Chapter IV
We all know that when it comes to enchanted forests, there is a whole gallimaufry of varieties, but only two basic genera. Before we discuss that, I apologize for possible overuse of the word gallimaufry. I know I use it too much, but I just like how it sounds, and I’d like to reintroduce it into the common vernacular. So on that count I don’t apologize. I just momentarily felt a little self-conscious, like that dream everyone has when they’re a teenager that they end up going to school naked. There are two main varieties of enchanted forests. Remember the beginning of the paragraph? I hope so. I’m sure you know of the two basic types of enchanted forests. The first, because I’m putting the good news first this time, is the friendly sort, the type of place where you can go and talk to the wise old trees and garner such a multitude of advice, or merely voice your problems and have them heard by a good listener, or you can go and play catch with while they enlighten you with their myriad of wisdom. The second is a much more malevolent type, one that you enter and the trees leer at you and make you feel uncomfortable, and then start grasping at you with their branches and maybe throwing their fruit at you. Sometimes they grapple you with the hope of entangling and consuming you. Fortunately it was into the first variety that Bari floated into with his new friend.
As we mentioned earlier, Bari attempted to kill himself by jumping off the moon, and because the atmosphere of our Earth does not tolerate indecisiveness, reality had no choice but to split into three parts, with one of them being an existence where Bari had become a basketball. In his moment of doubt, two-thirds of him had wanted to live, and one-third to die. Of the two-thirds that wanted to live, one wanted to go back to Earth and the other did not, but the one that wanted to return home realized that no human would ever survive the fall from space, unless we completely changed the laws of physics. As a writer I am at liberty to do such a thing, but to make things interesting, I decided it would be fun to put evolution into work, and instead of reversing a natural law, I would take an existing concept and alter and speed up its abilities, and thusly avoid the legal fees associated with physics court. The concept of which we speak, is of course, evolution. It is a concept that many claim to be false, and to believe it is heresy. Balderdash says I! So far as I understand, this evolution thing is a process by which living beings adapt and transmutate over time to be fitter for survival. To be fit for survival is what Baritone desired in this moment. If he was not fit for survival, his odds of surviving would drastically decrease. Sure, he might get lucky, and though not fit, still achieve his goals. Look at our government. How many of them are fit to govern? Good odds for Bari you would think. But he’s not running for office! He needs to live! And to live he needs to adapt! And to adapt he needs to be alive! And so he called out to he who had had given the world evolution, Charles Darwin to help him, and help he did.
But how so? Most living creatures would not survive, so to simply change species would not help. Could he grow a part that would protect him in the fall? Growing a parachute surely could have saved his life, thought it probably would have been useless after he finished falling, which he presumed would be the majority of his natural life. Besides, the choice was not up to him, and Charles hadn’t much time to think before Bari smashed into the ground, and clarity of thought in such situations is a tough thing to come by. So, Bari became a basketball.
Basketball is a neat game. It consists of two teams of five players each running up and down a surface, throwing a ball back and forth to each other with the eventual goal of throwing it into a circle with a net hanging from it. It looks something like this:
Now, the championship game for an arbitrary local high school was being held outdoors, and in the final seconds the home team was down by one point. In a desperate attempt to win the game as time expired, one of the players heaved up the ball, but his aim was terrible and the course of the ball strayed so far from the hoop that it ended up a couple towns over. The good thing about this is that nobody saw where it went, and so it didn’t seem so odd that a ball fell into the hoop. That ball, as we know, was our protagonist. But so far, anyone that is reading this, the player who threw up that shot, and I are the only people that know that. Odds are that that’ll be the way things stay even to the end of our story. I don’t hold it against the attendees of this game that they didn’t notice. Would you guess that a basketball falling into a hoop came from space? While basketballs fall from space more often than most people notice, it’s still a rare occurrence, and it’s much more logical to assume that a ball falling into a hoop came from one of the players, as that happens quite a few times in every game. This boy, who had just won the big game for his team, was being lauded as a local hero. It was forgotten that he’d been one of the worst players on the team all year, because they were now champions. And though this praise was on false grounds, it was understandable that Arthur Crouton, for that was his name, would like to maintain his hero status. While he knew that he didn’t make the shot, he didn’t know exactly who did. Even if he came clean, there would be no explanation, and they might just revile him as a man out of his wits. So, he kept quiet, and pondered the issue. The fame would pass by soon enough anyway, and it was best to enjoy it while the perks were available. He’d never been one to be in the favour of anyone anyway, so why not take advantage of such an opportunity? No excuses were to be found, yet he still wondered at the nature of the truth, which, though he raked his mind, he could not find, until the basketball that sat on the table before him started talking to him. It went like this:
The night after the afternoon of the BIG GAME, Arthur sat in his living room, running through his mind the events had just passed, and basking in the glory of being recognized and being given free food and t shirts and trips to amusement parks, and while on the couch, he was working on transferring a prodigal sundae from the bowl in which it sat to his stomach. The basketball sat on the table before him, as he wondered if merely hours before he had passed the zenith of everything he was ever to accomplish, If nothing in the future would bring him more fame than “winning that game.” Beyond the fame, he wondered if he would ever do anything worthwhile again. He at least believed that this was his first true accomplishment, and if anyone else claimed he had accomplished something, he always assumed that they were just trying to send him their pity, and he tore that up when he received it. One thing I’ll say for him is that instead of basking in his own self-pity, he did think of ways he could bring himself out of such a state. He knew there had to be a better future for him, and surely there was somewhere he could go to find it. This town and its basketball titles just weren’t the place for him. Being a human bestowed with no abilities beyond the normal scope of what is perceived as human perception, Arthur Crouton could not see the future, but he had seen a great deal of films where people would tell the future by staring at round objects. While they were usually crystal balls, that was something he didn’t have at his disposal, and so he had to rely on his basketball, which he stared at for several minutes with a ferocity that might have even made a bear avert its gaze, and a ham its glaze, and while no visions of the future came, a voice began to emanate from the basketball, which would eventually tell him many things, though none of the future, for he only knew of the past and present, and even then only the events which directly pertained to him or those he had learned of secondhand (and those were hard to trust sometimes). Sports. Deportes. Setroped.
Bari sat on the table, musing over his own particular predicament. He was certainly glad to still be alive, but now that the survival section of his mission was over, he would have liked to have just become human again, but alas, that is not how things work. Evolution is generally accepted as being a linear process, ever moving forward, and attributes, especially those which had contributed to survival, were tough to rid oneself of. Little did he know, but he found himself in a similar predicament to Arthur. What bothered him more now was that Arthur was staring at him so intently.
“Why
is it that you’re staring at me?” he asked.
“I’m trying to see the future” was Arthur’s response.
Also by this point, Bari was sick of his proximity to Arthur, who had failed to shower after the game, and had many foul odours emanating from him, so he began to levitate and thus continued the conversation.
“And you expect to see into the future by staring at a basketball?”
“Well, a lot of the time when people want to see the future, they look into round objects.”
“Even still, looking at me, you’re only going to see a basketball. They usually use crystal balls. While basketballs share one syllable of their name and a similar shape to crystal balls, overall the two species are drastically different.”
“I suppose that’s logical. But I figured there was a chance I might see into the future in you, and further, what logic is there to be had in a basketball that is speaking?”
Bari took a moment to ponder what Arthur had just said. He didn’t know much about basketballs before he had become one, and he hadn’t learned anything in the meantime, only that he was one. He knew the basics of the sport, and he thought he had known that they possessed no speaking mechanism. Surely they were not living creatures. Not a ball he had used had ever spoken to him, so he had to make the concession to Arthur that maybe it wasn’t so unreasonable for him to expect illogical things from a basketball that had fallen from space and was now speaking to him. Still, though, that didn’t give Arthur the right to assume that every basketball could see the future just because it was round. That was asking a bit much of the basketballs of the world, in his opinion.
What neither party knew was the true nature of basketballs. In most cases, the ones used in games are not living creatures. Cruel it would be to utilize something which is living to bounce off a floor and throw through a hoop. These basketballs are modeled after the fruit of a tree that the inventor of the game had seen whilst travelling. He had seen one of them fall from a tree and bounce upwards and into a hoop-shaped plant that sat nearby. This gave him the idea for the game, and he studied the properties of this fruit and figured out how to synthesize it, and they had a ball to play the game with. Later rules and complications came into the picture, but they don’t really matter to us here. Of course you’d expect that fruit normally wouldn’t still be a living being, just a fruit that you eat off a tree. But this is a special tree that we are discussing here. When the fruit of the basketball tree reaches maturity, it falls from the branch where it was raised and bounces away, having developed a hard skin that is conducive to bouncing. From there further development is optional. If they wish to keep their minds dormant, they may, and if not, they are free to develop minds, and even limbs. Bari was in the process of growing arms now.
And he began conversing with Arthur. They found that they had much in common. Similar upbringings, family situations, social situations, and such. Arthur had much that he could gain from interaction with Bari, who he found to be much like himself, though four years older. They discussed their favourite recreational activities, the story of how Bari had come to be in the situation he was now, and they even touched a bit on pancakes, among other lesser subjects, like the geopolitical situation of the world. What had incited Arthur’s interest the most was Bari’s tale of how he had strapped himself to a rocket, shot himself to the moon, and tried to commit suicide by jumping to Earth. See, Arthur often found himself possessed with such suicidal thoughts, but he lacked the creativity necessary to contrive plans such as Bari’s. Hoping that he could glean some ideas from Bari, or maybe even put himself in the better scenario where he no longer wished to engage in those sorts of activities, he began to ask Bari about how all of this had come to pass, and so Bari, in response, began the following soliloquy:
“As I’ve told you before, I was a human before I was a basketball, aged twenty-two years. Towards the end of my studies in University I was walking in the forest one evening, and I came across an old rocket. In the days up to this walk I had become increasingly bent on ending my life, mostly on the basis that I had never thought to think through the scenario in detail. However, I could never think of a suitable method. Sure, I could’ve drunk Drano, or jumped in a river, or impaled myself upon a bayonet attached to a forklift, but all of those had been done before. I’d heard multiple cases of each of the above methods, and more. It seemed like the songwriting process, or how people claim the songwriting process to be, where they say it’s pointless to write a new song because everything that could possibly be a new idea was in fact one that had been done before, most likely several times. But then I found this rocket. I never questioned why it was in the woods near this school. Maybe the school had some secret connection with the space program. Maybe they had their own space program, or intentions of starting the first college in space. Just think of the tuition money that could be gotten from that. But none of that mattered. From the moment I found it, the rocket was mine. And I knew what to do with it. I could still go out with artistic integrity, and give people a good show. So my plan was that i would wait until the night of my graduation, and amidst the revelry, I’d be the fireworks. It’d be grand, spectacular even. And I wouldn’t ruin the celebration. I’d be blown apart and land far away from their shindig. I’d give them entertainment. That’s all. So I graduated. It was simple. I sat through some speeches and was handed a diploma. After dinner that night, I snuck out to the woods and tied myself to the rocket, and then tied additional explosives to myself. Lacking another person to attach additional explosives to the additional explosives I had to break the pattern and continue with the plan. There should be plenty of fireworks this evening, I figured. Once I got the rocket started up, I lit the fuses attached to the fireworks attached to myself. When the fuse reached its end, I flew upwards, but the fireworks were duds, and failed to become explosive devices, instead becoming extremely silly looking jewelry.
As a result of failing to explode, I continued sailing upwards. “Oh, this is cool”, I thought, as I entered space. I’d always wanted to go to space anyway. In fact, this was the beginning of my doubt. I did something I wanted to for once. Leading up to this it’d been all work, between my job and schoolwork, and by this time school had ceased to be what you’d think it’d be, that being studying subjects that interest you and eventually getting a job in that field. The culmination of all that was that I was doomed to return to my old job, with massive amounts of debt, and most likely end up getting laid off from there anyway. But when I entered space, I thought that maybe it wasn’t all so bad, it was all just the scenarios I had put myself in that weren’t the ones I wanted to be in. But for now I was where I wanted to be, and had no choice but to carry on for the time being. After all, I could still kill myself eventually. Why not explore space a bit first? So, I held my breath and made an atmosphere for myself so that I could breathe and be warmed while I floated towards the moon, which was slowly approaching. While I floated on, I contrived a new plan.
See, four years previous to this portion of my story, I had once embarked on a similar quest. I’m not sure about the area in which you live, but in mine towards the end of our secondary education, an event called a prom is put on. What that is, is an event where couples dress up in formal clothing and assemble in one place and dance and eat a fancy meal and dance some more. You pay an exorbitant amount of money for all this, but afterwards everyone loses their virginity. Of course most teenagers don’t own their own tuxedos or fancy dresses that they’ll only wear once in a lifetime, so a fairly large industry revolving around renting formal wear for functions like this, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other such functions popped up. Much like many of my peers, I went and rented some such garments to wear. I was hoping to get a green tuxedo with coattails and a ruffled shirt, but I didn’t have a job at that point and so I was relying on my father’s financial assistance to acquire this formal wear, and unfortunately he wouldn’t allow such an oddly coloured suit, assuming that it needed to be black. I w
as however able to get the coattails and the ruffles. In the end, it was the ruffles that did me in. it turned out they were possessed. Well, the whole suit was possessed but the ruffles were where the neurosis had made its headquarters. “
Arthur had never dealt with any experience like that. He had no idea that a piece of clothing could be possessed. Sure, he’d heard the priests talk about getting demons out of people and he’d even seen a movie about someone that was possessed and was exorcised. So many unbelievable things were happening to him this day. So many, in fact, that he decided for the moment to suspend all disbelief and just believe everything. Later on he would find a balance and he would begin to think things through before he decided whether or not he believed in them. But for the moment he would believe. Luckily, Bari was telling only the truth. That was his nature. Even had he known Arthur would have believed anything, he wouldn’t have taken advantage of that. Well, maybe. But only if it was to convince him that some sort of extremely preposterous notion was true. He was at the point in the story when it was up to him to, not exorcise, but exercise the demon. This was how he told it:
“See, this was an odd type of neurosis. I’ve been possessed a few times. It happens fairly frequently to everyone. In most cases, it’s just some lonely bacteria that want someone to talk to for a while. You know, rather harmless stuff. Of course, as with any disease, there’s always going to be more serious cases. A neurosis itself can’t kill you but it can lead you to extreme self-harm. So there I was, I was stuck in a formal war with formal wear that would only wear me down if I fought and tried to remove it from my body, and for some reason it was obsessed with killing itself. The neurosis was kind enough to remain dormant for the entire prom, and actually the entirety of the after party. After the prom we all went to a friend’s house by a river, and there danced the night away and sat in the street and by the river. A sort of last hurrah before we all went our separate ways, into what adults tend to refer to as real life. I think that what allowed the neurosis to activate was that my own thoughts started heading downwards. Of course it was a triumphant night, but it signaled an end. Sure, I still had the summer. The end of high school wasn’t the end of the world, I wasn’t so foolish as to believe that, but there was something bothering me still. I think what it came down to was that that evening was a letdown. All the movies told me that it would be the greatest night of my life, and while I did enjoy myself on the whole, much better nights had been had, and hopefully much better nights would continue to be had. So, I sat by the river all night, pondering many things worth pondering, but for a moment I allowed my thoughts to sink downwards. And of course this resulted in the neurosis being awakened or activated or whatever the term is for when a neurosis leaves its hibernation and takes control. And lo! What did it want to do? Kill itself. But where a neurosis can’t kill a person, it can convince a person to kill themselves, and have the parasite die with the host. This one was bent on dying in a very specific manner too. It wanted to drown in the Pacific Ocean. At this point I certainly hadn’t the money for a plane ticket, and I had no car. The only means of transportation I had was my bicycle. I convinced it to let me finish high school at least, so I’d only count as the suicide statistic and not the dropout one, and when school ended I headed west. My country, when poorly drawn, looks like this: