The Myth of Wile E

Mirror-Universe Goateed Version

So. Every night it was dark, as night tends to be. And in this matter the indoor/outdoor cucumber Christmas lights were no help. It seemed they were one of those old "series"-type strands where if one cucumber goes out, they all go out.

No doubt you've been thinking: the obvious solution to my darkness problem was to get some glowworms. As a matter of fact, I did know of a boggy area around a nearby pond with gobs of glowworms in the muck beneath the cattails. I could've scooped a bunch of glowworms into a jar and had my own magical green lantern—for a while. But I dismissed this idea because, as a kid, I'd discovered the hard way that glowworms were capitalists to a fault. If you put a bunch of them in a jar they'd eat one another until only a single big fat glowworm was left. Well, no thanks. I didn't want to be a party to that.

Nor did I really want to go wandering around the woods in the dark, anyway. Sure, we all know trees are safe enough during the daylight hours. With their drowsy nodding and sighing, they're harmless as an elderly matinee audience. But come nightfall, that same crowd of trees feels more like a tree mob, closing in on you with nefarious intentions. When it's dark you just know you've slipped through the looking glass somehow, into the wrong world, where everything safe and familiar has been replaced by a mirror-universe goateed version of itself.

So I made myself a nice snack of Royal Caribbean pears and settled in for a long night.

By the dying halo of the flashlight, I wrote. I made a list of Things to Get in Town (the Next Time I Go There), item number one of course being "batteries." Then I wrote a letter to Dougie, telling him all about spring in my valley. If a picture's worth a thousand words, I wrote about three-fifths of a landscape. Before sealing his letter I'd wait for the moon to rise, and hold the envelope under the sky to trap a bit of fresh moonlight inside. Poor Dougie used to love the moon (at least, he did whenever he got "enchanted"). It had been an awfully long time since he'd gotten to see it.

All around me, the night filled up with sounds. They came out like stars. At first I'd notice them one by one: An owl crying Whooo? Whooo? Whooo? like a restless spirit demanding answers. Something (a bird? a bobcat?) shrieking like a monkey. And then suddenly there were countless noises, everywhere.

Teeny toenails tapped across my roof and scurried through the trees. Every few minutes I heard a strange, echoing conk-conk-conk, like something knocking on hollow wood. Bugs and frogs filled out the percussion section with their ch-ch-chs and their tst-tst-tsts, like millions of tiny pepper mills and maracas.

And every time the wind blew, the trees couldn't help whispering about it.

I paced my home. When at last the moon rose, it followed me from room to room. It wasn't a full moon, just a wide Cheshire-cat grin, smirking at me wherever I went. I'm not sure what his big secret was.

As I paced, I got to thinking: If nighttime is the Mirror Universe, what about the things that are "evil" in our world? In the darkness, would they be swapped for better versions of themselves? And so I hiked up the hill (hurrying past all those sinister trees that were no doubt plotting my demise), to check out the coal-burning power plant.

And would you believe it? The ugly power plant had been transformed into something magical, all twinkling lights and glowing silver smoke; it looked like a fantastical Seussian factory that conjured clouds and stars.

I rushed back home and composed a poem called "Ode to Darkness," writing by the grin of the moon.

Just before dawn I ventured back up the hill to mail Dougie's letter and an entry into the Free!! Poetry Contest!!, and then I sat and watched until the sun came back and the world transformed into itself again, and even the Cheshire cat's smile vanished in the sunrise.