Beats Entropy

Danny was tired. This was not a condition of the moment, rather an institutional policy; a prolonged, preemptive, surrender. He began inauspiciously: his mother claiming him an accident; his father, a deliberate act of spite. He was a bruise, a bad riff, an off hand remark that lingered. He had been inflicted more than born, and found the whole thing exhausting. Until today that was the whole of his story.Today he lost his job.

Danny had been drinking since noon. He had his pride. It was the sort of uneven binge seasoned drunks avoided: all thunder out the gates, then long maudlin stumble. By the second hour he was pinned to the floor beneath his whirling ceiling, mouthing sad vowels at a radio he could no longer reach.

His phone rang.

Danny glared at the radio.

The phone rang again, clearing the radio’s name.

Danny backstroked his way towards it, careful to keep his shoulders flush against the carpet. The phone rang again. Danny kicked it off the end table and rolled his face onto the receiver.

“Ya” said Danny.

“You live at 115 Bay, right?” said the receiver.

“What?” said Danny.

“Your house asshole…where you live. What’s the number?”

“What?” said Danny.

“Go outside…look at the door…then come back and tell me the fucking number. If you can’t count that high just try and describe the shapes. Idiot”

Danny scrubbed his numb face and tried to sort through the receiver’s abuse. As a rule he did not confront. He barely engaged. Still, he was drunk enough, and had been subjected to enough open contempt he felt compelled to defend his position.

“What?“

The receiver exploded with scorn.

“Are you fucking with me? Did I just call a school for the deaf, or are you just on the first day of your remedial English calendar.”

Danny took several heavy breaths. Despite the callers bewildering anger he felt an alarming need to connect. He pressed his eyes shut with his thumbs and tried to replay the conversation in his head.

“You want to know where I live?” Danny said.

The receiver spluttered furiously.

“Fuck you, tough guy! You want to make me pound on every door on the block? Ok. See what happens. Maybe I teach you the true meaning of Fistmas… huh, I’m talking massacre on 34^th street!”

Danny absorbed a very small part of part of the tirade.

“Are you threatening me?”

The receiver’s screaming was on pitch with a deranged and boiling teapot.

“TELL ME WHERE YOU LIVE!”

The question finally took root in Danny’s booze addled brain.

“85 Bay. Across from the big church.”

The receiver disconnected. Danny wondered for a bit at the oddly high pitched voice that had been speaking to him…and then passed out entirely.

*****

In Danny’s dream he had wrapped his brain in a dry-cleaning bag, and was attempting to drown it in the bathtub. The Shampoo bottle pulled at his hands, pleading with him to show mercy. The Conditioner egged him on in its maniacal silky voice.

“All the way down, Danny. Who’s the liar now?”

His brain clawed defiantly at the plastic, shrieking racial epithets that only vaguely applied. Danny slammed his brain repeatedly off the side of the tub to quiet it.

Thud.Thud.Thud.

His brains hateful snarling grew more coherent.

“I’ll burn your fucking house down, you Hasidic shit farming Wop!”

Danny blinked his eyes hard, trying to bring his furious brain into focus. The pounding grew louder and surrounded him. Danny leveraged a hard blink into opening his eyes;  light slammed his brain back home hard enough he vomited. At length. Another kick rattled his door.

“Hey, Thumbulima! I know you want to look pretty in your promdress…but could you save the morning purge until after you open the fucking door. It’s cold like a bastard out here and I’m trying to keep a low profile.”

Danny froze. The voice had escaped the phone and was pounding on his door. He needed a weapon: by and large a man of peace, there were none at hand. Improvising, Danny filled a pillow case with a half dozen beer bottles and his framed highschool diploma. He gave his impromptu bludgeon sack a smash against the wall, to up the lethality, and then began whirling it menacingly above his head.

“You get out of here. I…I am a trained police officer” said Danny.

It was a weak lie, but the high velocity shards of glass flying from his pillow case made it difficult to concentrate. Before Danny could amend his claim to something more plausible the bottom of the case gave out entirely, sending a barrage of shrapnel into his kitchen nook, and him sprawling into the entryway of his tiny bachelor apartment. Nauseous and bleeding Danny lay where he fell. The door, now only inches from his head, thumped again.

“Hey fuckwit, if you’re done fighting the Faberge army could you open the fucking door. I can hear you crying…I know you’re still alive.”

Exhausted and sick Danny gave into his tormentor; he’d used up the little fight he possessed. Pushing himself up to his knees Danny unlocked and opened the door; a moderate sized hedgehog glared up at him.

“If you were going to take the time to bow, Peaches, you could’ve at least wiped the puke off your face too” said the Hedgehog, closing the door behind him.

***

Danny knelt, staring at the door, trying to make sense of the psychotic break he had clearly undergone.  He considered the appropriateness of screaming. It seemed a little forced. He was unsettled, certainly, but more deeply uncomfortable than terrified. He let out a short, experimental,

“ahhhhhhhhhhh?”

Too much time had gone by; he felt stupid enough he tried to pass it off as a yawn. His nausea bubbled up again mid way through, splattering puke against his door. The Hedgehog dove behind a ruptured throw pillow to avoid the backsplash.

“Wow…classy. I’d ask you to lock it but I don’t want you shitting your pants in front of me”.

Danny rolled over to his back and willed himself to die. Heartbeat after heartbeat resisted a barrage of discouraging thoughts. It was going poorly. A persistent rustling sound penetrated Danny’s fog of humiliation. The hedgehog was unfolding a week old newspaper and laying the sheets over piles of vomit. He stopped at the half filled cross word section.

“You just filled in cocksucker like 15 times…except for here, where you wrote coxsukr because you didn’t have enough squares. I don’t know if it’s more pathetic that you were vandalizing your own crossword puzzle or that you were too lazy to finish the job? “

In his defense Danny had actually stolen that newspaper from his neighbor, so it wasn’t technically his property. Had he been in better sorts he likely would have offered the rebuttal, as it stood he just moaned and closed his eyes. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but he could at least pretend there wasn’t a hedgehog tidying his apartment. He could still hear it, though.

“Hey shit stain, you just gonna lay on the carpet all day?”

Danny refused to talk to it. If he didn’t talk to it, it wasn’t really there.

“You got a recyling bin? Or should I just drop  this bloody glass off at the needle exchange box?”

Danny thumped his head against the floor to try and drown out the sounds of rodent industry.

” Hey…can you use toilet cleaner on wall paper? Cause I’m not going near that toilet, and we might as well use this for something”.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Why do you only have one prong on your vacuum cord? I’m going to try it anyways, but that can’t have been an accident”.

Mercifully, Danny’s brain relented and allowed itself to be pounded into unconsciousness.

***

Danny awoke restrained. His arms were tied behind his back, his ankles to separate legs of the coffee table. He was unsure where the hedgehog had gotten the twine. Metaphorical cotton filled his mouth; a numb fog filled his brain, dulling his panic to flat curiosity. The hedgehog was lounging in a hooded sweater Danny was sure he’d lost two years before. He needed answers.

“What are you” Danny asked.

“A concerned denizen” said the hedgehog.

Danny didn’t know what denizen meant.

“Is that some kind of Hedgehog” asked Danny.

The hedgehogs clicked its mouth shut, started to say something, stopped, shook its head, and then started again.

“Look…I’m here to help. I’m a helper. Just go with that”.

Danny considered the creature glaring up from his sweat shirt: while he was strangely unable to raise an acceptable level of alarm, the reality of a talking animal was beginning to wear at his edges. He figured it best to tackle it head on.

“Are you real?” asked Danny.

The hedgehog pressed at the sides of his head hard enough the temples touched.

“I just tied you to a fucking table; what do you think?”

Danny tested his bonds.

“These are pretty loose; I’m pretty sure I could just pull my hands out”

Danny pulled his hands out to prove the point. A score of tiny puncture wounds and abrasions covered both wrists.

The hedgehog bent into a sullen curl.

“Yeah, I don’t have thumbs…it’s hard to tie a good knot. Anyways, I just wanted you in one place until the Xanax kicked in. You were kind of freaking out there for a while”.

Danny noted the pill bottled on the counter with a hole chewed through the top. A large number of tablets were spilled out on the table beside it.

“Jesus, how many did you give me? I still have a ton of booze in my system. Holy shit, I need to go to the hospital!”

Danny clawed at the twine around his ankles. The hedgehog had done a better job on those knots. After a couple failed attempts Danny took the more expedient route of snapping the legs off the coffee table and clattering about the apartment with them trailing like busted snow shoes.

The hedgehog was laughing.

“Shut the fuck up!” Danny shrieked. “You poisoning son of a bitch”.

The hedgehog was now laughing so hard he’d curled involuntarily into a ball.

Danny searched frantically through his newly organized apartment for the phone: it was on the wall by the fridge. The “9” and “1” had been gnawed off, the holes filled with rubber cement. Danny glared at the Hedgehog, and then pressed “0” so he could get the operator to call an ambulance for him. There was no dial tone. Danny noted the cord had also been chewed in half.

“Why would you wreck the numbers if you were going slash the cord anyways?” Danny demanded. Furious.

The hedgehog’s laughter had progressed to inaudibility; Danny considered kicking the silently vibrating ball of quills through his front window.

“How many did you give me?” Danny shrieked.

The hedgehog uncurled enough to get an arm free, and held up two fingers. Danny collapsed into a kitchen chair, weak with relief and spent rage. The hedgehog scrambled up onto the kitchen counter to be roughly face to face with Danny.

“All right, if you’re done playing Heath Ledger sing-along can we get down to business?”

***

The Hedgehog moved about the kitchenette with a foragers efficiency: grounds and filters were pulled from the backs of cupboards and combined with a dexterity that belied his forest roots; water was added to the reservoir cup by cup. Danny sat numbly in his single chair wondering where the fuck the Hedgehog had learned to make coffee. The Hedgehog pushed two cups across the table towards him.

“You’re going to have to pour, it’s a might heavy. And give me a splash while you’re at it”.

Danny obliged, filling his own and giving the Hedgehog a half cup. They both declined sugar and milk, drinking it black in silence. Danny bounced a question around his head for three cups and a few false starts.

“Do you have a name?” asked Danny.

“No. I’m a hedgehog: we know who each other are”.

“I need to call you something” said Danny.

The Hedgehog squinted suspiciously.

“What…why? Just start talking; there are only two of us here, I’ll figure it out.”

Danny absorbed the reply but it wouldn’t settle.

“I don’t know… it seems weird; I should know who you are.” said Danny.

“What…you worried you’re going to confuse me with all of your other hedgehog friends? Don’t invent problems, chief. We’ve got enough to deal with as it is.”

The Hedgehogs rebuke brought Danny back to the beginning; what was going here?

“I don’t understand any of this.”

The Hedgehog raised a bristly eyebrow.

“How so?”

Danny gathered up all of his questions: concision wasn’t his strong point, but he suspected the hedgehog wasn’t game for a scattershot interrogation.

“What are you…what’s going on here…how, how can this be happening?”

The hedgehog took a long pull from his coffee. For several  minutes he seemed to ignore the question, then, with the magnanimity of the freshly caffeinated, he answered at length.

“Kid, you are trying to fit a round peg into a crossword puzzle: it’s a different sort of thing; the answers you want…you’ve got no place to put them. Still, you obviously need something you can wrap your head around, so I’ll give you the Lego version of the lowdown.

• I am a very special hedgehog. I can do things other hedgehogs cannot, I can’t explain it, so you are just going to have to roll with it.
• Circumstances outside my control necessitate I help you get your shit together. It’s an impulse on my part that I don’t really understand either, so take it or leave it, I don’t give a fuck.
• And this is happening because it’s fucking happening, you want me to explain the order of the universe you are shit out of luck; you want to deny it, that’s your prerogative…but it’s just going to piss me off and make your life that much more miserable.

Beyond that there is nothing more to say on the matter. So don’t ask, or I’ll start chewing bald patches into your hair while you sleep.”

Danny sat long enough the coffee went cold. The Hedgehogs answer had an intuitive rightness to it, but Danny had long lost touch with his intuition. Even still, Danny understood it was the only answer he was going to get, and if he had one talent it was enduring uncomfortable situations until he could not. He decided to roll with it.

End of chapter 1.

It was ten past midnight and Danny had been digging for hours. His hands were blistered and raw; his worm bucket full and writhing.

“Now, Curl! Now” the Hedgehog screamed.

Danny flung down his shovel and pulled himself into as tight a ball as the small trench would allow. Loam and beetles filled his nostrils. The Hedgehog marched about the edge of the trench, a shadowy mole hill in the darkness, tutting and poking at Danny’s exposed neck and stomach with a stick.

“If I were a fox you’d be dead right now. You call that a ball….it’s barely a crouch! And where are your quills?”

Danny patted at the bare patch on his shirt where the pine needles had fallen out. Not for the first time he questioned the efficacy of the Hedgehogs self improvement regime.

“There was a tick…I’m pretty sure he was burrowing for my heart. I had to scratch it out”.

The Hedgehog scrambled down into the hole and began weaving fresh needles into the fabric of the sweater.

“Your lies are burrowing into my heart! What is the worth of a single quill?”

Danny sighed into the dirt.

“The same as the one next to it” Danny replied.

The Hedgehog inspected his repair before following up.

“And if there is no quill next to it?”

Danny considered not answering, but he knew the Hedgehog would wait all night for the correct reply.

“Then I might as well be a Hamster…fit for pleasure and nothing else. But I really don’t see how that appli…ahhhh!”

The hedgehog had whipped the pliable branch hard against Danny’s exposed ear.

“Hey, Spitvalve, you agreed to do things my way for a month. Don’t question my methods; do you want to turn your life around or not?”

Danny weighed his options. He couldn’t recall exactly why he’d thought a magic hedgehog’s instructions were worth following; but it had paid his back rent. And his life was definitely improvable.

“Yeah…I guess I do”

“Allright. Now get out my flashcards: we’re going over state capitals again” said the Hedgehog.

“It’s pitch black out and I’m Canadi…aaaahhhh, what was that for?”

“Flashcards!” snapped the Hedgehog, his quivering whipping branch raised in warning.

***

Aching, Danny could barely bend low enough to remove his mud-caked shoes. Thick ropes of pain bunched his lower back and fixed his hands into useless claws. Thin red welts laced his neck and ears. Danny had lived a life of long nights and this  had been one of the longest. The Hedgehog chattered uselessly beside him.

“Don’t throw the Quill sweater away; we’re going to need it for your burrowing drills tomorrow”.

Danny tossed the sweater into the corner beside his shovel. He debated dumping the bucket full of worms into the garbage disposal, before swallowing his rebellion and placing it on the bottom shelf of the fridge. It wasn’t worth his bathroom being filled with bees again. The Hedgehog scampered up onto the counter and began washing itself in the sink. Danny shot it a long glare. The Hedgehog locked eyes with him.

“This ain’t a peepshow, Creepshow; why don’t you put your heavy breathing to good use and order us some Chinese food. And no Almond cookies, they taste like drywall”.

Danny continued to glare at the Hedgehog. The Hedgehog began exaggeratedly drying his balls with Danny’s favorite tea towel.

“You got something on your mind princess?” asked the Hedgehog.

“You’re just jerking me around; you said you’d help me and all we do is dig holes in the woods and practice crawling and balling and catching worms. This is not what was missing from my life” said Danny, furious.

The Hedgehog flossed his crotch with the tea towel one last time, and then paced about on the counter.

“See, you don’t understand process; representative struggle.”

The Hedgehog noted the rapid glazing of Danny’s eyes.

“Let me put it this way: did you ever see Karate Kid?”

Danny shook his head.

“No”.

The Hedgehog’s quills raised in outrage.

“How have you not seen that movie? It was huge when you were a kid and it’s on cable like nine times a day. There are sickening holes in your popculture awareness”.

Danny slouched defensively.

“I don’t know…I didn’t have a T.V. when I was growing up. How the fuck have you seen it…you’re a goddamn Hedgehog?”

“Yeah, I am…so I have a lot of free time on my hands” said the Hedgehog.

Danny could feel the dodge inherent in the answer; this willful evasion that was worth pursing…or that would have been had a huge Panda not pressed its nose up against his kitchen window.

“What hell is that” asked Danny.

The Hedgehog looked absently about the kitchen.

“What’s what?”

Danny placed his hand on the Hedgehog’s back and turned it towards the window.

“The huge fucking panda staring in my window”.

The Panda closed its right eye and pressed its left one flush against the window. The Hedgehog shrugged.

“Probably some escaped zoo panda. Just ignore it, it’ll go away”.

Danny stuck his head in the freezer and took several long breaths.

“So you don’t know anything about this panda that suddenly showed up at my house” said Danny.

“Nope” said the Hedgehog.

“Even though he’s holding a piece of cardboard with my address on it?”

The Panda was indeed holding a piece of tattered cardboard with Danny’s address and apartment number scrawled upon it awkwardly between his paws.

“What am I, a game warden? I can’t be held responsible for every stray fucking marsupial in the city.”

The Panda flipped over its piece of cardboard. There was a crudely drawn hedgehog on the back of it.

The Hedgehog’s pacing picked up speed, his quills flaring in time to his step.

“That doesn’t mean anything…it barely even looks like a hedgehog. He could be looking for some possum for all we know”.

The Panda’s head dipped below window level. Danny’s phone rang.

“Don’t answer that” screamed the Hedgehog. “I’m expecting a call”

Danny raced the Hedgehog across the room, barking his shins off the coffee table, but reaching the phone first.

“Hello” Danny answered.

Muffled chewing sounds emitted from the receiver. Danny played goalie in front of the phone jack, warding off the Hedgehog with well timed boots to its head, and receiving several toe punctures in return. The chewing sounds took on a more accusatory tone.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying” said Danny.

The Panda’s head reappeared in the window.  It raised one huge paw and tapped the first part of shave and a hair cut against the glass. Danny moved towards the door.

“NO! Don’t let him in…he’s crazy. I heard he killed a man in Beijing with a souvenir umbrella.”

“I thought you didn’t know him” said Danny, unlocking and opening the kitchen door.

The Hedgehog swore in vitriolic rodent; all snarl and gristle.

The Panda nodded politely, wiped each paw carefully against the mat, and then entered Danny’s kitchen and life.

***

Ripples of irritation waved through the Hedgehogs bristles; Danny’s end route with the Panda had put it at disadvantage for the first time in their relationship. He’d also been kicked in the head, repeatedly. The net effect left it off balance (figuratively and literally), watching the Panda investigate the apartment with Danny trailing dutifully behind.

“Uh…Panda, can I get you something to eat, or, something? There’s worms in the fridge” said Danny.

The Panda shot a disgusted look over its shoulder before ambling into the living room.

“He’s vegetarian, dipshit. Maybe if you got some fucking cable in here you’d know these things. And his name is Eustace, not Panda.”

Danny whirled on the mocking Hedgehog.

“You said animals didn’t have names!”

“I said Hedgehogs didn’t have names…you racist piece of shit. I didn’t say a goddamn thing about Pandas” said the Hedgehog.

“Yeah, you also said didn’t know him…so why should I believe anything that comes out of your ratty little mouth” Danny retorted.

The two held their ground, seething. The Hedgehog scrambled back up onto the counter to be nearer eye level.

“Look, I only lie to you when it’s for your own good; or I’m really tired; or I think it will be funny. But in this case….wait, what we were talking about?”.

Danny was unsure, but shouted for good measure.

“I don’t know! Probably…something about that Panda.”

The Hedgehog slumped a little, the tension having fizzed out of the room. Another player had entered the game, but he could handle this.

“Yeah, just give him some lettuce and apples or whatever. Be quick though, he’s hypoglycemic and we really don’t want his blood sugar to drop.”

Danny removed the vegetable crisper from the fridge, splashed some soysauce on the contents, and brought it into the living room. The Panda was sprawled across the entirety of his couch watching a documentary about WWII era biplanes, on public television. Danny settled into the arm chair beside it and let the surreality of the situation wash over him. The Hedgehog crouched on the arm of the sofa and began an intense whispering exchange with the Panda. Eustace nodded occasionally but never took his eyes from the television. Danny’s couch groaned under the weight.

“Can he talk” asked Danny, tired of being excluded from the conversation.

“Speak. Can he speak; And no, he cannot” said the hedgehog.

“Can he understand me?” asked Danny.

The Hedgehog shrugged.

“As much as anyone can”.

The Panda made a peculiar grunting Shuuusssshh and pointed at the T.V.

“It’s my fucking house” Danny mumbled, quietly, under his breath.

The Hedgehog froze in place, his tiny ears rotating like anti-aircraft radar.

“You expecting company, slick”

Danny sat up.

“No. Why?”

The doorbell rang twice.

“Hide motherfucker!” the Hedgehog shrieked at the alarmed Panda, who’d reared up on his hind legs and begun pawing the air like a punch drunk boxer.

Danny crawled to the door on all fours and peered through the gap at the bottom: a pair of woman’s shoes were visible. The owner of the shoes knocked three times, hard.

“Danny! Danny, it’s Beth…let me in. I can hear the television”.

The Hedgehog scurried across the room and crouched near Danny’s elbow.

“Who the fuck is Beth?” the Hedgehog whispered.

“My ex-girlfriend” Danny whispered back.

“You had a girlfriend? Like…an unpaid one? Man, I need to read your diary more carefully.” said the Hedgehog.

“Yeah…I’ve had a few. Don’t act so fucking surprised” said Danny, in a whisper loud enough it defeated the point.

“Who are you talking to” asked the owner of the shoes? “Open the door for Christ’s sakes! I need to talk to you.”

The Hedgehog waved its arms in a frantic negative, silently mouthing “No” as well as a creature without proper lips could. Danny stood up and peered through the peephole.

“Uh, hey Beth; this isn’t really a good time. I’m having some…plumbing problems.”

An exasperated sigh preceded Beth’s response.

“Can you at least open the door so I can give you your stuff? It’s freezing out here and I have plans.”

The Hedgehog planted his shoulder against the corner of door and dug his feet in. Danny shrugged and acquiesced to the owner of the shoes, opening the door halfway. A hopeful, involuntary, grin lit his face. A petite brunette handed him a milk crate full of belt buckles and stepped past him into his apartment, a small brown dog trotting behind her.

***

“How have you been, Daniel?” asked Beth, passing Danny the milk crate so she could remove her heels.

Danny held the box dumbly. He hadn’t thought about Beth in weeks. Her sudden appearance dropped his stomach and sent his mind racing in sad, familiar, obsessive, loops. It was enough to make his forget his situation.

“I…I really, uh…I don’t know” Danny answered.

Beth placed her shoes on the mat, making a little noise of surprise at the neatly organized shoe tree beside it. A rubber boot hopped covertly out from behind the door and made its way to kitchen. The small brown dog followed.

“I heard that you lost your job. I just wanted to see how you were doing”.

Beth stepped past Danny’s halfhearted attempt to corral her in the entry way, placing a warm hand on his arm and brushing through into the living room. Her attention was immediately drawn to a large, suspiciously Panda shaped arm chair that dominated the left corner.

“When did you get that? It’s hideous.”

A tiny dejected moan issued from the chair. Danny began sweating profusely.

“A couple days ago, but I’m thinking of getting rid of it”.

Beth moved up close to inspect it properly: it looked exactly like a slumped Panda holding its arms and legs outright and sucking its gut in.

“It stinks. Did this used to be a real Panda?”

“I don’t even know anymore…I’m just glad you can see it” said Danny, attempting to guide Beth back into the hallway.

Beth slapped away Danny’s hands and gave the Panda’s gut a few test pushes before lowering herself into the chair. Leaning back into the expansive gut she wiggled about to try and get comfortable.

“Is this thing heated? And I think sitting on the remote”.

Beth reached behind her to try and find the device jabbing her, the Panda closed its eyes tightly and let its head slump further back in bliss. Danny pulled her forcibly up from the chair; a thin spider strand of goo connected her to the seat, before pulling taut and breaking away. The Panda shot Danny a sleazy wink, and mimed searching for the remote in his own lap. Danny held Beth tight against his chest so she wouldn’t see the display.

“What the hell are you doing?” Beth demanded.

Danny waited until the Panda resumed his chair act proper before letting her go.

“Sorry…there is a busted spring that I didn’t want jabbing you. You could get tetanus…or rabies…or something.”

Beth brushed clothes back into place.

“God you are weird. Your place looks good though; are you dating someone?”

Danny felt a thrill at how Beth’s voice pitched upwards when she asked the question.

“I’ve got a couple things going…nothing serious.”

“I’m glad. You seem different…have you been working out?” asked Beth.

“Uh…yeah, I’ve been keeping active.”

Danny took a couple deep breaths and tried to bring the conversation back around.

“So, how about you then; you still with the bone collector?”

Beth rolled her eyes and waited for Danny to rephrase the question.

“You still with Pete” Danny corrected.

“Yes” Beth answered, smiling sympathetically.

“Rough deal” said Danny.

Beth began to retort when she noticed an absence.

“Where’s my dog?”

A horrible yelp of pain rang out from the kitchen.

***

Danny reacted to the yelp like a shot from a starter’s pistol: exploding into a full run he stiff-armed Beth into the couch and pulled down a bookcase behind him to ensure he’d reach the kitchen first. He turned the corner in time to see the Hedgehog pulling a bloody lump three times his size into the bathroom. Danny grabbed the roll of paper towels and frantically began mopping the long smear of crimson off the floor. There was a crash from the hallway

“What the fuck, Danny!” yelled Beth, disentangling herself from a newly purchased Ikea book shelf.

Danny threw the sodden towels into the trash, then smashed the kitchen light fixture with a frying pan.

“Sorry Beth…I thought I heard the phone…only it was actually a huge rat…that I just locked in the bathroom”.

Beth moved into the dim kitchen rubbing a raw spot on her elbow.

“Where’s Coco? Is he in here?”

Danny tried to hold the frying pan in a casual fashion. Flecks of glass dusted his hair.

“Not that I can tell. Maybe it chased the huge rat into the bathroom. I’ll go check. Wait here” said Danny.

Concern for her dog and fear of a rat large enough to trash a kitchen warred on Beth’s face; she stepped back into the hallway. Danny opened the bathroom door just wide enough to slip in, his frying pan raised, honestly intending to smash the first rodent he saw. He closed and locked the door behind him. The Hedgehog was standing on the edge of the tub, knife in hand: the tub contained a small brown dog with multiple stab wounds, wrapped in a blood soaked tea towel, a knife lying beside it. The Hedgehog raised its small paws defensively.

“I realize this looks bad”.

The frying pan smashed down with force directly where the nimble Hedgehog had been standing a moment before.

“You Rat motherfucker psycho piece of shit….why are you fucking with me” Danny screamed.

“Get him Danny” Beth shouted encouragingly from the hallway.

The Hedgehog took cover behind the toilet.

“What is your fucking problem? Why are doing this to me?” Danny asked.

“I swear on my quills….this is not what it looks like. The little shit pulled a knife…it was a hit, I had to no choice but to defend myself” said the Hedgehog.

Danny slumped back against the wall. He pitched his voice lower.

“Come on man, I’m not stupid. I’ve known that dog for five years, he’s not the type to pull a…I can’t believe I’m even discussing this.” Dejected, Danny let himself slip to the bathroom floor.

“What am I supposed to do here?”

The Hedgehog crawled tentatively out from behind the toilet, placing his knife on the ground in front of him and kicking it towards Danny.

“I’m going to tell you exactly what happened, and if you don’t believe me…take that knife and stab me right in the ass. I won’t even fight you. Just hear me out”.

Danny bounced his head off the tile wall a couple of times. Gore surrounded him. He dearly wished he was small enough to shimmy out the bathroom window and start a new life across town. The enormity of the situation, and the implausibility of his escape, forced him to confront matters head on. Danny pushed himself to his feet, closed his eyes, felt around the tub, and retrieved the mangled dog by the scruff of its lacerated neck.

“This dog tried to stab you?” said Danny.

He shook the canine lump in the Hedgehogs face, turning up one little paw  to highlight the lack of capable digits.

“Did  kissing that bitches ass again make you go deaf ? He…pulled a knife….on me! That is not a normal dog” said the Hedgehog.

“Yeah… now that you stabbed fourteen fucking holes into him he’s not. I’d say he’s pretty fucking exceptional!” .

Danny jabbed a finger into one of the more garish chest wounds to illustrate his point; the dog snarled, turned its head a good half circle, and tore off Danny’s right ear. Danny shrieked like a woman and threw the surprisingly lively dog into the bathtub. The Hedgehog grabbed the knife off the floor and began tossing it from paw to paw.

“Oh you fucked up now, Benji; you  pulled the gloves off a bad motherfucker …and these hand weren’t made for baking bread, baby; they were made for killing” said the Hedgehog, by whose own account was a bad motherfucker that did his baking with a blade.

The multiply punctured Yorkshire Terrier retrieved the other steak knife from the tub, hopped over the edge, and began circling opposite the Hedgehog.

“You ain’t bad, Bristles, you ain’t nothing!” said the Terrier in a low growl.

Danny stood stunned in the corner clutching his bleeding ear-hole.

“Is everything o.k. in there” called Beth, from the kitchen.

***

The Hedgehog bounced on the balls of his feet, weaving patterns of distraction along his quills. The Terrier advanced, implacable, his distended jaw pugged out like some horrid cockney boxer. Danny considered helping but he was unsure who he wanted to lose. Steak knives flashed and clattered too fast to track; wads of fur and quill and flesh spun out from the foul mouthed dervish whirling across the bathroom floor.

“I’ll tear you up like crotchless panties at a frat party, you Yorkie piece of shit”

“You’re getting gutter-fucked, Hedgehog….slow and sloppy”

The Terrier parried a low strike and pinned the blade to the floor; lunging forward he sunk his prenaturally large maw into the Hedgehogs chest, ripping out a palm sized chunk of meat. The Hedgehog crashed his shoulder into the Terriers torso, driving him back into the base of the tub, sending a cascade of hair care products down onto them. The terrier whistled a high slash just over Bristles head. The Hedgehog ducked low, then stomped hard on the shampoo bottle at his feet, launching a glob directly into the Terrier’s squinty little eyes.

The Terrier shrieked in pain.

“Ahhh…what is in that, Jojoba?”

“I have scalp dryness” Danny whispered, defensive despite his shock.

The Hedgehog seized the moment, plunging his steak knife hilt deep through the terrier’s heart.

“Danny, I hear voices. What is going on in there?” demanded Beth, who had moved to stand just outside the bathroom door.

“I’m going to need a minute here, Beth” said Danny, who was prying open the dead dogs mouth so he could retrieve his ear from its throat.

“Is Coco o.k.?” asked Beth.

“Uh…he’s been better” said Danny.

The ear was intact, if bloody and distinctly not attached to his head. Danny pressed the ragged edge against the tatters surrounding his bleeding ear hole, praying for some Mr. Potatohead-esque miracle. None was forthcoming. Understandably he failed to hear the butter knife click open the bathroom lock.

“Jesus Christ, Danny!” shrieked Beth.

Danny whirled in panic; his mangled ear wobbling out of his slack grip towards Beth’s horrified face. She slapped it from the air like a particularly loathsome June-bug and staggered backwards out of the bathroom.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Beth…things could have gone better” said Danny.

Beth’s eyes froze on the lapdog speared to the ground by dollar-store cutlery. It occurred to Danny they couldn’t have gone much worse. The hedgehog played dead by the vanity.

“Oh my god, Coco.”

Danny stepped forward and closed the bathroom door behind him. He was at a loss for sufficient explanation. Beth stood there for a while, stunned, crying, shaking; then ran from the apartment. Danny punched a hole in bathroom door. The vague promise of breakup sex had been transmuted into impending dread of prison rape, in record time. The law was unkind to dog killers. Danny sat and collected his thoughts.

The wounded Hedgehog dragged the food processor into the bathroom from the kitchen and began feeding pieces of the dismembered dog into it. He flushed each thoroughly pulped load down the toilet.

“Get the mop, kid. We’re going to have company soon and I don’t want this place looking like a Korean BBQ joint”.

Danny got the mop. What else could he do?

End of Chapter 2

Danny stood in front of the bathroom mirror poking at the bleeding hole his ear used to cover. It had been his least favorite ear, but nostalgia had him remembering otherwise. He opened his first aid kit: it contained one band aid, three Flintstone vitamins, and a drawing of him falling the down the stairs surrounded by the prohibitive circle with a diagonal line. He retrieved a cotton ball from the bottom of the drawer, soaked it in cool-mint Listerine, and applied it to the side of his head. The pain was intense, if refreshing. Danny’s severed ear lay on kitchen counter, packed, by the Hedgehog, into a ziplock bag full of ice. The Panda had donned a stewpot helmet and was keeping watch over the backdoor.

“I think I need to go to the hospital” said Danny, directing the complaint to the Hedgehog sitting on the toilet across from him.

“Yeah, sure thing, Kid; but first lets all sit down and get our stories straight. You walk into that emergency room talking nonsense and you’ll spend the next month playing Thorazine bingo on a locked ward” said the Hedgehog.

The Hedgehog hopped to the ground and led Danny into the living room. Danny grabbed his ear bag and moved towards his favorite arm chair; the Hedgehog nodded at the Panda who raced across the room to dive into the seat just before Danny got there.

“What the hell, Panda? You took my chair” said Danny.

“Whoa, settle down Rosa Parks…there’s plenty more furniture. Eustace needs to decompress and collect his thoughts. It’s been a rough day and he comes from a very gentle people” said the Hedgehog.

The Panda nodded sadly in agreeance, stoking his eye spots sadly before falling abruptly into an exaggerated and patently false  slumber. Danny was too sore and tired to press the issue further. Careful to keep his wound clear of the ratty fabric Danny lay back on the couch, trying to fathom the surreal disintegration of his life. The Hedgehog climbed up onto the arm behind Danny, strips of clean T-shirt in hand, to better examine the wound.

“Close your eyes, Kid. I need to throw a bandage over that so it doesn’t rot through to the other side”.

Danny closed his eyes tightly, clenching his jaw against the expected pain. The Hedgehog looped the ends of the bandage around each hand, braced himself against the couch edge, and pulled the makeshift garrote tightly around Danny’s neck.

“Now Eustace” screamed the Hedgehog.

The Panda surged up from the armchair, took one great bounding step, then belly flopped hard onto Danny chest, driving the breath from his body and trapping his limbs beneath the Panda’s girth. Danny levered a knee into Eustace’s gut; the Panda retaliated with the sort of clinging blustery fart only lifelong vegetarians can produce. The Hedgehog gagged and released the bandage from Danny’s neck.

“Jesus Eustace…I said hold him, not execute the lot of us.”

The Panda shamefully, and perhaps strategically, buried his face between the couch cushions; Danny attempted to maneuver his head close enough to bite the traitorous hedgehog.

“Easy Chopper, this is necessary shit and will hurt a lot less if you quit fucking squirming”.

The Hedgehog pulled out one of his sharper quills, secured a length of thread to it, then opened the ziplock bag to retrieve Danny’s ear. As Danny watched the Hedgehogs preparations a deep disquiet grew within him.

“What the hell are you doing” said Danny.

“You can’t go to the hospital: there will be too many questions; and I already told you we got company on the way. It’s not the sort appointment you can blow off” said the Hedgehog.

“I’m not going to let some talking rat sew my fucking ear on! You don’t know what you’re doing” said Danny.

“I fixed your shirts, didn’t I…this is basically the same thing” said the Hedgehog, laughing halfway through his own comparison.

Danny struggled hard against the Panda’s weight: the Hedgehog was right, the squirming did make it hurt a lot more.

***

Danny laid out the five remaining Tylenol, placing each blue gelcap in line with an accusing tap. One by one he chased them down with a swig of water, stopping between each to glare balefully at the Hedgehog. The half melted Ziploc bag full of ice was applied to his newly reattached ear. The Panda was curled inconsolably under the kitchen table, wracked with guilt over his role in the guerilla surgery. The Hedgehog, who was pacing across the tabletop, showed considerably less remorse.

“Stop being a pussy…if you’d gone to the hospital you’d still be sitting in the waiting room next to some fossil with a busted colostomy bag. I probably saved you ten hours of checking out shit stained pictures of ugly grandkids.”

“You probably gave me fucking rabies or…. leprosy” said Danny.

“Armadillos carry leprosy, not Hedgehogs. And I’m not the one who jerked off after fishing candy out off my neighbor’s garbage…without washing my hands. If anyone was in danger of contracting a disease it was me; you pestilent motherfucker!”

“It was in the recycling, not the garbage; and it was still in the wrapper!” said Danny.

The Hedgehog flourished a mocking bow.

“Oh Pardon me, Lady Primose…so sorry to have impugned your manners”.

“Man…what is your fucking problem? You say you’re supposed to help me but all you do is jack my life up and tal…speak  to me, like I’m trash. How is that helping?” said Danny.

“Do you think I want to be here?  Do you think I spent my days lying around the hedge yearning for the chance to teach special Ed. in some douchebag’s shithole apartment?”

“Then why are you bothering? What’s so special about me that you have to ruin both our lives?” said Danny.

The Hedgehogs maw peeled back to show long rows of needle teeth, his quills seemed a length and sharpness Danny had not seen before.

“Kid, you are as far from special as this world will allow. Literally”

As before the truth of the statement resonated in some deep place; though the tone struck somewhere small and brittle; the Panda issued a hard growl of warning and rose up from under the table. The Hedgehog remembered himself and snapped his mouth shut, offering a shrug of apology to the looming Panda. Danny could feel the tension pull between them but couldn’t fully place its source. Confounded, he swallowed his last pill and stayed silent, if wounded.

The doorbell rang.

“About fucking time” muttered the Hedgehog.

***

The doorbell rang again, this time the rapid multiple buzzes of an obnoxious child or asshole boyfriend. Danny’s headache pulsed in time to the beat. The ringer added a thumping baseline by applying his steel toed boots to the doorjamb.

“Open the door you fucking freak! You put a knife in my girlfriend’s dog; I’ll put my fist upside your fucking head!”

Danny glared at the Hedgehog.

“Thanks a lot”.

The Hedgehog smirked, to the extent he could.

“He ain’t looking for me, kid. Keep your chin tucked and try not to lose that ear…I don’t warranty my work”.

The Panda rubbed Danny’s shoulders and mimed a jab-uppercut combo. Danny felt the burning doubt and indigestion of the conflict-averse. A final hard kick busted the door from its frame. Beth’s boyfriend Pete “The Bone collector” Barlow, flanked by two of his douchey friends, stepped over the fallen door into Danny’s apartment. The douchier of the two friends propped the door back up on the frame; the other provided a mission statement.

“You fucked with the wrong man’s bitch, Bitch. B.C. is going break you off!”

Pete stopped a few feet from Danny, his two friends circled to either side. Danny shook his head ruefully.

“Look, Pete, normally I’d just take the beating and get on with my day…but this not a good time”

Pete fired a hard two handed shove into Danny’s chest, knocking him back into the wall.

“What the fuck did you think was going to happen? Do you know who the fuck I am?”

Danny shrugged.

“Vaguely”.

“I’m your worst fucking nightmare” said Pete.

Danny began laughing, hard.

“Dude, you have no idea. This is like… the fifth worst thing to happen to me today”.

Pete nodded at his douchey friends; they each grabbed an arm and slammed Danny against the wall. Pete pressed his forehead against Danny, to more properly scream in his face.

“Do you know why they call me the Bone Collector?”

Danny shrugged again.

“Because you suck a lot of dick?”

Pete butted Danny hard in the face. Blood poured from a deep cut over Danny’s eye.

“What did you just say, smart guy?” demanded Pete.

“I’m Sorry…I just assumed it had something to do with your love of hard cock”

There was muted snicker from the kitchen. Pete purpled with rage.

“How’s this for hard cock!” Pete screamed.

He smashed two brutal punches into Danny’s groin. Danny slumped in the douchey friends arms; both seemed uncomfortable with the tack the conversation had taken. Pete pounded Danny’s lolling head back into the wall.

“They call me the Bone Collector because I used break bitches like you in half when I played ball. Broke their bones” said Pete, eager to drive home the correct etymology.

Danny forced his head upright.

“Why would a collector go around breaking things…that doesn’t make any sense” said Danny.

Pete pounded on Danny for a fair amount of time. Eventually he tired and searched about the room for some novel way to cause harm. He spied the pine needle covered sweater; he grabbed it and it shoved it in Danny’s face.

“What the fuck is this: some queer fucking costume from your D&D night?”

Danny mumbled through his broken mouth.

“What did you just say” asked Pete.

Danny swallowed the excess blood and repeated.

“I said, Don’t touch my fucking Quills; I’m not some sleazy trick hamster!”

“What?” said Pete.

“Now, Curl! Now!” screamed the Hedgehog from the kitchen.

Danny flung himself into a ball, his abs made steely from his nights in the forest. The two douchey friends were sent hard into the opposite wall, forming heaps far sloppier than Danny’s tight defensive mound.

“Lunge” shrieked the Hedgehog.

Danny sprang towards Pete snarling and clawing, Pete stepped smoothly aside, Danny crashed heavily into the arm chair. Pete squared up. Danny rolled to his feet, sweater in hand. Pete grabbed the bat from the corner by the door. Danny pulled on his quills in one smooth motion.

“I’m going to smash your head in, you sick fucking psycho” said Pete, brandishing the bat.

For the first time he could remember Danny felt light; Awake, alert, and very much of his life.

“Keep talking, Buddy: I got twenty holes dug in the woods with your name on them” said Danny, whose count was off but intent was clear.

Danny shook a pillow out of its case and circled towards the bookshelf. Pete, unable to fully process how the situation had changed, swung his bat back and forth menacingly. Danny swept the Hedgehog’s pewter chess set, two cast iron bookends, and his reframed high school diploma into the pillowcase, gave it a smash against the wall for old times sake, and began whirling it above his head.

“I told you this was a bad time” said Danny, grinning manically.

Pete eyed his unconscious friends, willing them to wake up. It had no effect. Danny advanced, an ominous mix of whooshing and tearing cloth noise preceding him. Pete swung for Danny’s head. Danny snapped the bursting pillow case forward abruptly, sending a barrage of broken glass and scrap iron into Pete’s face. The impact sent Pete tumbling to the floor. Danny followed him down.

***

A minute into the beating Danny switched to elbows to spare his battered hands; the bottled rage fueled blows hard enough to bust the floorboards under Pete’s head. Or what was left of it. Brawny paws pulled him off his abundantly conquered foe. Danny thrashed against the Panda’s iron hug.

“Jesus, Danny…the rest of your life is not on the other side of his head. You pound him all day…it’s still just one fight” said the Hedgehog.

Danny surveyed the carnage: the two douchey friends were still piled limply against the wall; Pete…well, Pete had seen better days and was unlikely to see worse. The Hedgehog had retrieved his rubber boot and was hopping about the splashy gore.

“We’re going to need to rent a wet-vac.”

Danny’s adrenaline shorted suddenly.

“Holy fuck…is he dead?”

The Hedgehog hopped beside the neck, looked once, and declined to take a pulse.

“I wouldn’t pencil him in for prom king.”

The Panda tippy- toed around the blood and deposited Danny in his favorite arm chair. Placing his blunt paw under Danny’s chin he tilted his head up to make better eye contact. Danny tried to look back at the entryway but the Panda kept his head locked in place. The Panda stepped away from Danny, nodded towards the pile of bodies, and then held up a huge paw in textbook high-five position. Danny numbly slapped the paw: shock or not, you don’t leave someone hanging. The Panda nodded solemnly then motioned for Danny to hit him on the flipside. Danny obliged. The Panda motioned for Danny to stay in place, removed the center cushion from the couch, and disappeared around the corner where the unconscious douchey friends lay. Danny let himself believe the Panda was making them more comfortable. He was debatably correct.

***

“Hey, Kid. Give me a hand with this.”

The Hedgehog was attempting to pull a large orange tarp from the hall closet. Danny carried it into the living room and laid it out on the floor. The Panda rolled the bodies into the center of the tarp. The Hedgehog retrieved a pencil from behind his ear and began roughing out some calculations on the coffee table. To Danny’s untrained eye the tarp looked about a corpse too small. The Hedgehogs math must have backed this up as he rounded on the Panda, snarling.

“If fatty there wasn’t such a Nancy this would be a fuck of lot easier”

The Panda peeled a leaf off the head of lettuce he was eating, pointedly looking away from the Hedgehog.

“You couldn’t eat one fucking body! Your whole race is a disgrace to Bears: you’re barely a Panda-Sloth”

The Panda angrily shook the head of lettuce in the Hedgehog’s face. Danny stepped between them: they didn’t have time for this.

“Look, just wrap up Pete and the little douche and we’ll put the other one in the front seat with me.”

Danny rolled the big douche off the tarp and muscled him onto his shoulder. The Hedgehog fished Pete’s car keys from his pocket and tossed them to Danny, who caught them. Danny levered back his busted front door and peered into the night: it was clear.

****

The first mile was the longest of Danny’s life. The way seemed entirely composed of left turns; the corpse’s clammy torso continually swayed against him; the lifeless Douche stunk intensely of voided bowels and smothering. The Hedgehog was perched on the dash giving directions. The Panda kept reaching up from the backseat to change the radio. Danny was shaking so hard with spent intensity the car  drifted erratically from lane to lane.

“Hey fuckwit, you’re driving a little casually…you want me to fire a few shots at passing cars to draw us the proper attention? Maybe have Eustace throw a couple fridges out the back?”

Something had been building in Danny’s mind since they left the house. He accelerated.

“Why is this happening” asked Danny.

The Hedgehog grabbed the hula-girl affixed to dashboard to keep his footing.

“Jesus…kid, I’ve told you a dozen times: you wouldn’t understand it and don’t want to know.”

Danny pressed the accelerator to the floor and move into the lane designated for oncoming traffic.

“Make an effort”

The Hedgehog clawed at the vinyl dashboard for traction. Headlights appeared in the distance. The Panda made a chuffing noise from the backseat. The Hedgehog exchanged a long look with him.

“Are you sure?”

The Panda nodded, folded his paws comfortably over his chest, and awaited the imminent collision. Danny steeled himself for impact or disclosure.

“You ever read any Nietzsche, kid” said the Hedgehog.

Danny shook his head.

“Probably not”

The Hedgehog was unsurprised.

“I figured as much. Look, I’m just going lay it out and if we survive this any barista with bad dreads should be able to fill in the holes for you.”

Danny shrugged without optimism.

“Whatever. Just say it”

“Very basically: you’re like the Anti-Ubermench…lets call it the Every-Mench. You’re the thread to which every other thread is tied; the stock that the whole market follows.”

An SUV appeared over the rise, noting the oncoming car it swerved into the other lane. Danny followed. The Hedgehog gnawed desperately at Danny’s ten o’clock hand. Danny ignored him and kept course his course.

“I don’t understand a word you just said”

“Yeah, well…it’s hard to find an apt fucking analogy when you’re about to be an Escalade’s hood ornament.”

Danny considered: the Hedgehogs ramblings had rung true, if nonsensical. Danny moved onto the shoulder enough the SUV could get by on his left. High speed invective poured from the passing vehicle. Danny pulled back into the appropriate lane, but continued at speed.

“Explain it simpler”

The Hedgehog sighed.

“Yeah…like I was talking to complete idiot, got ya.”

Danny either didn’t notice or accepted the barb as warranted. The Hedgehog continued.

“All right…this is mostly wrong, but will make sense.

Lets pretend that every long while the (for lack of a better word) World sees to it that someone is born who is more connected than everyone else: a sort of representative for that species; someone who just by living their life sets the tone and direction of said species. Now, in general, the gestalt, or unconscious, or whatever will put forth a strong entry: an ideal creature that can bear that sort of burden.”

The Hedgehog stopped his story and indicated for Danny to slow and turn down a familiar dirt road. Danny struggled with the weight and immediacy of what he’d been told. The obvious question thumped around Danny’s skull.

“Why would it pick me then?” Danny asked.

The Panda covered its eyes, flinching sympathetically. The Hedgehog waited until the car slowed and stopped before answering.

“If I had to guess: you’re a white flag. A statement of surrender. Humanity calling for the check an…”

“OK, I get it. Enough all ready” Danny interjected.

The answer felt true but incomplete, although the Hedgehog had warned him of as much.

“Sorry” the Hedgehog said, seemingly sincere.

“Wow…this is kind of a worst case scenario. I just figured I was a wizard or something”

The Hedgehog snorted.

“Trust me kid…worse hands have been dealt.”

Danny unbuckled the Douche and opened both front doors. The Panda squeezed himself out of the back seat and helped Danny retrieve all three bodies from the car. Panting hard Danny turned back to the Hedgehog.

“So what are you then” asked Danny.

The Hedgehogs quills twitched wryly.

“I’m a differing opinion”.

***

Danny and the Panda chose the three deepest holes he’d dug in the woods, depositing a body in each of them, before filling them back in. The Hedgehog stood proudly on a mound of freshly packed earth.  Danny looked around the woods at the half dozen unfilled holes.

“Won’t someone notice all the other holes around here?”

The Hedgehog puffed up further.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. This place is safe, and we might need the other ones down the road.”

Danny chilled at the thought. Then something occurred to him.

“So, we’re not surrendering then?”

The Hedgehog mouth split into a pointy grin.

“No, we are not. Now fix your Quills…this won’t be a popular decision.”

Danny was tired. It was, however, a condition of the moment: the hard won exhaustion of a day denied. The ache of a first step. He had begun inauspiciously; he hoped that he would end better. His story continued.

***

The End. For now.