Strange Characters

         “Come in, have some tea, we can chat while we wait. — I don’t get many human visitors. I assume you live near-by?”

         “Yes, I temporarily moved into the stone cottage about a mile down the road. Summer get-a-way. Just me and my five cats for now.” The woman fidgeted nervously as she sat by the dining table while Joel puttered in the kitchen. The only reason she was in the stranger’s home was because he said that he had seen her missing Twyla, and the cat would be coming for dinner shortly, along with the strays in the area. “Um, should you put some food outside —for the cats.”

         “The cats will scratch at the door when they arrive.” The kettle whistled and Joel prepared two mugs of tea. He took a bottle of ethyl acetate from the shelf above the counter and poured a little into one of the steaming cups. Shuffling over to the woman, he offered it to her. She sniffed, noting a slight smell of alcohol wafting from it.

         When Joel saw her hesitation, he quickly said, “I added a few drops of Chambord liquor,” You’ll love it.”

         She sipped, then gave an approving nod.

         “I'm a butterfly collector,” Joel said.

         “That must be interesting.”

          “Yes, it is a very intricate process. I’ve learned a lot about the practicality of every part of the butterfly. They chose me to help because I am a butterfly collector.”

          “They?”  The woman slurped.

          Joel prattled on. “Did you ever look at a piece of cut wood and see an abstract picture embedded in the grain?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Most people think the images are natural and coincidental. I however, understand that they are deliberate sketches; one of the ways extraterrestrials communicate with us. The fence that surrounds my house is full of their graffiti. They are asking me to help them learn the anatomy of life on this planet.

         The woman fell unconscious before Joel finished speaking. He cradled her limp body in his arms and carried her to the bathroom while humming the tune to ‘DEM BONES.’ He laid her tenderly in the porcelain tub, then he strolled into the kitchen and drizzled the ethyl acetate onto a couple of cotton balls. Hurrying back to the bathroom, he crammed them into the woman’s nostrils.

~~~

         Two days earlier, Joel knelt just inside the fence that surrounded his house. He sang while cutting a rug of grass at the base of one of the pickets. “The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone, the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone, now shake dem skeleton bones.”

         Mark approached the fence and stood on the opposite side startling Joel. “Need any help?”

         “Found a dead bird on my doorstep this morning, probably a gift from one of the stray cats I feed. Just giving it a proper burial. I think I could handle it.” Joel gestured toward the paper bag beside him. “My house is in the center of a pet cemetery.”

         “I’ll leave you to it then.” Mark trotted back to the road.

         Joel commenced with using the garden spade to dig a grave. He placed the bird’s wrapped, dismembered carcass into the hole and filled the void with the extracted mound of dirt. After covering the site with the piece of turf, he wrestled onto his feet and stomped it flat.

         He glided his rough fingertips over the outline of a bird on the wooden board in front of him. The curve of a head, the open beak, and the dark brown streak arcing downward from a solid, brown sphere that represented a heaving breast. Strategically placed fissures in the timber signified the feathers of a wing.

         His head swiveled to the right and his eyes fixed on the coiled snake depicted on another picket in the fence. He stepped closer and lightly caressed the image; the loop that formed its long neck, the V that showed its forked tongue, the hypnotizing spiral, like an archery target, denoting its coiled body. 

         He moved along the enclosure. The next wooden slat was for Golden Guy, the fish. A figure in the shape of a torpedo appeared to be jumping from a ring below it. Undulating lines surrounded the figure like splashes of water. “My low-maintenance roommate,” he sighed.

         He rounded the corner and walked past the gated entrance to the opposite side of the enclosure then paused. “Aw, Jerry the mouse. Your pointy nose, your round corkscrew ears, your delicate hooked feet.”

         Resuming his trip down memory lane, Joel turned to his right and focused on the board next to the corner beam. He smirked as he lifted his arm to touch the darkened elongated oval that stretched like a rubber band. A series of arched contours spread outward, like sound waves bouncing off it. “You wanted a butterfly, you got a butterfly. No problem. Dedicated to everyone that laughed at me for collecting butterflies.”  

         He sauntered toward the back of the house and stopped. The board he examined contained the burnt silhouette of an inverted lightbulb. He ran a finger along each of the eight curved streaks the sprouted from it like rays of light. “Spider. Should be easy,” he mumbled.

         He walked through the back gate and headed for the dilapidated shed at the edge of the woods. He breathed heavily, “Plenty of spiders in here.”

        It didn’t take him long before he spied something crawling along the windowsill. Upon closer inspection, he was able to identify it as a wolf spider. He cupped the harmless creature in his hands and hustled back to the house.   

         Slamming the door with his foot, Joel hurried to the bedroom. He dropped the creature into an open jar he kept at the bottom of his closet. It was the “kill jar,” a jar any serious butterfly collector would have. He carried the jar to the kitchen and set it on the counter. He threw in a few cotton balls soaked with ethyl acetate and sealed the tomb. “There you go buddy.”

         Once the spider became rigid, its legs curling inward, Joel removed it from the glass chamber with a long pair of forceps and began detaching the legs from the abdomen. He used a paring knife to separate the figure eight form and put the ten pieces in a small manila envelope.

         The following morning, Joel buried the grim package containing the spider at the foot of its grave marker in the wooden fence. His gaze wandered to the run-down shack. Two almond-shaped knots in the wood were positioned approximately a foot apart and resembled human eyes. The natural darkened grains in the wood formed a lengthy and rather pronounced streak, like an aquiline nose between them. Inches under that streak, a horizontal split in the lumber signified parting lips according to Joel. It was like a portrait on a mausoleum.

~~~

          The extraterrestrials observed Joel via one of the many screen monitors lining the walls of the rocky cavern. They were counting on him to provide them with prototypes of the life on Earth.. Unfortunately, the first woman Joel targeted when they asked for a human specimen, wore a prosthesis and the puzzle would have been incomplete.

End