(Completed but not published.)

A Web Too High

or Toodles and The Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers

by Mark Fairchild

© Mark Fairchild, 1988, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

It began, of all places, at a Thursday morning meeting of the Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers in the Wide Eyed Bean Coffee House on 32nd Street and 31st Avenue. It was, admittedly, an audacious plan; one which would require tenacity, financing, and lots and lots of chutzpah. Just the way they liked such things!

The idea was to march en masse into the Skylian National Archives, right there in Skylia, and demand at quill point to see the original parchment of the Founding Principles of the Skylian State. Said document amounted to the essence of the overthrow of the preceding dynasty by the founders of the Skylian dynasty. (Very few people knew that the Founding Principles of the Skylian State consisted of a single sentence: "I'm out here with a gun, so get lost or die!") 

So far as anyone could tell, no living person had ever so much as seen the parchment on which it was written. It was, as the Skylian Royal Archivist frequently explained, much too convoluted for commoners to understand, and, anyway, it was infused with magic that would instantly melt the skin off anyone who viewed it. It was, therefore, best to view the library's 5-volume annotated copy, with all its footnotes, commentary, diagrams, charts, and graphs.

The enabling point on which the plan was based was that the Potodd lay on display and unprotected at the same National Archives. The potodd was the blank check on which the national treasury and consequently the Skylian economy was based, drawn up by the loser in a game of poker, i.e. it was his "pot odd"  and the winners fortune of a lifetime! 

This made it simple to snatch up the Potodd by hand and demand that the Founding Principles of the Skylian State be laid before them in exchange for the hostage Potodd — after they had read the document, of course. This would only work if they bore a sharpened, loaded quill and were willing to use it.

The Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers were primarily known for their audacity, not for their intelligence. They read quite well, but could not write. Well, they could at least write their names. Hence the current standoff in which five people, a loaded quill, and the blank check called “Potodd,” were pitted against a small, highly trained military force armed with daggers, swords, bows and arrows, Black Widow spiders, poisoned-toed centipedes, catapults, and acid coated lassos.

Demands had been made, threats asserted, acquiescence feigned, counter-threats made, cooler heads brought in, but still the standoff prevailed.

It was a warm day; warm enough that many people were out and about. One of them, Laqueta, was simply passing by the admittedly humorous scene when a brilliant member of Military Intelligence thought of a way to break the impasse. He snatched her from the street and marched her to the Front Line where he held his personal secretary's Loaded Quill to her head. Toodles, the Chief Intelligent Military Member, then announced his intention: “Hand over the Potodd or the bystander by gets it!”

“Gets what?” responded Goeter, a seventy-year-old Bored Stiff Coffee Drinker who was no match for the muscle-bound Officer Toodles. But the military officer who faced them from behind the shoulder of a frightened young woman was not very fearsome. At least not to the Coffee Drinkers. Still they were genuinely curious as to what Toodles had in mind.

This Audacious Response caught Toodles off guard, so he stammered for a bit, shrinking three inches in the process. “Well . . . we'll. . . we'll. . . Ink! We will Ink her!”

“How?”

“With the Quill, of course!” Office Toodles snapped.

“What do you mean? Will you let her see the ink, in order to scare her into a heart seizure?”

Toodles was embarrassed that he had not thought of such an Audacious Use of the Quill; but he quickly recovered his dignity, and his lost three inches of height, by declaring, “Yeah; she’ll See The Ink!”

Instantly, every Bored Stiff Coffee Drinker knew just how literate Officer Toodles really was, given that he seemed to believe that the sight of ink would cause instant death. “And what if that doesn’t kill her?” they replied.

“Well, of course, we will. . . we will Write on her.”

“Write what?”

“A Word!”

“What word?”

Which word had not occurred to Toodles; after all, a word is a word is a word, is it not? He stalled for time. “Ah . . . just a minute, please.” He turned to his assistant and hissed, “Get me one of those . . . those . . . word thingys. One of those word guides. a 'Field Guide to Words' or whatever it’s called.”

His assistant paused for a moment, staring at him blankly. “A . . . dictionary?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it. Go get one.” Then turning to the Horrid Hostage Takers he casually called out, “It'll be just a minute; we have to find the worst possible word, one that will make her suffer until you release the Potodd unharmed.”

Goeter sighed and replied with a suppressed bemusement, “Oh ... Oh, yes. Please do take your time. Such things must not be rushed.” Much subdued snickering ensued among the Coffee Drinkers. Toodles saw it, but assumed that it was the Snickering of Fear that he had learned about in boot camp. Many enemies, apparently, died with their faces contorted in laughter due to fear.

Poor Laqueta was baffled and scared beyond words. ‘What in God’s name is happening to me,' she thought. 'What are they going to write on me? What could be so terrible, so horrible, that they need to consult a dictionary to decide my fate?’

Meanwhile, Private Larsken was wandering from door to door in the background asking local residents and shopkeepers if they had a “dictionary.” Inevitably, he was met with confused shrugs and “Sorry.” In time he returned to Officer Toodles to whom he spoke in low tones. Officer Toodles turned, with much eye rolling, and pointed to some other lackey-looking cohorts, shaking his finger vehemently. Private Larsken scurried off to round up the indicated cohorts. 

Officer Toodles turned to the Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers and smiled his infamous Studied Pernicious Smile. Private Larsken and Cohorts formed a huddle and after much agitated “discussion,” mostly on Private Larsken's part, they hurried off to interrogate even more locals, most of whom answered hidden from behind hesitant, shivering doors. Most of them had dictionaries, but no one who could see the scene wanted to turn them over to an angry and ignorant sergeant who was waving an overloaded quill. So they lied.

The Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers watched the scene unfolding before them with increasing incredulity. Their general demeanor slowly evolved from sad bemusement to genuine concern as they witnessed the residents of the area subjected to such astounding and aggressive idiocy.

After about twenty minutes of this, Officer Toodles called someone on his Special Policing Communications Device, and after much muffled muttering slammed the SPCD (SpiCy-D was the verbal Shortism) into its holster—he had so many holstered devices that his shoulders and pants sagged.

The Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers no longer snickered. Someone with some intelligence might get involved. That would be disastrous. Or, well, maybe—maybe someone less blindly intent on his goal might deal with the situation more in their favor.

Officer Toodles stood thinking in silence momentarily with his back to the Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers. Then he turned, still holding poor Laqueta in a neck lock. Laqueta, who was obviously uncomfortable in this neck lock, had ceased to look scared and now looked merely bored. Tightening his grip on his hostage he turned to the Horrid Hostage Takers and shouted, “Alright, we cannot find a Field Gui . . . dik... shun,,,ne....ry ...but that doesn't matter! I'll just write . . . “rot” (“rot” being the biggest baddest word that he knew he could spell without embarrassing himself).

The Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers looked at each other. Now it was their turn to huddle, which they did for some time. Twice Officer Toodles tried to interrupt them. The first time the leader-by-default held an index finger in the air to indicate that they needed a minute. 

Five minutes later Officer Toodles tried to interrupt them again, this time using a rolled-up newspaper to magnify his voice. One Horrid Hostage Taker responded by holding up the Potodd while another held up a Quill! This tactic bought them another five minutes in a huddle. 

The last time Officer Toodles interrupted them, he did so to inform them that they had obtained a “Dic-shion-airy.” Again, Potodd and Quill hovered momentarily over the huddled mass of Thursday Morning Coffee Drinkers.

The discussion in this Extended Criminal Huddle Of Horror (as Toodles termed it) went something like this:

“This guy is nuts!”

“That's all well and fine for him, but he is terrifying that young lady.”

“And the neighborhood, looking for that dictionary.”

“But he's found a dictionary now, so he can just focus on us.”

“We have to do something. He is going to scare half the population with his threats, however ridiculous they are!”

“OK, but what can we do about it.”

Such discussion went on for some time, with said interruptions, before they settled on a plan. They de-huddled long enough to Make Their Demands (or “beg,” as Officer Toodles thought of it). 

Their demands were for (1) an hour, so they could think the matter over, (2) coffee for each of them—black, but with sugar, vanilla flavoring, and cream on the side—because it helped them think rationally, and (3) the hour was to begin when they got the coffee.

Officer Toodles reluctantly acquiesced, saying, “An hour after the coffee comes, and that is all! We will coddle Potodd Threatening Terrorists only so much and no more!!!”

The Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers thanked him: “Thanks Toodles!” “You are so sweet Officer Toodles!” “We don't deserve such nice, sweet police in Skylia!” “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” And so on and so forth.

Officer Toodles blushed.

The Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers then sat down in a tight circle and waited for their coffee. One pulled out a book to read. Another leaned against the building they were next to and closed her eyes. Another pulled out a phone and called someone. Two others put a piece of paper on the ground and played a number of pencil games, mostly tic-tac-toe.

Officer Toodles was flummoxed. Why were they not Concocting Their Despicable Devious Plan? The explanation he finally decided on was that they needed the time to enjoy their Last Few Minutes Of Freedom.

Time passed, and the crowd of onlookers grew—at a comfortable distance from the police and Officer Toodles' bystander hostage. They were quite peaceful. In fact, the entire scene took on a feeling of an old, now obsolete, pleasant Sunday afternoon at the band shell.

Eventually though the crowd had begun to murmur. The Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers displayed no particular reaction to the murmuring. Officer Toodles glanced briefly, and saw that they were reacting to an old airplane in the sky. A curiosity, but little more. He kept his Keen Eye soundly fixed on the Horrid Hostage Takers.

It was not very long, however, before one of his Subordinates came up and whispered in his ear. He turned and saw that the airplane was writing in the sky. It had thus far written “O-f-f-i,” so he said to the other officer, “don't bother me with that. Let them gawk, I have a Hostage Situation here!” He returned his Eagle Eye to the Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers, who were still being actively bored.

Then, yet once again, the subordinate interrupted him. “What?” he yelled, staying focused on the Gang With The Quill (he was devising new names for them as he waited).

“You really need to see this,” the other officer eventually said.

Exasperated, Officer Toodles turned around and looked up. There in the sky was written:

O-F-F-I-C-E-R

T-O-O-D-L-E-S,

This shook Officer Toodles a bit. He turned to glare at the Coffee Drinking Hostage Threateners on the sidewalk, but they were now looking at the sky too, obviously as amazed as everyone else. He turned again to see why his name was in the sky.

As he watched the airplane slowly spelled out:

G-O-O-D-B-Y

He turned and, obviously, they were gone. The Potodd sitting beneath an empty coffee cup unharmed except, it later turned out, for a very tiny coffee stain on one corner of the check.

The airplane finished:

                         -E.

Officer Toodles looked again. They were still gone. The Potodd was still there. The only hostage in sight had Officer Toodle's arm wrapped around her neck. 

He shouted, “Find them!” Officers swarmed the streets, but they could not tell Hostage Takers from By-Standers. Eventually, they gave up. They had to; after four hours of stopping everyone in sight, there was no one left in sight.

Finally, Officer Toodles released Laqueta from his arm lock, dashing the Loaded Quill to the ground. “Can I go?” she asked sheepishly. Officer Toodles only growled and walked dejectedly away.

His official report had his troopers handling crowd control, while he dodged poisoned stirring sticks hurled from tiny custom-made crossbows. According to his version of things, an anonymous passerby heroically leapt in and shielded him until his plan of skywriting “Officer Toodles, Goodbye” convinced the Hostage Takers that he was quite insane, and they fled in terror, inevitably dropping the Potodd in the process of fleeing.

It was nearly two months before Officer Toodles was awarded the highest award the Skylian royalty could offer—The Quadruple Star, now redesigned With Crossed Coffee Stirring Sticks, for heroically saving the Skylian economy.

Toodles, however, was constantly harassed by the Bored Stiff Coffee Drinkers—whose names he never knew, not even the name of the group. Every Thursday, an anonymous cup of coffee would appear on his desk.

At first he was outraged. He tried to catch them in the act of purchasing the coffee, but it was always home-brewed and in a cup from some random coffee house. Eventually, he took to viewing it as an unavoidable irritant, like a spider in a web too high to reach. He ignored them.

He never forgot just how useless that Field Guide To Words had been in his Hour of Need. 'Imagine a Field Guide To Words that has to be READ to be useful. 'Nary a picture in the thing,' he thought.

Never again would he take an assignment that involved Field Guides To Words, ink, or quills—or even pencils, for that matter. His superiors displayed compassion for him and always assigned such cases to other officers.

Eventually, he did become a coffee drinker, he even learned to use a dictionary . . . although he would never admit to any of it.

The End