Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

Thoughts ran through my head, the silly thoughts of a once care-free man—

Perhaps I should start my own cult. Use my middle initial so as not to be confused with the House of Platinum guy. Maybe I could call it The House of Vinyl Siding.

And—

What if I contacted these other Ben Cleavers? We could create a Ben Cleaver Society. Pool our resources and buy a ranch in Montana. Populate it with nothing but Ben Cleavers!

Thoughts like that.

I hit the back button.

My computer froze up again.

Hadn’t I wasted enough time? I’d already eyeballed the first hundred links, and as far as this Ben Cleaver was concerned, there wasn’t much to write home about. If anything, it made me feel like a grain of sand in a dirty kitty-litter box. I apparently didn’t rank very high on the Ben Cleaver totem pole.

Ben Cleaver; vice-president of a large company.

Ben Cleaver; faced death and caught it in the civil war.

Ben Cleaver; principal at an elementary school.

Ben Cleaver; leader of a cult.

And what could be said about me?

Ben Cleaver; message board stalker of writers much more talented than I.

But…

What if…

I hit the restart button, logged back onto the net, brought up the search engine and typed in my name.

396 hits. Huh. Did I do something different this time, or is the net really such a fickle mistress?

I skipped ahead to links 120-130.

Another blurb of mine on a message board.

“Mort, I’m a big fan. Where do you get your ideas?”

Okay, did everything need a fucking link to it?

Then there was the web page of a Steven Ben Cleaver. A youngster, apparently, who’d made it on some honor roll.

I never made the honor roll.

Another Ben Cleaver who was an endocrinologist.

More of Ben Cleaver, vice-pres of Val-Corp. The same press release over and over.

More civil war links to Ben Cleaver.

Shouldn’t a name be like a snowflake? A fingerprint? A strand of DNA? Something unique like a domain name, a patent, a social security number?

Jill shouted from the bedroom. “Aren’t you finished checking your email?”

“Be right there.”

I logged off.

As I write this, all is silent on the highway that winds past our backyard. No roar of semis or cars or motorcycles. And there’s no singing of birds, or the playful holler of the neighborhood children. And that fog — that blueberry swirl fog — is creeping up the hill.

I stopped checking the links to my name for a few days, but two nights ago—

I typed in “Ben Cleaver.”

217 hits.

I realize it can change daily, but that’s less than half of what it was when I first conducted this search.

More silly thoughts from what was still, at that time, a care-free man—

Was a conspiracy underway to get rid of all the Ben Cleavers of the world? Was the idea of a society of Ben Cleavers too much? Perhaps one of the other Ben Cleavers wanted to eliminate us one by one until only he remained. I suspected Ben Cleaver, vice-president of Val-Corp. To reach a position like that, you have to be crafty. Ruthless. He was only one step away from being on top of his company, so why not dominate the playing field of names as well?

Thoughts like that.

I scrolled through the search results. There was the usual cast. Civil War Ben Cleaver. Val-Corp vice-president Ben Cleaver. House of Platinum Ben Cleaver. Honor roll Ben Cleaver. Another inane blurb I left on a message board. Is it really necessary for these to be linked? I’ll have to watch what I say in the future, or at least not post after four rum and Cokes.

“Hey Mort, man — you rock! I mean, you really rock!!” I felt like pounding my head onto the keyboard.

Jill again. “Ben? Honey? You coming to bed?”

The women I’ve known don’t value the importance of alone time. Jill has said that if she were never alone for the rest of her life, it would be fine with her. In fact, she’d prefer that. Prefer constant company, continuous companionship.

I used to think this was a strange defect particular to women. But maybe I’m the one with the defect. Maybe Jill’s longing for constant companionship, whether it be with me or her family or friends, is a symptom of altruism, pure and simple. A desire to share. Maybe that’s the true sign of unselfishness.

Maybe I should spend more time with her.

My computer stopped working only ten minutes ago, so I’m going to write as fast as I can the old-fashioned way; on a pad of paper. With a pen .

I can no longer see the valley below. The phones aren’t working. I don’t know where Jill is. I shut the computer room window this morning, because what if that strange fog seeps into our house?

But…

Last night. Paranoia set in. Only 103 hits when I entered “Ben Cleaver”. The vice-president of Val-Corp and all his captivating press releases were gone. Maybe their computers were down. Their network? Hell, I didn’t know how it worked. But other Ben Cleavers were gone, too. The elementary school principal. The honor roll student.

I hit reload. The hits dropped to 98. I stared at the screen.

Hit reload again.

97.

Reload.

Still 97.

I noticed that civil war Ben Cleaver had disappeared.

Jill called out from the bedroom. “Ben?”

“In a minute.”

“How long are you going to be?”

“Just a minute!”

I tapped on the mouse. Hit reload again.

Exhaled. The number of hits remained at 97.

I had to stop. I had to pry myself away from the screen. I didn’t know what this was all about, but it couldn’t be something bad, could it? The worst it could be was some computer virus roaring across the virtual highway like a PCP freak on a Harley. Right?

I pushed the chair away from the computer, walked zombie-like down the hall and fell into bed.

“Sorry I snapped at you,” I whispered, but Jill was already out. I kissed the back of her neck and watched her sleep. She looked so vulnerable. A sleeping child. I rolled onto my back, but the pillow wouldn’t conform correctly to the shape of my head. It’s hard to fall asleep when you have so much to say, but don’t know how to say it, or are afraid to say it, or don’t want to wake up the one you want to say it to because she’s so goddamn beautiful laying there, and you feel that if you wake her, you’ll ruin something so pure and perfect and rare.

But mostly, I thought about the links.

What was going on?

And why should I care if tomorrow there were only fifty hits? Twenty hits? What difference would it make?

I told myself I wouldn’t even check. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Forget about it. I won’t even check my email until Friday. It was Tuesday then, so I figured three days of no checking. Jill’s right when she says I’m too damn obsessive about my email. Especially since all I get is spam about enlarging my penis and *** HOT COED COLLEGE GIRLS *** and Look and Feel Younger in Just 10 Days!

So who cares? Who cares if I don’t find out until Friday? Not me, boy. No way.

When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of cotton candy. I haven’t had cotton candy in over a decade, but I woke up craving it.

Before Jill woke up, I snuck down to the computer and fired it up.

How could I not look? Just a quick peek. I brought up the search engine.

Typed in “Ben Cleaver”.

Only two hits.

Two.

The note I’d left on Mort Castle’s message board. (Hey Mort, man — you rock!)

The other was for The House of Platinum.

Doesn’t matter. No big deal.

I tapped nervously on the mouse. I looked outside.

The valley below was engulfed in the blueberry swirl ice-cream fog. It crept up the hill in softly rolling waves. My hand trembled over the mouse. I was afraid to hit reload.