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<\/p>\nA novel by EJ Spode.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chapter 13. Between a Rock and a Hard Place<\/p>\n
When Circe got out of the shower, she threw on a white terrycloth robe and went
\ninto the kitchen and made us a snack. She warmed up something she called
\n\u201cburek,” which was a flat puff pastry filled with cheese \u2013 feta cheese maybe? She poured us shot glasses of rakia, which was a kind of Serbian schnapps, although different from Slivovic. Or maybe Slivovic is a type of rakia; I wasn’t clear on that. Shit was tasty, though, kind of like homemade grappa, only smoother than it had any right to be.<\/p>\n
The burek was all kinds of cheesy flakey excellence, and the rakia burned
\nthrough it’s fatty, oily properties, making it seem like a much lighter snack than it surely was. While we were eating, Circe finally got around to addressing the two thousand pound bison bull in the room.
\n\u201cSo Spode, what’s the story with you and Penny these days?”
\n\u201cYeah\u2026that. To be honest I’m not sure.”
\n\u201cNot sure about what?”
\nI sat and thought. Circe waited.
\nMy thought processes were going like this: Did I know Circe well enough to talk about this? Did I trust her enough? Would she think it was weird to be talking about Penny so soon after hooking up? Did this mean she was interested in me? Was she probing for something else? Did she want to hear that it was over with Penny? Did she want to hear that it wasn’t going well with Penny? Did she care at all about Penny? Was she just making conversation? Was she testing me? Did she know I still had a thing for Penny? Did she want to see if I would tell the truth about Penny? Or\u2026was she offering to help me out with my Penny situation? Or, was she just being\u2026you know\u2026a good friend.<\/p>\n
All of those thoughts spun around my head like the wheel of fortune, until the
\nwheel came to rest on \u201cbeing a good friend.” I had no reason to believe that over the other options. It just happened to be where the wheel stopped.
\nI glanced at Circe. She was looking at me, waiting patiently. I came clean:
\n\u201cHere is the thing, Circe. I don’t know where Penny and I are at.”
\nCirce said nothing, but waited for me to say more.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd by that I mean I don’t know where I am at.”
\nCirce nodded.
\n\u201cI feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place here. It isn’t simply that I love
\nPenny; it’s also that I’m afraid of life without her. When she’s not around
\neverything goes to gray. It’s like some invisible vortex sucks all the color out of the world and then sucks out all the excitement and positive emotions and I’m afraid it’s going to suck me into a bottomless sea of nothing \u2013 a place far worse than death.”<\/p>\n
Circe took a giant bite out of her burek, looking at me the whole time. I
\ncontinued with the other side of my dilemma.
\n\u201cOn the other hand\u2026honestly, life with Penny is like being constantly
\nemotionally battered. Don’t get me wrong; there are moments that are great, but for every great moment there are so many that are deeply painful. It’s like getting smashed against the rocky shoals of Drama Island\u2026. So that’s my dilemma. I either accept a life of drama and emotional battering, or I end up dead at the bottom of an ocean of emotional nothingness.”<\/p>\n
Circe didn’t say anything, but sipped her rakia. She was waiting to see if I had anything to add. I figured I would add an invitation for her to comment.
\n\u201cAny advice?”
\nCirce nodded. \u201cI see the problem Spode. You know\u2026 the usual advice here is
\nthat you are supposed to take the battering because it’s better to be battered than to be dead, right?”
\n\u201cIs that what they say?”
\n\u201cThat’s what they have been saying forever, Spode. Think about it. It’s better to be alive and hurting than a zombie.”
\n\u201cIt is?”
\n\u201cYes it is. And you know it is.”
\nI nodded. Circe continued.<\/p>\n
But here is the question, Spode. You’ve never let the vortex take you to the
\nbottom of the ocean, right?
\n\u201cNope, never let that happen.”
\n\u201cSo the question is, how do you know what you are going to find there?”
\n\u201cWhat do you mean?”
\n\u201cI mean you are so sure it is taking you to a place devoid of feeling\u2026”
\n\u201cRight, but it is.”
\n\u201cWell that’s where it starts, but where does it end?”
\n\u201cI dunno, where do you think it will take me?”
\n\u201cThat’s the thing about vortices, Spode, we never know where we end up. I
\nmean, where did Dorothy end up when the tornado picked up her house?”
\n\u201cNot in Kansas.”
\n\u201cExactly right, she ended up in Oz.”
\n\u201cMaybe I don’t want to end up in Oz either.”
\n\u201cWould you rather stay in Kansas?”
\n\u201cUm\u2026”
\n\u201cThe thing is, Spode, you have no idea where you would end up. And I think\u2026I
\nmight be wrong\u2026but I think you are afraid to find out.”
\nWe sat in silence for a bit and sipped rakia. Well, that isn’t correct; it wasn’t 100% silent: I started noticing the noises in her kitchen. The compressor in her refrigerator sounded a bit shaky \u2013 like maybe it wouldn’t get through the year. I could hear the faint buzz of the incandescent lights overhead. I could also hear the heating air ducts in the apartment make thin, tinny, ghost-like noises as they expanded and contracted from the heat being pushed through them. That’s the fucking thing about silence. It doesn’t exist; it only gets quiet enough so you can hear the sad noises made by the infrastructure of our world, and when you hear that you realize how everything is being held together by string and chewing gum \u2013 like it could all collapse into a scrap heap at any minute.
\n\u201cHere is another question for you, Spode.”
\n\u201cShoot.”
\n\u201cWhy are you in such a hurry?”
\n\u201cAm I in a hurry?”
\n\u201cWell, you say you have to pass between a rock and a hard place \u2013 between a
\nvortex that is going to suck you down into nothingness and being bashed to
\ndeath on the rocky shores of Penny’s Drama Island.”
\n\u201cYeah\u2026”
\n\u201cWell, why do you have to go between them?”
\n\u201cI’m listening.”
\n\u201cWell, why not go around either the vortex or the island. Why go between
\nthem?”
\n\u201cWell, that sounds deep and all, but I don’t understand the metaphor. What
\ndoes it mean to go around Drama Island?”
\nCirce didn’t answer. \u201cI don’t know, Spode; we have to figure that out!”
\n\u201cOK\u2026how do we figure it out?”
\nThere was a long silence in which we both sat and thought about the problem.
\nHow the hell do you circumnavigate this? What is the long path that avoids the
\ndilemma? And what’s the method you use to figure out the solution?
\nFinally, Circe broke the silence: \u201cI tell you what, Spode, let’s do a tarot reading and see what the cards have to say to you.”
\nWell now that was an interesting proposal. I had never had a tarot reading done
\nbefore.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/image-32-1-202x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong><\/p>\n EJ Spode abides<\/a>. 3:AM<\/em> are serializing his novel weekly<\/a>. Keep up.<\/p>\n Image: Jana Astanov<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Chapter 1:<\/strong> Giants in the Earth<\/a>: Circe nodded. \u201cI see the problem Spode. You know\u2026 the usual advice here is Chapter 13 of EJ Spode<\/strong>‘s novel The Oddity<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":83013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84082"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84126,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84082\/revisions\/84126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nChapter 2:<\/strong> The Welcome Inn<\/a>:
\nChapter 3:<\/strong> Dimebag Bob’s<\/a>:
\nChapter 4:<\/strong> The Trojan Horse<\/a>:
\nChapter 5:<\/strong> The Turtle Diaries<\/a>:
\nChapter 6:<\/strong> The Cartagena Diaries<\/a>
\nChapter 7: Penny<\/a>
\nChapter 8: San Pedro<\/a>
\nChapter 9: Triggered<\/a>
\nChapter 10: Letters and Dreams<\/a>
\nChapter 11: Helena and Steady Eddie<\/a>
\nChapter 12: Circe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nthat you are supposed to take the battering because it’s better to be battered than to be dead, right?\u201d\u009d
\n\u201cIs that what they say?\u201d\u009d
\n\u201cThat’s what they have been saying forever, Spode. Think about it. It’s better to be alive and hurting than a zombie.\u201d\u009d
\n\u201cIt is?\u201d\u009d
\n\u201cYes it is. And you know it is.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n