Garlic and Butter

Sometimes my brain needs a rest, like the day I wrote this short story. Let your brain rest and enjoy:

Garlic and Butter

A short story with bite.

There was a snail in Nancy’s jewelry box. Quite a large snail, too, sitting on her lapis lazuli pendant. Ick. What the hell was a snail doing in her jewelry box? How did he get there?

If one snail eats another snail, Nancy read on-line somewhere, he retains the memory of the snail he eats. But, she wondered, does he––how did she know this was a he?––retain his own memory, or does the horror of what he’s done blot out all memory of the self who ate his fellow snail.

“Not at all,” said the snail, startling Nancy more than a little, “And what horror are you thinking of? I get hungry. This is a nice piece of lapis you’ve got here,” as he crawled, at a snail’s pace, across the broad blue stone of her former favorite necklace. 

He was talking. His creepy, ugly mouth wasn’t moving, thank goodness, and he was reading her thoughts. She had gone insane. 

“It’s not so surprising if you’re logical about it,” said the snail––in her head––ignoring Nancy’s second startled jump. “If you will notice, I am a rather large snail––for my kind, anyway.” He paused, stretched his neck high, and his two tentacles extended––with eyes on their ends looking at her from two different directions. Did that make him dizzy? Nancy thought she saw a sardonic smile. Could snails smile? Could snails be sardonic? She was definitely hallucinating. And it had been weeks since she’d even had a small toke–purely medicinal–and pot didn’t make you hallucinate, anyway.

“I have, you see, developed a taste for other snails. Rather a good way to acquire knowledge, don’t you think? Sometimes I encourage the sweet young snails to read things I would like to know about and guide them in the direction of their studies. They are the better for it, you know. Yes, snails smile. And you may be right, I have, perhaps, developed a certain cynicism. I shall have to watch that. What do you wear these rather large pink and green enamel earrings with? They are certainly” pause “colorful.” 

He was at least a tactful snail. Sweet young things? What were the memories of sweet young things? Did snails go through puberty? She didn’t need thoughts of adolescent snails running rampant through her mind. Her own teenage memories were embarrassing enough.

“I am not a pervert. I do not eat children. Their minds do not have enough information yet to be valuable.”  He paused, thoughtfully, cocking his head, “They are quite creative, though. I encourage that.” 

Noticing the still puzzled state of Nancy’s mind, he continued, in his patient, pedantic tone, “I encouraged several to study brains and that, of course, led me to the study of thought. One particularly tasty young thing was quite brilliant and gave me a good amount of useful information about thought patterns and energy. Telepathy, you see.”

Did he eat his fellow snails hot with garlic and butter? Too late, she tried to suppress the thought.

“Please! What a horrid, heretical thought! The smell of garlic and butter will signal the apocalypse.” The snail withdrew into his shell for a moment. Then his head poked out and Nancy caught a nasty gleam in the eye at the end of his extended right tentacle. “But what could I expect from someone who eats cows and chickens and fat dull lumps of potatoes. I certainly cannot imagine gaining anything from filling yourself with the memories of some placid neutered bovine stuffed with corn, half of whose short life was spent standing in its own waste matter. And what could a potato have a memory of anyway. Earthworms and plastic bags and pimply supermarket stock boys?”

“What I learn, I learn on my own. I don’t have to be a cannibal to do it,” said Nancy, aloud for the first time, rather startling herself and causing the snail’s antennae to wave wildly. Were his ears there, too? Snail anatomy was a little outside her store of knowledge. She was a bookkeeper for a small dress store. In her line of work, coming across a telepathic snail was a remote impossibility.

“Of course, of course,” smiled the snail, “But please, it isn’t necessary to shout.”

“I think I’m going crazy,” muttered Nancy. Her head was beginning to ache. “Snails can’t talk, and what is a snail doing in my jewelry box, anyway. Ugh! Slug!”

“There is no need for you to get huffy about it,” said the snail. He seemed stung by Nancy’s distaste for snails, at least without the benefit of garlic and butter. “I am not a slug. Snails are not slugs. We are a fine and honorable species. Some of us have shells far more beautiful than what you have here in this box of, I must say, rather tacky trinkets.”

“Honorable?” That raised Nancy’s left eyebrow a little. “Telling pretty little snails what to study to better themselves and then having them for dinner? Literally?” She ignored his slur on her taste in jewelry. He was probably right anyway; she didn’t have money for expensive jewelry, and the dress shop’s stock was, well, yes, tacky. But she got a discount.

“All in the pursuit of knowledge,” huffed the snail. “What I am doing is quite important, quite important.”

Poking around in other people’s minds.

“In the first place I am not ‘people’, I am a snail. And in the second place I am using a time honored method of learning,” he paused then went on, “In the third place can’t you think of instances where you’d like to know what someone else is thinking, and in the fourth place, how else could I communicate with you, and in the fifth place, most human’s minds are decidedly dull, anyway. All that bovine you eat. And chicken is worse. Stupid clucking creatures.”

Nancy immediately thought of Fred, pedantic Fred with his uppity Harvard degree. She had been dressing for their dinner date when she opened her jewelry box. Fred was being a little standoffish lately. She did sometimes wonder what he was thinking, or if he was thinking. He was usually fixated on her breasts. But he was smart. And educated. She’d graduated from a small-town high school with no particular honors.

“Exactly!’ snapped the snail.

She  wondered….?

“Yes, of course. I could teach you. It would be an interesting experiment. Though possibly only some rudimentary basics. All that cow, you see.”

“What do you suggest I eat? Snails?” snapped Nancy.

The snail disappeared into his shell.

“I’m sorry,” Nancy was contrite. Truth be told, she was interested in knowing what Fred might be thinking. And this skill could come in handy at work, too. For when she waited on customers, her other–well, primary–duty. And when the big corporate boss’s representative visited. And what if someday the boss actually showed up in person? The possibilities were–hmmm.

“Very well,” said the snail. “Your dietary habits are natural to your species, if unfortunate. But you seem to be extraordinarily empathic for a human; perhaps you could learn. We’ll try.”

“Are all snails like you?” asked Nancy.

“Oh, no. I have my specialty; others have their specialties. This particular study is my own unique area. And, I must confess, not altogether approved of by my colleagues. That happens all too often, you understand, when a scholar branches out into a new area of study. It takes some time for new ideas to be accepted, however useful and brilliant they may be.”

Nancy smothered her thoughts about inflated snail male ego as quickly as she could, but the snail cocked his head at her suspiciously, and his tentacles grew a bit longer, his eyes waving in a squinty manner. Squinty manner? Could a snail squint?

“I think,” he turned toward a mother of pearl pendant, one of Nancy’s favorite pieces of jewelry, “I should like this beautiful polished shell to sit in while we begin, so cool and smooth. Fortunately, not one of my ancestors. Let’s go somewhere more comfortable, shall we? It’s stuffy in your jewelry box. Not too near the heater, please, and out of the sun.”

That was the necklace she’d intended to wear, thought Nancy, with some dismay.

“It’s too gaudy for that pink sweater, much too large for you, and besides, you shouldn’t wear shells in winter,” he said as he snail-slowly and professorially adjusted himself in the center of the pearly shell. “Over there, I think.”

Nancy carried the shell, snail ensconced, to the table he indicated beside the small stuffed chair in the corner of her bedroom.

“Clear your mess off this table, please, while I collect my thoughts about how we are to begin. I’ve never attempted anything like this before. If this works, I have a lot of knowledge I could impart to you. You have a great deal of room in your mind. Virtually an empty slate. I’m quite excited.”

She registered the insult, decided to ignore it, picked up her coffee cup and a plate with muffin crumbs and candy wrappers on it and headed to her tiny kitchen, wondering if he could still hear her thoughts from there.

“Only the first part,” he said when she returned. “As you move further away your thoughts become a part of the general hum and impossible to differentiate. About fifteen feet is the maximum, and then only when there are not too many others about. It can become all a jumble then, you see. Now, to begin.”

“I suppose,” said Nancy. She was not very sure about all this. To be sure this was an exceptional snail, but what would this do to her mind? She already felt she was going crazy. And she was a little concerned about the snail’s motives.

“There is no need to be frightened. This is an important experiment for me. I recently ate an interesting student of cross-species communication, and I have wished to try his theories. My theories, now, I suppose. I shall begin by explaining the basics to you.”

Nancy looked at the clock and wondered how much time this experiment would leave her to get ready for her date with Fred the Harvard Graduate and Don’t You Forget it.

“Don’t worry, this first session will be quite brief. It will possibly take a number of sessions, but time is relative, you know, as another genius proved. Now, shall we proceed?”

Thirty minutes later Nancy was brushing her teeth when the doorbell rang. 

“Hey, Fred,” she called, “Door’s open. Come on in. I’m almost ready.”

Fred looked around, sniffing the air. “Hey, darlin’,” he called through the bathroom door, “I thought we were going for pizza? It smells like you’ve been cooking. I smell garlic.”

God, like she’d ever offer to cook for me. I get so tired of taking her out all the time. She eats like a horse and never ever offers to pay for anything. I gotta get rid of this girlfriend. There has to be something better out there. Somebody not fat, maybe.

Nancy cleared her throat. She was standing in the doorway, much less than fifteen feet away.

“Oh, hi.” His eyes, as usual, were on her chest. “Didn’t see you standing there. You ready, or did you already eat? Smells like garlic and butter in here.”

Nancy didn’t answer, just narrowed her eyes and looked at him. So much knowledge in that over-large and not-so-attractive body. How much butter did she have left? Maybe she should go to Costco.

“What? What?” said Fred.

Illustration by Kurt Nilson (done when his brain needed resting, too.)