of Groucho Palin smiled through a Silly Putty mask. Then the What opened its mouth wide and

with full force clamped its jaws on the goddess. The red teeth shattered into thousands of sprinkly

shards and the What blared like all the car alarms Brooklyn.

With the What defanged, Martin stepped out from behind the smoke and fired his revolver

into its head. The What shrank to the size of the bullet that now filled its entire body like a gazelle in

a python.

Martin was nearly knocked down as the sui generis bush sprouted out from under his feet.

For a moment his heart sank as he imagined he’d grown sick of living without even realizing it. Then

the What scuttled off the edge to its death and the bush disappeared.

Before he could saype Noctem a woman’s

muffled scream almost

tower. The goddess was rapidly incarnating within her Tensile Argent shell. Martin unwrapped her

as quickly as possible. The false head plummeted to the ground, revealing the radiant face of a

goddess with a large moustache and dark-rimmed glasses.

“Area

god who can changenother god’s appearance

thus?”she asked.

“He calls,” s

“

“ only a


“No, m’am. Justa mortaldetective.”

Then that explains how you have vanquishedthe What—

mortal can stop it.”

And that explains why the Drama God hired me to do what I figured he could do for

himself.”

She shook her head and the moustache and glasses disappeared, leaving beauty to shine

forth like a klieg light.

he said, and took off into the sky.

XIII. Payday

The next day, the goddess entered Martin Box’s office with a paper bag full of bills.

“The Drama God sends your payment in full,” she said.

“Thank you,” Martind, counting the money.

“Why you

here?”

“He’s grown tired of me,”said. “I don’t know where

to go.”

“I thought you wanted to kill yourself.”

“Onlyen I

wasstuck with theama God. Besides,

now thathe What

is out of

commission, I can’t.”

Later that night, Martin and the goddess were sitting on his couch. She was blissfully staring at a pile

of laundry on the floor as though watching shooting stars or a flight of exotic birds taking off from a


misty lake. Martin was uncomfortable. It wasn’t often he let anyone into his life—especially a

woman who cannot die.

To shake off his nerves he started counting the money again, coolly flipping the bills in an

even tempo. He thought he heard a tiny overture and examined them under his microscope.

Sure enough, the Drama God had left some final residue for Martin to examine. The players

on the hundred-dollar stage looked up at Martin with exhaustion; they seemed tired of seeing this

one audience member, like a single theater critic, continually coming to their shows while the public

stayed away. But they went on with it anyway:

The King. The mortal has made an appendix of my heart.

The Queen. Let him remove me, if you speak of your queen.

The King. Who else? He has shown me what I do not want,

That your love bores as an earthworm through dirt.

The Queen. So he may have my love, that deeper digs

Than royals in their gold and kings in their wigs.

The King. So shall it be, and forever.

The goddess turned on the TV.

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