The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (10 page)

“A monster,” said Leona.

“Apparently,” said Fritz.

“Or maybe Monster was his last name?” said Gil. “You know: Phil Monster. Like: Hi, I’m Phil Monster? It’s not entirely clear from the syntax.”

“Whatever,” said Sally. “Let’s go eat.”

Leona looked at Gil. Syntax? What the heck kind of word was that? What was Gil, some kind of big-shot? She hated big-shots, she suddenly realized. She’d have to watch Gil. She’d talk to Sally about it. Sally didn’t seem like a big-shot. Sally seemed sensible and moral and down to earth. Sally, like Leona, was compressed and ball-shaped, unlike the freakishly elongated Gil.

As the months went by, the New Hornerites took to avoiding The Phil. Although nobody could exactly say why, The Phil gave them the creeps. Soon the path bowed out around it, weeds overtook it, and all that could be seen of The Phil was the tip of Phil’s rack, which stuck out of the weeds like a bad flagpole. Animals burrowed in The Phil, birds nested there, balls accumulated there because the New Horner kids were too scared to retrieve them.

And that is where Phil is today: hidden in a thicket of weeds, not loved, not hated, just forgotten, rusting/ rotting, with even the sign that proclaims his name fading away.

Except sometimes Leona comes to visit. She does not find The Phil monstrous, but strangely beautiful, and sometimes sits in the thicket for hours, dreaming, for reasons she can’t quite explain, of a better world, run by humble, compressed, ball-shaped people, like her and Sally, who speak, when they speak at all, in short sentences, of their simple heroic dreams.

FIN

The author wishes to thank the Lannan Foundation, 

the Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences,

and his colleagues and students in the Syracuse Creative

Writing Program, for their generous support during the

writing of this book.