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Jigsaw Deadly
by Joseph Howse

Arlo Baxter sighed -- an uncomfortable sigh. How much worse could it get? He was eyeing the stacks of wrinkled Reader’s Digests and battered picture books. However, he had something else to sigh about, too.

Arlo’s jaw ached -- or not so much ached as prickled. A crazed, electrochemical cat was prickling his jaw (or so he imagined). Over the past week, the sensation had progressed beyond feathery, beyond fluffy, beyond astringent; yes, it was distinctly prickly -- and since Arlo was just about due for his semiannual cleaning, he gave in to his family’s concerns by booking an appointment.

What was keeping the dental hygienist?

The phone rang. The receptionist (ring!) finished filing (ring!) the last nail (ring!) of her left hand, with which she then grabbed the receiver. “Drs. Hertz and Payne Dental Clinic; Sally speaking; how may I help you?

“Sure. ... Sure! ... And did Dr. Hertz prescribe you something for that? ... And have you been gargling with it regularly? ... Okay. ... I’m sure he’d be happy to see you again! Now, you like the 8 a.m. slots, don’t you?”

Arlo shut his eyes and leaned his right ear on the corresponding hand. (He cared about both his ears but in politeness he could cover just one, the stronger.) Sally really pushed the 8 a.m. slots. She had probably learned to do that in one of her dental reception seminars.

When the hard sell was over and the phone lay back in its cradle, Arlo raised his head and immediately regretted the pressure he had applied to his jaw. The electrochemical prickling cat had resented the rough handling. Nothing now would soothe it, as much as he might pet it by grinding his molars.

A ponytailed, white-grinning, aqua-suited hygienist, named Martha, sprung from the clinic’s back rooms. “Arlo?” she called. “Come right this way, please.”

Arlo stood and wove his way around the boring toys and children on the buff-carpeted floor. As he and Martha walked, she grinned over her shoulder and issued the usual questions. “How have you been, Arlo?”

“Fine, and you?”

“Good, and what about your family?”

“Okay.”

Now what would Arlo ask? Had Martha ever mentioned anything about her family? Did she have one? Arlo was not sure and would not risk it.

They reached the dental chair. “Just sit on down,” Martha invited. Arlo complied and shifted until the headrest no longer pinched his neck. Martha lowered the dental chair, took her own seat -- an arthritic-looking, rolling contraption -- and then wheeled over to the counter where Arlo’s dental chart lay. “Any new medications or health conditions?” Martha inquired.

“Well, no,” Arlo faltered.

“No?” echoed Martha. “Any concerns about your dental health?”

“Yeah, well,” Arlo dove in, “I’ve got this sensation in my jaw -- this prickling sensation.”

“Prickling?” asked Martha as she wrote on the chart. “You mean pins and needles?”

“No, prickling -- like cat claws.”

“Hmm. I’ve never heard that description before.” She wheeled back to gaze into his eyes. “How long have you had it?”

“This past week it’s been getting worse.”

“Where is it?”

Arlo indicated the place where he had rested his palm so shortly ago. The hygienist pursed her lips, masked and armed herself, and said, “Okay, open wide for me.”

The examination (fruitless) and the cleansing (minty) occupied the next half hour. Arlo declined the offer of sunglasses, so he spent much of this time glancing aside from the searing lamp overhead. He developed an insalubrious acquaintance with the striped wallpaper and off-the-shelf floral prints that graced the workplace of Drs. Hertz and Payne.

Once Martha exhausted her repertoire, including the didactic and the cautionary, she rose and said, “Thank you, Arlo. I’ll go find Dr. Payne for you now.”

“Thanks so much, Martha,” Arlo bubbled. As he waited for the hygienist to return with the Doctor, Arlo wondered whether he had time to grab and read his chart.

No.

The head of Dr. Amber Payne slid into Arlo’s view. An angular, bespectacled woman, she never went without her germ-proof mask. She was, indeed, unimaginable without her mask or, equally, without her latex gloves, her angled mirror and prodder, her magnifying goggles.

“Hello, Arlo!”

At home, Arlo believed, she must have cut up meals with her mirror and prodder, slipped each bite up under her mask, washed the dishes with her gloves on, and checked for microscopic grease marks using the goggles.

“Hi, Dr. Payne.”

“I hear,” she hummed, “you’ve been having some pins and needles in your right upper jaw.”

“Prickling,” Arlo burbled. He needed to spit out or swallow more froth. “More like prickling.”

“Open wide,” the dentist requested. She made the lamp swoop down to illuminate his mouth’s deepest recesses. She probably used the very same lamp in lieu of candlelight for romantic dinners.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” chirped Dr. Payne. “Do you want the sunglasses?” Arlo nodded and attempted to smile but the effort only made him drool. “Looks like we need some more suction here,” Arlo’s dentist observed.

Martha passed the sunglasses and suction device to Dr. Payne, who in turn passed them to Arlo.

“Thank you!” squeaked Arlo once he had suctioned his spittle and shielded his eyes.

“Of course!” the dentist replied. “Open wide. A little wider. Very good!” The electrochemical prickling cat found it not so good. Arlo’s eyeballs swam from side to side. The investigation went on.

At length, Dr. Payne exhaled. “Doesn’t he have clean ones, Martha!”

“Yes, he does,” said Martha -- but to qualify her agreement, she added, “There’s some recession of the gumline, especially in the upper right quadrant.”

“There is some,” hummed Dr. Payne, briefly sweeping her gaze over to that land of barren crags, “but I’m wondering more what could be wrong back here. I see ... nothing amiss.” She whipped the instruments back out of Arlo’s mouth and swiveled toward the charts. As an afterthought, she shut off the lamp and muttered, “You can close your mouth now, Arlo.”

“Thank you!” Arlo said again. Martha grinned and removed the sunglasses.

“I’d like some X-rays,” continued Dr. Payne, “but unfortunately our machine is out of order.”

“That’s not good,” said Arlo.

“No,” the dentist agreed, “but who am I to tell Stepan -- Dr. Hertz, Arlo -- to yell louder on the phone to our suppliers?”

A shaky giggle escaped from Martha.

“What should I do?” Arlo stammered.

“You’d better see your family physician,” suggested Dr. Payne. “This sort of sensation -- it could be neurological. You’ll have to be persistent, Arlo, and get yourself some attention! Come back to me if you don’t get satisfaction. Do you want something for the pain?”

“No, it’s not really pain -- more like prickling -- and Tylenol doesn’t seem to do anything for it.”

“Okay. Keep me updated,” Dr. Payne told Arlo. “Make sure you tell Sally I told you so.”

Thus concluded the first inconclusive appointment with respect to Arlo Baxter’s prickling jaw.

* * *

The following week, emboldened by his family’s growing concerns, Arlo Baxter secured an appointment with his family physician, Dr. P. Earl Gates. Advised that the Doc was “fitting” him “in”, Arlo came early -- an error.

There was nowhere to sit. A vastness -- the collective waiting space of one dozen family physicians -- brimmed over with human dysfunction. Here, one body hacked; another limped; another blabbed. A miasma of vile flora and fauna filled the poorly ventilated air. A factory’s loading bay would have seemed more fresh and free.

Arlo stood with crossed arms as he enviously gazed down the rows of limbs splaying out from the dwarfish chairs. What now? The Doc, if still in the running, had to be running behind. With perhaps an hour to kill, Arlo escaped into another world. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the world of the Doc’s potted plants.

“Please ... sneeze on me so I can drink,” the hydrangea seemed to beg.

“Does it look like I’m enjoying the Holidays?” the Christmas Cactus might have rasped.

They could have rewritten "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner":

“I fear thee, ancient Spiderwort! / I fear thy skinny frond! / And thou art long, and lank, and brown, / As is wet Durabond!”

Arlo snapped out of it. Like an idiot, he had been resting his ear on his hand again. His elbow prickled too, where he had braced it against his side.

How, for the sake of the electrochemical prickling cat, could Arlo keep his hands busy elsewhere? Against his better judgment, he reached for one of the office’s hundreds of ragged magazines. The once-glossy pages, now matted with fingerprints, were surely conduits for contagion. He could not help it. Needing to read in this situation was like needing to search the fish plant’s dumpster for food.

The media available in the Dr. Gates’s waiting area was as up-to-date and incisive as that found in POW camps. The magazine in Arlo’s hands reported on the previous year’s breakup of two celebrities whom he did not recognize. He surreptitiously switched it for the fashion file, which (despite its having expired in an earlier season) also contained nothing recognizable to Arlo. Next, he perused bullish predictions about the stocks of dead startups that he had also never known.

What else might Arlo have unearthed had his expedition been longer, more measured? Perhaps slathering game reviews of the latest Atari releases? Or biographies of men in the Politburo? Here, for eternity, lay every imaginable morsel of belated and uninspired news, short of obituaries for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

“Mr. Baxter,” uttered an exhausted man.

Arlo turned and let the magazine slip back onto the heap. Dr. Gates -- the stocky, whiskered Dr. Gates -- had come into the waiting area. Drawn as if by magnetism, Arlo shuffled up to the Doc. They exchanged nods. “Well, go on ahead,” said the Doc, indicating the cramped, cluttered examining room. Dr. Gates gathered Arlo’s chart before following. Then, the fiberboard door swung shut with one nudge from the Doc’s forefinger.

“How are you?” Arlo pre-empted as he sat facing the side of the Doc’s desk.

“I won’t complain,” was the answer. Dr. Gates sat down, laid out Arlo’s file and began looking for the royal blue fountain pen that should have been beside the day planner. “What can I do for you?”

“There’s this prickling in my jaw, right here,” Arlo recited. “For two weeks, it’s been getting worse and worse. I’d say maybe it’s starting to spread to my ear and sort of down my neck and shoulder.”

Ah, the pen was under the day planner! “Any change in sleeping habits?” asked the Doc as he began to pen.

“No,” said Arlo, “I’m sleeping the same way, as far as I know.”

“Been in any accidents -- not necessarily recent?”

“No -- well ... no,” Arlo replied.

The Doc bit his pen and savored the firm resistance given by the steel. Presently, he said, “I’ll just get you to hop up on the table.”

The examining table was, indeed, only one hop away from the patient’s chair. As he mounted that ledge and left jagged holes in its pristine, slippery covering of paper, Arlo studied two laminated charts hanging on the wall. They showed -- in hues of peach, fuchsia, cobalt and custard -- cross-sections of the male and female torso. Would cross-sectioning feature largely in this examination? Despite the paper sheet, one could have wished for more sterile conditions.

“Say ‘aah’,” instructed Dr. Gates.

“Aah,” said Arlo and thus another tongue depressor ended its useful life. The tip of an ear probe similarly found its way to the yellow plastic bag in the Doc’s scruffy white wastebasket. The basket did not close properly, so the Doc had to handle its lid, stained with old bodily fluids. A tool for hammering joints and scratching foot soles lived to see another dawn, as did the stethoscope, albeit unwarmed by the prospect. The ear probe, sans tip, did double duty by shining in Arlo’s eyes.

“There’s some asymmetry to your eye movements,” Dr. Gates observed. “I’m going to get you an appointment with Chuck Crane, the neurologist, and I’ll ask him to book you for an MRI ahead of time.”

“Do you suspect anything?” Arlo asked.

“Not so much -- but I’ll read up on it,” Dr. Gates replied. “These kinds of symptoms often go undiagnosed and often go away -- but if you feel any change, don’t stay quiet. Let me know, right?” He started writing, even while squinting into the invisible distance that enveloped the windowless room. “And I can push for you if you don’t hear about an MRI as soon as you’d like. Take these blood tests, too. They might show something.”

“Thank you,” breathed Arlo as he collected the blood requisition from the Doc.

Thus, with another nudge to the door from the Doc’s forefinger, Arlo’s second appointment was over.

* * *

The following month, with leverage from Dr. Gates, Arlo received an invitation to come to the hospital for an MRI. The rapidity of his advance up the diagnostic ladder left his family and peers flushed with hope and fear.

A little searching brought Arlo to the registration area for Diagnostic Imaging. A spindle of numbered tickets hung on the wall. Arlo approached the plastic, ketchup-red contraption and clumsily yanked out several tickets with his prickling right hand. His lowest number was 00. He stuffed the other tickets back up the chute and checked the digital display, which read 89.

This time, determined not to let the waiting process drag him down, Arlo went strolling up and down the corridors. A number of original artworks, encased behind weighty glass and further protected with the best cardboard corners, flaunted the munificence of the building’s original donors. Ranging from gloomy portraits of people with IV poles to creepy fetus sculptures, the works left an impression that could only be described as indelible.

Arlo returned just in time to hear the warm, welcoming words, “Number zero, zero to desk two.”

On reaching the reception desk, Arlo presented his health card and papers to the clerk. She, peering out from behind furrows and mascara, managed to scrutinize the matter. Then, she posed an array of questions that caught Arlo slightly off guard, as he had not heard them in so long. (For his blood tests, he had gone to the private lab where no questions were asked.)

“Dr. Phelps, your family doctor?”

“No,” said Arlo, “Dr. Gates. He helped me get booked for this test.”

“Need to know his first name, dear.”

“Earl.”

The clerk frowned. “Don’t have an Earl Gates in the system, dear. Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes,” said Arlo. “Oh, his first initial is P.”

“Pamela ... er, Parker Gates, is it?”

“Could be,” Arlo said.

“At the Coalfield Centre?” asked the clerk.

“Yes, I guess so. I don’t quite remember the Centre’s name,” Arlo confessed. The clerk typed.

“121 Destiny Way, your civic address, dear?”

“No, it’s here on my driver’s license,” sighed Arlo as he dug it out of his pocket. He didn’t like giving out his address aloud.

“All right,” clucked the clerk. “I see it.” A good deal of typing and retyping followed. “Johnny Baxter, your next of kin?”

“No, Jennie Baxter -- as in Jennifer.” What species of primate had typed this form before?

“Go down the hall back here, take your first right and seat yourself in the waiting room there. The technician will call you by name.” (Alas, Arlo almost wished the tech would devise some other way to call him: the system seemed so flaky with names.)

Arlo walked -- and walked -- past photographs of children catching withered leaves, and families in hospital johnnies in wheat fields -- until the hallway terminated its original course and veered left instead. There had been no branch to the right.

Nurses were passing every few seconds and Arlo mustered the gumption to question an unimposing-looking one. “Excuse me,” he asked, “do you know where I might find the waiting area for an MRI?”

“Okay,” murmured the nurse, facing Arlo and casting her hands in an indeterminate direction, “you have to go to Registration first.”

“Yes,” said Arlo, “I’ve just been there.”

“Oh,” she said, “then I don’t really know. I’m just starting here this week.”

Maybe Arlo should have gone with an imposing-looking one. “Okay, thanks anyway,” he said.

The nurse smiled sheepishly and went on her way. Before Arlo could stop anyone else, she came running back. “I found it!” she called.

A few meters past the turn, in another right-hand direction, was the waiting room -- more of an alcove, really. Arlo effused his gratitude to the nurse and she left with buoyed enthusiasm for her new job. Perhaps it would last awhile.

The other occupants of the alcove were dressed in johnnies and housecoats. Arlo wondered whether he was supposed to go somewhere to get this standard attire but it would have been too awkward to enquire of the other patients. He never asked such questions as, “Where’d you get those loafers?” -- let alone, “Where’d you find that johnnie?”

One seat remained vacant. Perhaps it was unpopular because its mustard-colored foam guts were spilling from its maroon vinyl hide; no matter. Arlo sat and crossed his legs, just as the others were doing. A television set stood on the scuffed wooden table in one corner of the alcove. The program seemed to feature two tedious people commenting about another.

“Can you believe -- I mean what sort of person...?” the woman commentator railed.

“I h-know!” seconded the man commentator in an exaggeratedly effete tone of admonishment.

“I mean, did you see her...?”

“Hey, let’s play that again!”

Between commentary segments, the show followed the other tedious person -- the so-called “guest” -- as she performed various tedious tasks assigned by the tedious commentators. Here, the guest was shopping for clothes while complaining to the camera about the time limit imposed on her. Elsewhere, she was credulously swallowing advice from the hairdresser whom the commentators had chosen. The hairdresser believed in cutting hair short -- of course! Did no one perceive his vested interest?

“Arlo Baxter?”

A technician, with another johnnie and housecoat draped over her arm, stood just outside the alcove.

“Yes,” said Arlo, leaping up.

“Put these on, please,” requested the technician, extending her arm. “Remove everything except your underclothes, socks and shoes. Johnnie in front, tied in the back; housecoat in back, tied in the front. Changing rooms are over here; lockers over there. Don’t put any valuables in your locker.” (A sign, indeed, reaffirmed this advice.) “I’ll be back out to call you when we’re ready. Okay?”

“What are you scanning?” Arlo wanted to know. They seemed to have ruled out the feet, anyway.

“You should discuss that with your doctor.”

“Surely you must know,” Arlo insisted.

“Head and spine.” The technician’s cocked eyebrow seemed to ask whether he was satisfied with that.

“Okay, great,” Arlo answered. Left with the outfit, he snuck off to the remotest changing room.

“Johnnie in front, tied in the back; housecoat in back, tied in the front,” Arlo recited to himself. What if he could not accomplish it before the tech returned? Would he be disqualified, on grounds of general uselessness, from having an MRI? Would even the Doc’s influence get him back in?

One of the ties on the johnnie was missing. That just took the cake. He hoped the housecoat was his to keep for the duration of the scan.

Back out in the waiting alcove, Arlo watched the conclusion of the show. The guest nervously gushed that she had learned so much about dressing for success. She felt she could stride confidently into her future.

Yeah, well, that was easy for her to say. When she strode, her clothes would stay shut in back.

“Arlo Baxter?”

Arlo did not leap up this time but rather comported himself like royalty, clasping his housecoat shut. “Which way?” he demanded before he could be told.

“Right this way,” said the technician. Another twitch of her eyebrow belied vexation with Arlo’s preemption.

Marching in his ragged robes and supple leather shoes, Arlo imagined himself as an elite soldier in Antiquity. Fie on the finery of the times! Out of duty, he would walk to the ends of the earth even if defeat, capture, execution and an unmarked grave awaited him there. Either that or he would assassinate the Emperor over pension policy.

Before conducting Arlo to the machine room, the tech took him aside into another closet-like space. A nurse waited there in readiness to insert an IV line. An alcohol swab crossed Arlo’s wrist. “A little pinch,” he was warned before the hunt for veins began.

“Hmm,” said the nurse after the first attempt.

“Hmm,” she repeated after the second. “This vein looks good but once I get in it collapses.

“I don’t like hurting you,” she confessed after one last attempt. “Let’s see if Lisa can do this.”

As the unsuccessful IV nurse went questing for the sage Lisa, the technician lingered in the doorway and kept an eye on the loudly ticking clock over Arlo’s head.

By and by, Lisa came and inserted the IV. Then, Arlo was off to the machine room. Alongside the tech, he approached the torus-shaped gizmo. A second tech watched from behind glass.

Still doing the first tech’s bidding, Arlo climbed up onto the platter that would bear him into the machine. Happily for everyone, he got to keep his housecoat. A red laser flickered nearby as he adjusted his head.

A needle in hand, the technician loomed. “This radioactive contrast dye,” said she, reminding Arlo of an evil supra-genius, “will probably make you feel warm and may make you feel as if you have to use the bathroom -- but you won’t.” That seemed pretty dastardly.

The dye went into the IV. A moment later, the tech asked, “Are you feeling warm yet?”

“Yes,” replied Arlo as the melting sensation numbed even the electrochemical prickling cat.

“Do you feel as if you have to use the bathroom?”

“No, I don’t,” Arlo lied. He saw no objective purpose to that question, anyway. He was getting sleepy.

There was more talk.

Contrary to the expectation instilled by television dramas, nothing climactic happened to Arlo inside the machine. For many minutes, between (and during) commands of, “Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in and hold ... breathe,” Arlo contemplated the merits and demerits of his confines. Perhaps one could hide in an MRI machine during an attack by aliens. Perhaps one would simply be cornered in the MRI instead. There were so many ways of playing out each scenario.

“I ... I have to get the radiologist,” murmured one distant-seeming technician. Had something gone awry -- with Arlo or with the machine?

Before Arlo could work it out -- about either the absent aliens or the present radiologist -- the scan was over. “Thank you. Thank you,” he said to everyone in the machine room and behind the glass. Once he got away from supervision and back in his own clothes, Arlo dumped the damaged johnnie in the garbage.

* * *

Arlo was the day’s last appointment for Dr. Chuck Crane. The patient entered the neurologist’s office suite, on the mezzanine of an up-and-coming mall.

“You must be Mr. Baxter, for four o’clock,” the receptionist inferred. She did not wait for Arlo to respond. “Just sit and wait.”

Having polished off her last reception job for the day, the old lady stood and left the suite.

Gingerly, Arlo made his way to the ornate burgundy chairs, which seemed to meld into the fractal-patterned wallpaper of the same hue. A coffee table held tidy stacks of conservative newspapers -- from that very day! A few scientific journals lay there in an arc, with the covers’ dominant colors arrayed from violet to red.

Arlo took his prickling right foot in both hands and rested it near the journals.

On the walls hung black and white isometric drawings with Renaissance figures in them. A number of optical illusions, such as circular staircases, lay hidden in the backgrounds and the details.

The seriousness of the situation began to sink in for Arlo. He was now an object of scientific interest.

Gales of laughter erupted from the office in the back of the suite. A patient in jeans, followed by the lab-coated figure of Dr. Crane, came out into the waiting area just as Arlo evacuated his foot from the coffee table.

“A pleasure, sir,” chuckled the specialist.

“Gee. Thank you for your help!” replied the man in jeans. A handshake and then the swinging of the suite’s door ended the meeting. Dr. Crane turned.

“Ah! Ah-ha! Mr. Baxter!” the neurologist declared as if he were discovering the headwaters of the Nile.

“Yes. Dr. Crane?”

“The very one. Come and join me, sir.”

Arlo followed Dr. Crane into the office proper. A sumptuous labyrinth dedicated to professional advancement, it was as large as an MRI chamber, twice as large as the Hertz and Payne examining rooms and four times as large as any humble niche frequented by Dr. Gates. Lining every wall were bookcases full of three-inch binders, labeled in gold ink with patient names. Trophies of the specialist’s exploits, they scintillated under the bold incandescence of myriad green-hooded lamps.

“Do sit,” the neurologist said. Arlo did. So did Dr. Crane, flinging his legs up on his mahogany desk. A handheld computer and digital camera shared the space with his shining shoes. “Am I to understand,” said he, “you’re causing some difficulties for the rest of us?”

Unsure what to say, Arlo stared and then attempted to laugh.

“Chasing doctors and such?” Dr. Crane went on.

“Yes,” Arlo said, “I have this awful prickling, like cat claws...”

A miniature tape recorder surfaced from Dr. Crane’s lab coat and he flicked it on. “The patient is experiencing some prickling, like cat claws.” Then he stopped the tape again. “Go on, sir; go on.”

“Well,” said Arlo, “it began in my right jaw but now it sort of shoots down my neck, shoulder, arm, leg, foot...”

“Still on the right-hand side?”

“Mostly, but some in the left side of my face and down from there.”

The tape recorder clicked into action again. “This sensation extends from the right ear downward to the right foot, with some spreading to the left side as well.” Then it was off. “Do go on!”

“Well, it’s bothersome and my family’s worried.”

Dr. Crane’s fingers shook but this information did not make it onto the tape. “Let’s backtrack,” he said.

“Okay,” Arlo consented.

“How long ago did this sensation start?”

“Almost two months,” Arlo reported.

“And is it constant or does it come, go...”

“Pretty much constant,” said Arlo, “but pressure or movement makes it worse.”

Here was cause enough to resume the recording. “The sensation,” announced Dr. Crane, “has persisted in excess of eight weeks and is present constantly, albeit aggravated by motion or pressure.” He stopped recording, narrowed his eyes and studied Arlo. “Sir, is there anything else you can think of to add?”

“Oh, no,” said Arlo. “Do you have my MRI?”

“Would that I did!” sighed Dr. Crane. “Those fools in radiology are as yet keeping it for themselves.”

A real poet, this one was, Arlo mused to himself. “What next, then?” he asked the neurologist.

“Next?” said Dr. Crane, emerging from his brief reverie. “I will examine you. Step right this way, if you so will. Good man.”

Arlo and the neurologist stepped aside into another room. This one seemed to mimic the examining room of poor Dr. Gates, right down to the white-papered table. The charts on the wall differed not in hue but only in showing brains instead of torsos. Perhaps, for the specialist, an examining room such as this was like Marie Antoinette’s play village.

Dr. Crane employed the same disposable and reusable instruments as Dr. Gates had used, plus asked Arlo to walk and stretch in certain ways. Once he had depleted the battery of tests, the neurologist clasped his right fist, as if around his tape recorder. (He had left it on the desk.) Then, he pursed his lips and said, “I can’t rule out anything serious.”

“You mean -- it is serious?” Arlo asked.

“I can’t rule it out.”

“Can you rule out that it isn’t?”

“Possibly so,” Dr. Crane grunted. “That is to say, I’d be so much less worried if you’d been experiencing this your whole life.”

“What do you mean?” said Arlo.

“Well, we do worry about the sudden changes -- but nothing -- I repeat, but nothing -- will be certain until we see your MRI.”

“Why?” Arlo shuddered. “What might you see?”

The answer was not good. Through the rest of the appointment, Arlo took in little, and as he left he stumbled and nearly fell over the mezzanine. What an isometric mess he might have made in the mall.

* * *

The room where Arlo Baxter must have appointments now is orders of magnitude worse than the ones with Reader’s Digest, picture books, fine art prints, magazines, daytime television, newspapers or even scientific journals. A jigsaw puzzle sits in that room, for his condition has progressed to jigsaw deadly.

Aside from jigsaw puzzles, the room features thread angels hanging from hooks in the suspended ceiling. The worst part is that Arlo Baxter just hates angels -- always has -- but how can he say that to the staff?

Joseph Howse has received over 300 rejections from novel publishers, picture book publishers, literary agents, anthologies, journals, magazines, and webzines on 4 continents. (Astonishingly, his record of newspaper acceptances remains unblemished.) Strange Horizons has rejected his work but has subsequently put him in charge of its Articles department, proving that sometimes first impressions count for nothing. He is steadily working on converting humanity to Nummism -- the worship of his apotheosized cat, NummNumm. Twice per day, every day, he eats haddock with spinach and mashed potatoes. He is Nova Scotian, with an uncropped beard that catches molasses from his breakfast toast.