Colin And The Terrible, Awful, No Good, Really Bad Day
By Lynne Thompson

It began as usual with disposing of yet still another blackened remains of a cross which had burnt itself out unnoticed from the night before when Colin emerged from the outbuilding which housed his many inventions, before going to work.

The charred pieces of wood joined many more in a sad refuse heap behind Colin's shed. He wiped the soot off his hands with a handkerchief and stuffed it into his mailbox where he always kept it handy. He never got any mail anyhow. Well, once in a while perhaps a dead animal or a lit firecracker. He enjoyed the antics of the children in the town. Some of them were still enrolled at the Fair Oaks Primary School where he taught several grades (well, did you think he could survive on his nonincome as an inventor in THAT society?!!).

Lately, though, things seemed to be going downhill as far as his teaching career was concerned. His class enrollment had fallen from a fairly healthy number of twenty-three students to only about six or seven since the school year began, two months before. He guessed it might have had something to do with the last science project and not a cholera epidemic the parents were using as an excuse to pull their children out of school. You'd think a homemade volcano spewing a water- bicarbonate of soda mixture was the work of Satan or something, the way they reacted.

"Goodbye, Jedediah!" Colin called out to his imaginary friend as he was leaving for the school.

Jedediah waved back to him from the window. Of all the friends Colin once had, Jed was all that was left.

He reflected on that as he walked to work. Old and crippled Mr. Isaiah Whitman, a close neighbor, hung on longer than the others. Mr. Whitman was ninety-six years old and could remember the days before the advent of such luxuries as horse-drawn buggies and hand-pumped water. Colin had designed and built for him a 'chair-on-wheels'. The gift was eagerly accepted...at first. Community volunteers worked, well, SORT of hard to keep the unpaved main street evenly graded, but ruts and potholes developed quickly. Mr. Whitman often found himself stuck in the middle of Main Street as traffic rumbled past him each way. Passers-by were treated to a loud demonstration by the old man of taking the Lord's (and Colin's) names in vain. Colin sniffled and wished that just for once, someone would make an effort to understand him. Instead all he got was lynch mobs trampling over his stringbeans and tomatoes in the patch out back.

He arrived at the schoolhouse and unlocked the door. It wasn't long before his students arrived, none lived very far away. He finished wiping the slate board clean of scribbled threats and turned to face the class. Only four students peered up at him from their desks. "Where are the Miller kids?" Colin asked Joe Riddings, who lived the closest to the Miller family. "I dunno, something about ty..typhoid," The seven-year-old piped. "Mr. Mallory, what'd they mean when they said you're going to eternal dammanation? Are you going on vacation?"" Colin sighed and decided to simply start the day's lessons rather than answer THAT one. The morning passed uneventfully, except for when at recess Clarence Hopkins and Elizabeth Beacham disappeared. Colin ordered the remaining children into the schoolhouse while he searched the nearby woods. He finally found them hiding behind the milk-house of a nearby farm. Clarence had been just about to show Elizabeth his 'slingshot'. Colin seized the two by their earlobes and dragged them back to school. He dropped them into their seats, then continued lessons.

At noontime, Susannah showed up with a lunch basket. The children ate their lunches at home, so Colin and his squeeze had a romantic lunch under the old oak tree in the schoolhouse yard.

"Mother told me if I didn't dump you I'd regret it for the rest of my life," Susannah remarked. "Oh, by the way, I took her advice. I'm going with John-Boy Walton to the barn dance tonight." She gathered up the remains of their lunch, grabbed the half-eaten apple from Colin, and shoved it all into the basket. "I put everything you gave me on the porch of your house. And, Colin dear, Jedediah IS imaginary. He never existed at all. Okay? Bye!" She was gone, leaving poor Colin sitting alone on his outspread jacket. He sniffled, then checked his pocket watch. Nearly time to the students to return.

"Ma, I saw Mr. Mallory go into the woods and when he came out Elizabeth and Clare Hopkins were with him and he had his hands all over them," Noah Beacham told his mother. She grabbed her children and marched them off in the direction of the Hopkins' house.

Joe Riddings got stung by a bee as he walked back to school. His arm swelled up and he had to be taken to the doctor's office. "It's got to be that Mallory," The doctor growled, "He's bringing the wrath of God down upon us for allowing him to remain in our community!" "Kill him!" Someone else shouted.

Colin waited for the children to return. Of course, none did. He fell asleep under the oak tree, soothed by the sound of wind rustling the leaves above. He awoke at half-past two, still alone. He locked up the schoolhouse and headed home. When Colin arrived, his porch was filled with stuffed toys, bunches of dead wilted bouquets, and a cedar hope chest with a barn sale tag still on it. He forced his way through the junk and went in.

Jedediah informed him of the devil's sign scrawled with berry juice on his forehead. Also the ludicrously curly purple moustache on his upper lip. Colin groaned and began to try to scrub them off.

He decided to get away from the town for the rest of the afternoon. There was a flying machine he'd built in his shed. It was a beautiful day with a good wind, so Colin decided to take his machine out to the foothills and practice with it a bit. He dragged his rude homemade glider on a wagon through town. Everybody stared, and made signs of protection to keep the evil spirits away.

He passed the barn where the evening's dance was to be held. A bonfire pit had been dug and logs stacked neatly nearby. An effigy hung on a beam over the pit. It looked familiar. Colin sighed and kept driving.

He drove up to a smaller bluff outside of town where it wasn't too high and fairly clear of trees below. He pulled his machine off the wagon and harnessed himself in. Then he unharnessed, dragged it to the edge of the bluff, and reharnessed up. Ready to fly, he took off.

The wind caught the wings and lifted Colin up, then slammed him, screaming with fear, right into the only clump of trees around for a half-mile. So much for his fantastic flying machine idea. He had dreamed about inventing bigger ones which would carry dozens of people to the next town five miles away, faster than any wagon or coach. The dream screamed and died as he hit the ground. Hard. He didn't see the three persons, two men and a sluttishly undressed woman, running toward him, at first.

Colin stared at one of the men, who had a very dark face. He'd never seen a black man before. "Did you know you have a purple moustache?" The sluttishly undressed woman asked Colin, who turned red with embarrassment and muttered something unintelligible. He fetched his wagon down the broken flying machine and loaded it back on. His new comrades followed him without waiting to be asked. They also hitched a ride into town with him without asking. He was seriously wondering if they would ever go away. He was enough of an outcast as it was, without these weirdly-dressed strangers tailing him. He ran as fast as he could to Susannah's mother's house, trying to no avail to shake them, where he tried to talk her out of dumping him. Susannah, not her mom. Mother Morehouse called the one named 'Maggie' a whore and a strumpet and slammed the door in their faces.

They followed him back to his workshed and one of the strangers, babbling about parents he never heard of, busted the pocket watch Colin's father left to him. Then they held him down while one of them shoved a... microdot thing against his forehead while he kicked and hollered for help. Of course, noone came to rescue Colin. It caused him to hallucinate about the persons one of the strangers had babbled about. "Mother!" Colin sobbed, "Why did you leave me, Mother?!" "Cut the crap and be a man, dammit," The 'Dad' vision yelled at him. "That especially means no more Jedediah, understood?!"

"NO!" Poor Colin howled as he came out of his trance. He was disappointed to see the strangers were still in his house. Worse than that, they had opened his icebox and made themselves at home. The one named 'Maggie' was sitting slumped on a wooden bench, legs splayed apart, giving everyone in the room a nice beaver shot. Unfortunately, none of the men noticed. They were peering out the window toward where Colin's garden patch was kept. A great deal of noise, voices and shouting filtered into the workshop from outside. "It's a lynch mob!" The one named 'Quinn' yelled. Colin groaned to himself. "Oh no, NOT again!" He had just planted winter squash. Now that would be all trampled to hell. The strangers grabbed Colin. "We have to get out of here, NOW!" A whirling blue tunnel filled the center of the room. Colin stared at it, both terrified and fascinated at the same time.

"GO!" Someone shoved him hard from behind. The pull of the vortex sucked a no longer fascinated but now fully terrified Colin in, screaming at the top of his lungs. He flew through the tunnel, helpless, until at last he was suddenly dumped onto hard ground. "OOF!" He looked up and the strangers were there also, picking themselves up and dusting off.

Hyperventilating, he got to his feet. He was in a very strange place which bore very little resemblance to his home. Strange metal horseless buggies with people sitting inside them whizzed past at a frightening speed. The buldings were made of strange materials and many of them towered straight up to heaven. Looking up at them made Colin feel dizzy and unbalanced. "Come on, bro," Quinn said, tugging him along.

"Where are we going? What is this place?" Colin wanted to know.

"Welcome to Progress Heights, San Francisco," Maggie replied.

"Is this the future?" Colin asked as he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.

"Hey, my man, did you have a nice trip?" Rembrandt snickered. Colin looked at him. "I haven't gone anywhere. I've been right here since we arrived," The joke fell real flat. His new companions looked as though momentarily considering whether to dump Colin at the nearest shelter. Then they shook it off and dragged him into a department store to re-outfit him. The Amish clothes were left in the mens' fitting room area. Colin paraded around proudly showing off his new attire, a perfect Bill & Ted clone. The others snickered behind their hands when he wasn't looking.

"Hey, Colin, say 'dude'," Maggie requested, smirking.

"Dude," Colin answered.

The others stumbled around bent over helpless with laughter, tears streaming from their eyes.

Colin watched them, wondering what the joke was. Then he sighed.

Some things, apparently, never change...