ASK FOR SOMETHING IMPOSSIBLE
send me someone who knows what to do with me... | short fiction
Clara decided to stop praying.
It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in the big guy anymore; she’d just run out of requests small enough for him to handle. She’d asked for peace and received waiting room languor, she’d captured love in the form of off-brand toleration, her prayer for purpose secured a jerkwater cubicle in a brightly lit place—the big man listened and she wanted for naught.
She had comfort, but sometimes her mouth watered for the hell of church. In her hunger, she’d skulk to the nearest alter to light candles.
During a binge, the flames filled her gut with a yesteryear tingle—the same basal voice she’d hear the moment her bum hit the mall Santa’s lap: ASK FOR SOMETHING IMPOSSIBLE.
She shouldered through the wailing supplicants, lit a fresh candle, and did just that: “Father, send me someone who knows what to do with me.”
The next day, Clara got a text from an unknown number: Do you know how many teaspoons of sugar are in a Coke?
At first, she thought it was Deb—it sounded like her typical nonsense. She screenshot it and texted Deb’s sister: dis Deb? lol
Ten seconds later: wdym? lmao…
If not Deb it must be a wrong number or some weird GenZ marketing ploy…she couldn’t decide. She considered blocking like usual, but it was lunchtime and the Panera was swarmed. There was time to kill, so…Who dis?
After a Green Goddess and three hours of silence: Would you rather have four arms or four legs? Explain.
She smiled at her phone but didn’t respond. Her palms sweated in a good way and her tongue panged with pop rocks. She considered the binary during the all-hands meeting—daydreaming Vishnu-Clara in a pastel apron carving the Thanksgiving turkey to great applause, a quadruped-Clara barreling chest first through marathon tape to great applause…Her boss, Mark, was lecturing about the new PTO policy when her phone buzzed her desk. She came to. Her heart skipped. She looked at her Zoom square; her face had gone lobster red. She turned off her camera and sped to the bathroom to read on the toilet:
In current driving conditions, it would take sixteen hours and twenty-eight minutes to drive from Chopin’s heart to his body. Road trip?
Clara never responded yet the texts kept coming. There was something to them—some knowing gusto that animated them into friend-like beings she couldn’t bring herself to snuff out. They reminded her of a meditation course where she gave a Sanskrit-speaking white dude a fresh banana in exchange for a silly mantra—ein ghru or shi rim —meaningless bibble-babble powerful enough to make her tingle in some ancient way. She felt the same tingle from the texts: her butthole puckered with a-ha! excitement, opening and closing with a magic flourish lulling her shoulders to drop and her fists to unclench.
Three weeks after the Coke text she got God-hungry and slumped to the altar. She lit a chodey candle and stood watching the wax smother the flame. The exact moment the flame turned to ascendant smoke her phone nipped her thigh:
Did you know the word PROWL used to be pronounced like it rhymed with SOUL?
That night, the texts become a conversation.
Turned out the number had a name: Ellis.
He claimed to be a PhD student working part-time as a librarian but refused to tell her where, citing privacy concerns. What if you’re insane? He wrote. What if you show up with a hammer or a fruit basket or a ring?
Clara couldn’t tell if he was serious so she sent screenshots of a ball-peen, an edible arrangement, and a ring pop: CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER!!! 🔨🍇💍
He didn’t reply for three days.
On day three of the caesura, her cat, Beatrice, came home with a glass vial tied to her collar. Clara opened it and found a chicken scratch note rolled into a taught cylinder: WALK. EAST. NOW.
She laughed and took a picture of the note, texting it to Deb: LMAO dis you?
Her legs scissored and bounced with type-A angst. She’s expected somewhere now. Someone somewhere is waiting for her and every fiber of her yelled with her father’s tongue: the sluggard does not plow in the autumn!
She checked her phone—nothing from Deb.
Beatrice jumped from her lap and sauntered to the tree line.
Fine, she thought, lacing her boots. She followed Beatrice and pulled out her phone, letting it tell her what East was.
She walked for nearly an hour. East took her through the woods, past the browned baseball diamond and the school parking lot (where she once let Eric B. feel her up), all the way out to Echo Lake. The phone’s compass confirmed: true East ends at the water’s edge. She looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. She shrugged, at least I got my steps in.
As she approached the shoreline, a man emerged from nowhere, falling into lockstep with her: “You never answered,” he said in an insectile nasal, “four arms or four legs?”
Her butthole puckered and her shoulders dropped and she tingled in that ancient way. Despite the man looking nothing like she’d imagined, she knew it was him: “Ellis!”
What she imagined: a late-twenties, scrawny, last-picked-in gym-class type with the too-high socks and acne scars. A bespectacled late bloomer who grew into a hard-won confidence but remains quasi-traumatized by the years of wallflowering and cruel attention it took to fill his shoes. The shoes, of course, would be slightly dressy, the adult type of shoe that makes distinguished noises on all breeds of surfaces.
What she got: a hardscrabble thirties NPC—the lives-in-mother’s-basement type who wears secondhand cardigans hoping that strangers will think him “professorial.” Short and skinny-fat. His face unspectacled and acne-free; thick-nosed and Baldwin swole topped with a squid ink bowl cut that seemed, to her at least, slightly off axis. He struck her as the type of guy who stood too close to you in the check-out line and always smelled of mildew or creamy farts. She was right about the shoes, though; they were, as she hoped, very mature.
They walked around the lake, chatting. Clara didn’t know what to make of him. His voice was soft but exuded a pungent intensity that made her feel naked in a way that came off as clinical, not invasive. She often found herself mid-conversation looking down to ensure her breasts weren’t out.
“You’ve been thinking about quitting your job, yeah?” he said at one point in their stroll, “you should do it.”
She stopped and took a step back. When had she told him that? She doesn’t want to quit her job, does she?
“What makes you say that?”
He smiled and looked down. “I al—“ he hiccuped and started finger-fishing an eyelash from his right eye, “I always know what to do.”
THE TOP THREE THINGS THAT LEAD CLARA TO BELIEVE ELLIS ALWAYS KNEW WHAT TO DO:
(3)
Indeed, she had—albeit subconsciously—been toying with the idea of quitting her job, but to the extent she was able to articulate it, she had told no one. If asked, she’d gab about how much she loved her job, how nice Janice in HR was and re-tell the joke about the penguin she always fired off at lunch, but yes, Ellis was right, something deep in her brain started screaming: THE NINE-TO-FIVE IS KILLING YOU. A few months back, Deb strong-armed Clara to start the Etsy shop she always talked about—a passion project/side-hustle where she sold handmade crochet birds. Increasingly she daydreamed in her cubicle, her hands twitching in her lap, her mind’s eye watching phantom threads form into yellow warblers. She’d come to, angry at her empty lap. A few days after Echo Lake, the screaming in her brain amplified. She heard it—it made her work up the nerve to put in her two weeks. Hours after she spoke with her boss, sales to her bird shop quintupled.
(2)
On insomnial nights she found herself bellyaching in bed, unable to metabolize the world’s misbehavior. She’d sigh and give up hopes of sleep, reaching out to kill the night doomscrolling. The moment her hand lifted the phone off the nightstand it’d vibrate:
Ellis: do you want to talk about it?
(1)1
2:42:16 pm. Ellis: “CALL YOUR MOTHER”
2:44:03 pm. Clara: “…why?”
2:44:05 pm. Ellis” “CALL. HER.”
2:45:23 pm. Clara: “wtf. chill…I’ll call after work lmao”
2:45:25 pm. Ellis: “NOW!”
2:45:26 pm. Ellis: “NOW!”
2:45:27 pm. Ellis: “NOW!”
2:45:28 pm. Ellis: “NOW!”
2:45:29 pm. Ellis: “NOW!”
2:45:29 pm. Clara: "OKAY. CHILL."
2:45:35 pm. Phone ringing...
2:45:42 pm. Clara's mom: "hello?"
2:45:43 pm. Clara: "Hi mom"
2:45:45 pm. Clara's mom: “Hi, hon! Too funny...I was just thinking about ya; great minds think alike, as they say, ha! Listen, I’m at the store picking up the cucumbers and all that for your father’s favorite—-your father, well...he’s—-and don’t tell him I said it, he’s sworn me to secrecy, you know how prideful he gets—-he’s not doing so good. He didn’t want to weigh you down with all of this, but hey, you know what? How about you swing by around 7? Come by for dinner and pretend you just happened to be in town, haha! How does that sound? I just know he’d love some daughter-daddy time...”At dinner, her father said, “I love you,” for the first time in fifteen years.
Clara decided to stop lighting candles.
It had been three months since the Coke text and life was good. Her days were spent testing prototypes for the summer line of crochet macaws and caring for her father; there was little time for anything else. Altar visits and Ellis (whose texts had become more frequent) had to be sidelined.
She’d thought of Ellis now and again. She still got all fuzzed up when she read the texts in her free moments. But with each week, Ellis was becoming another long-ago face, joining the bland high school drones she’d remember once every five years, sitting up in the middle of the night: That’s right! That person exists! If he hadn’t started showing up unannounced, he would’ve been forgotten.
At first, it was easy to chalk up the encounters as coincidental run-ins. After all, he lived in the area so it wasn’t odd to run into him in the produce aisle or the dry cleaner or the cafe, but things changed when he showed up outside her building at 2 am.
It had been a long day sourcing yarns and draining paternal puss. Clara was stumbling home, thankful Deb was around to shoulder her. As Clara fumbled for her keys he emerged from the shrubs, sipping something thick from an I hope this email kills us both mug, “Evening ladies,” he said, extending the mug in a Gatsby toast, “How are we?”
They swung open the door and rushed upstairs. Deb hounded Clara to block “his creepy ass.” Clara was tired and lacked appetite for Deb’s dramatic stylings. She feigned agreement, took out her phone, and blocked his number. Deb hugged her before they both passed out.
The moment Deb left in the morning, Clara clamored for her phone and unblocked him. She hadn’t slept at all. For the hours he was blocked, she lay on her back, hopeless and heavy, made of cement, waiting for time to bulldoze her into dust.
She couldn’t bring herself to cut the cord. She didn’t know if he was dangerous, she didn’t much about him at all—all she knew was the airwaves must remain open because at any moment he could impart something monumental and true. Besides, he wasn’t hurting anyone…he was just some weirdo guy, tapping his weirdo thumbs, sending weirdo little messages that sometimes aligned in a kismet way:
Would you rather be autoimmune or auto-immune? Explain.
After the apartment ambush, she made a point to respond every now and then. Once, she met with him for coffee near Echo Lake, figuring tossing the occasional red meat of presence would cool his jets and buy time for him to say something prophetic. He just sat staring, not blinking much, picking at a scab on his elbow and watching her sip latte. Soon after, her father had taken a turn for the worse. She was over there all the time, not checking her phone.
In the spring, Beatrice went missing. Deb went with Clara to Kinko’s to print stacks of MISSING! posters and staple them around town. That’s when the dreams started: Ellis wearing a dirty lab coat tracing constellations in the sky with a schoolteacher pointer; Ellis handing her a baby full of Swiss cheese-like holes; Ellis sitting at the edge of her bed, dressed as Zultar, tracing her feet with a dry, calloused finger, reading her future aloud in what sounded like Amharic…
Spring turned to summer. Clara hired two assistants to help launch the macaws while she spent time with her father, who, by the grace of god, was on the rebound.
She’d come home in the evenings to find packages at her door—packages she couldn’t remember ordering: books authored by females who killed themselves, six THIS SMELLS LIKE MY VAGINA candles (one of them used), framed photographs of her mother’s vegetable garden, a thousand-piece puzzle of a smiling blue dachshund (with a single missing piece), calico slippers…
Virtual means “potential” as well as “simulated.” It just depends on how you play along.
Despite their odd smell, Clara loved the slippers. On the chilly evenings, she’d sit with peppermint tea, toe-pawing the felt lining and sending invoices.
What would you do if your soul has already crossed into it? Explain.
She was home when the last package came. It was early, around 5 am. Someone pounded on the door for a solid minute. Clara shook off the dream fog, slid into her slippers, and checked the peephole. Nothing. She opened the door. No one in the hall, just a manilla envelope on her doormat. She picked it up and flipped it over. No address. No writing. No stamps. She closed the door and opened it: Beatrice’s collar and a note: WALK. EAST. NOW.
She didn’t know what to do so she did it all: dropped the envelope, screamed, called the police, cried, screamed, blocked Ellis, screamed, held the slippers to her chest, threw up, screamed, called Deb…
Deb came over when Clara was speaking with the police; people in suits were using tongs to put the slippers in a plastic bag. Clara changed her number and stayed with Deb until she found an apartment on the other side of town. The police never followed up. She never saw the slippers again.
Years passed but Ellis never joined the ranks of the faceless. A buzzing in Clara’s skull attuned her to the perennial forking of time. Candles no longer helped; prayer was impotent. She became clueless, standing open-mouthed at every junction: east or west? north or south? here or there? When sleep proved evasive, she’d open Ellis’ contact and hover her thumb over UNBLOCK. Sometimes she’d click it, just for a moment, a few seconds at most, just long enough to feel the high of possibility—the possible flood of direction and knowing. When she did sleep, he appeared in her dreams, sat at the foot of her bed in his Zultar garb, his mustache as askew as his hair, tracing her deep pedal fissures with the hard edges of the dachshund’s missing piece, telling her things she hoped would never happen.
Want more? CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER:
Source: exhibit 43(a) from THE STATE OF WASHINGTON v. ELLIS HUXLEY JR.
This is so intriguing. I felt like you were up to something with this Ellis character. Idk if you intended any of this, but I was reading some interesting things into it. First of all the name Ellis: could be any of three different ways to mean benevolent or literally god, so that’s fascinating to me — made me feel like maybe I was on the right track with the rest of my thoughts, but either way I got interesting things from this.
It struck me how we often want a god in our lives, we pray for certain things or ask for them to happen and make pre-broken promises in return. But say it turns out that such a being is, it would be beyond our understanding and comfort. We reject it. This Ellis guy ends up benefiting her greatly, more than a few times, but he seems to be too … ~there~ too involved too close. Which, if you attend any evangelical church, is exactly how god is described — wanting all of you, looking for your full attention, obedience, etc.
So maybe we get what we want, but when god seems to want to much from us, we block him.
Wow! I was hooked from the very beginning and I hung on every word. So very eerie and weird and intriguing. Also, incredibly well-written. A great great piece, Will. :)