The Stairs, Chapter 35
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 59
THE STAIRS
© Tom Scocca, 2025
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, and events is entirely coincidental, with the exception of the events in Chapters One and Two, which happened more or less as written, on the line between Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, on Memorial Day weekend in 1999.
35.
Our own frozen moment was abruptly broken by the sound of Maxine yelling. "You KNOW I want a pony," she cried, shoving Dr. Argemend and backing away from us, toward the other end of the platform. "You SAID that I could have one, and now it's Christmas and now you say I CAN'T HAVE A PONY! You LIED to me!"
Dr. Argemend and Norman Melk moved after her, babbling comforting words. Everyone around us turned to stare at them. "I WANT A PONY!" Maxine wailed.
"Don't watch!" Theo hissed. "Hurry, while nobody's looking at us!"
I turned to see him holding out the slingshot. The elastic flopped around as he thrust the handle into my left hand. With his other hand, he stuffed three acorns into my right. "Go!" he said. "I can't shoot that far."
I looked over the side railing of the deck, at the tree beyond. There was a big orange bulb sticking out near the end of a branch, about 15 yards away. I focused on that one, breathed in, and raised my left arm. The slingshot was braced against my wrist. I tucked an acorn in the pocket, drew it back, and let go.
The rubber twanged. The acorn sailed a good two feet above the bulb and vanished in the dark. I exhaled. Behind me, Maxine was still yelling: "There is nothing—NOTHING—I need more than a PONY!"
I drew back another acorn and let fly again.
This one carried a foot to the left. I heard someone say "Ow!" from out of sight beyond the tree.
"Relax," Pythia said.
"P! O! N! Y!" Maxine shouted.
"Relax?" I said. Everything was a flashing din. There were two moons in the sky. Our entire existence was about to be crushed like a necktie in a hydraulic press.
"You'll get it next time," Pythia said.
"You're breathing too soon," Theo added.
My little brother was right. I lifted the slingshot again, with the last acorn in the pocket. This time, I breathed in as I drew it back. I held it long enough to settle my full attention on the one orange bulb, and no longer.
I didn't consciously know I'd fired till I heard the sound of glass breaking. The rubber band was flopping loose around my wrist.
The giant tree went dark, all at once. The whole Electrified Yuletide Garden went dark. Maxine stopped yelling. The band trailed off, with one last squeak of a piccolo. If anything, the silence seemed heavier than the darkness.
Then, from out past the edge of the Garden, there came a crackling whine that rose to a deafening wail. A blue-green light flooded the miniature city and the real buildings all around, growing brighter and brighter and more and more unearthly, casting everything in a sickly monochrome. The boxy building was too blinding to look at.
And then, with a SNAP! so loud it felt like a blow to the head, everything was dark again. A smell of ozone and burnt rubber spread over the Garden. People began to whisper and then mutter and then exclaim at the top of their lungs.
The western moon still shone in the sky, brighter than ever in the darkness. The eastern one was gone.
"Now," Dr. Argemend said. "Marta—"
"Aww," Marta said.
"If nothing else, our young friends depend on it," Dr. Argemend said sternly.
"On what?" Theo said.
Marta sighed and gave Dr. Argemend a salute with a forepaw. "On holding up our end of the deal," she said. She vanished into the holly bush.
"What are they doing?" I asked.
Before Dr. Argemend could answer, white light spread over the artificial snow again. The model elevated train started clacking into motion until it reached regular speed. The crowd stopped shouting and fell into a hush as the lights came on at City Hall, around Fort Muntjac, over Shroe Field, setting every detail of the miniature city aglow again. The carousel horses turned peacefully in their circle, rising and falling. Light swept up the Christmas tree, shining gloriously at the center of the illuminated Yuletide Garden, with one bulb missing.
With a tiny whine of feedback, the loudspeakers came back on. "Through any setback," the announcer said, as smoothly as if it had been written in his script, "through tempest or torrent or temporary interruption, you can know the Marble City Electro-Power Company will always bring you the light you need."
"The squirrels went back," Dr. Argemend said. "And redid what they'd undone."
"And now," Norman Melk said, "while the crowd is still absorbed in the show, on its way to convincing itself nothing untoward ever happened, it is time you went back, too."
"Give me the slingshot before somebody sees it," Theo said. I looked down and saw I was still holding it, and handed it over for him to put in the bag.
"Good shot," Maxine said. "I mean, the one at the end. That one was good. I don't know how much longer I could have kept throwing that tantrum."
"An excellent piece of theater," Norman Melk said. "I would expect no less from our Dramatical Society's junior auxiliaries. Let us go now, before the show ends and the rest of the crowd starts clogging up the walkways and the train station."
Go? I felt a rush of dread. "How can we get home, if the resonator is destroyed?"
"If my calculations are right, our time frames shouldn't slip all the way out of harmony at once," Norman Melk said. "The more well-established points of connection ought to hold for a little while."
"How long is a little while?" Maxine asked.
My watch said 4:35. "Certainly an hour," Norman Melk said. "But I wouldn't want to take longer than two."
Find previous chapters of The Stairs here.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, July 7, 2026
★★ The sulky sky and sodden air pushed out a prickly mist. Four pigeons and three starlings converged around a pizza crust on the sidewalk. The subway was hotter than the outdoors had been, or was at least bereft of breezes, and the subway car was hotter than the platform. For the trip back home, the same car with the same broken air conditioning arrived on the uptown side. The drizzle had stopped for the walk to dinner but carrying the rain jacket was a hedge against new rain or any further drop in the temperature—a hedge that paid off with the sight of wet pavement outside the restaurant afterward.
New York City, July 8, 2026
★★★★ The windows could be opened; the balcony could be sat out on; leaves trembled against a sky of deep clean blue. The light had its sharpness and sparkle back. The heat rose only slowly inside the apartment, but outside it was blasting wherever the sun reached, until the calm semi-warmth indoors needed to be replaced by air conditioning for people coming home to get any real relief. A pigeon, lost in backlighting, took off in a noisy burst from a head-high railing, unseen until it was a yard or so away. The leaves facing into the sun were as dark as astroturf.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Cookery: Choice Recipes Collected by the Woman's Club of Palo Alto, published in 1903 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Egg Sandwiches
Boil the eggs hard; rub the yolks to powder and chop the whites very fine. Mix whites and yolks to a paste with mayonnaise, season to taste and spread between buttered slices of bread.
Bohemian Sandwiches.
Rub cottage cheese to a paste with Worcestershire sauce and a few olives finely chopped. Spread between buttered slices of white bread.
Cheese Sandwiches.
Into one tablespoonful of mayonnaise dressing beat two tablespoonfuls of grated cream cheese. Butter thin slices of whole wheat bread and spread one half with the cheese paste, cover and cut into fancy shapes.
—Mrs. G. B. Little.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by our continued offerings, be sure to send along a description of your experience and a photo or three to us here: indignity@indignity.net.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
