Chapter 2: Haruki Murakami

They were singing that song again, the one about afros and polka dots and circuses. It drove me crazy the first time I heard it, and it was driving me crazy now.

The mammals were an odd bunch. Even after having spent so much time together, I never once felt like I could understand any of them. We really should have parted ways a long time ago.

Kowalski looked antsy. There was always something tight about him, like a sense of inhibition. Sometimes he reminded me of a clock spring, wound up and only waiting for the moment when something would snap and release all the pressure. "Singing getting louder."

It was. It was reverberating around in my head, and I knew that if I listened to it much longer some part of my soul would suffer irreparable damage and I'd end up a vegetable in some hospital in Hoboken. "Then move faster," I said. And added, almost as an afterthought, "Someone get that wig off Private."

The wig was multicolored and striped and was hurting my eyes, and I have no idea when Private had even put it on in the first place. It seemed like it had simply been there forever, like it had grown out of his head, and the thought disturbed me so much that I couldn't look at him until he'd taken it off.

As the noise from the mammals climbed to a frenzy and my men scrambled to prepare our escape, I had the strange gut feeling that we were drawing close to an event horizon, one that, once crossed, would launch us into the worm universe, a shifting, miasmic world with no foundation, where nothing is ever resolved. We'd been living in the mammals' world for a long time, but it was starting to feel like too long, and by the time the others were ready it was far too late to go back.

The best thing about owning a circus is being able to transport a cannon over state lines.

Anything involving cannons is really the best. I have never, ever seen a cannon that didn't come with a certain sense of excitement and the lingering perfume of my long-time flame, Lady Danger. They've got a good, solid history to them, too, a storied career as weapons of destruction. This one was a blue, yellow, and red circus cannon, so it felt a bit gaudy for my tastes. I couldn't complain, though. It would do the job.

The boys and I snuggled inside the cannon's barrel, squeezing ourselves into the space between sticks of dynamite. I could feel the old familiar adrenaline pumping through my veins. It made me smile.

The cannon fired, and we flew, clinging to a makeshift glider put together with a flagpole, circus tent fabric, and a string of lights. The night was cold and clear, the stars above us pinpricks of bright light. I could feel the frigid wind piercing through my feathers; for some reason, that made me relax. Time for my speech.

I turned to Private. "Ten years ago on this very day, a tiny egg hatched... and our world got a little bit cuter."

Private giggled bashfully.

"So, to celebrate," I continued, turning my focus back to the sky ahead, "we'll be infiltrating the United States gold depository at Fort Knox."

Rico and Kowalski were excited, of course; so was I. We'd been planning this little surprise for months, drawing up plans and studying blueprints under flickering candlelight whenever it got to be past Private's bedtime. The mission this time was so daring that I couldn't wait to pull it off. I'd been feeling like I was in a rut, spinning my wheels, for a while; sometimes I dreamed about building model ships, but there was always a piece missing and they all turned out so dull. It's a horrible feeling, having symbolic dreams that don't really ever end - hence the rut. I was sure that Fort Knox would give me the kick I needed to get out of it, and for that, I was excited.

Private made a noise like the sound a mouse makes when the trap snaps down on its windpipe.

I decided to make some analogies. "There she is, boys, the object of our desire. The butter on our biscuit; the royal flush-"

"Skippah."

"Private, what's our rule about interrupting analogies?"

Private drew back a bit, his eyes wide. "Sorry, please continue."

"No, the moment's gone. Private ruined it." I leaned forward over the flagpole, resting the underside of my beak on my flipper. Lately, something had been ruining all my analogies, and it wasn't always Private.

Getting into Fort Knox was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Nobody saw us fly in, and Kowalski's pink sleeping agent worked like a charm on the guards at the front entrance. There's something about the stuff that reminds you of fairy dust, which is why I think people are always so eager to breathe it in.

After that, the boys and I made it to the vault without a hitch. It was almost too easy, and I felt vaguely disappointed. From the way things were going, it was starting to look like Lady Danger had stood me up.

Kowalski waddled up to the vault door, which was demanding a passcode. He held out a flipper. "Rico, sonic-incursion device."

Rico vomited up the item in question, and it flew in a sort of lazy arc to land within Kowalski's grasp. Kowalski held the gadget, which looked suspiciously like an old eighties tape player, up to the vault and pressed a single button.

The tape inside began to play, and smooth, plodding jazz rolled out, the speaker leaving its moody harmonies distorted and too treble-heavy. I gave him a look. "Miles Davis?"

"You know it." Kowalski's beak quirked upwards in a tilted smile. "I'm 'All Blues.'"

The riff on the song's title wasn't even close to funny, and Rico let him know it with a half-hearted "boo." Surprisingly, though, the vault door swung open, accompanied by a few green lights and a slightly tinny "Real cool, man; I dig it" from the speaker below the passcode interface.

As we stepped over the threshold and into the vault, I had the strange impression that we were passing into another world. The gold was everywhere, piled up in floor-to-ceiling columns a la Cave of Wonders, and it reflected off of itself and the polished ceiling and floor and gave the massive room a magical glow. The air felt like it glittered, and my gut was almost certain that there was a dragon curled up somewhere in all that treasure, hidden just behind the rows of bars. I imagined he was there mostly to guard the hoard, but also to eat up questing heroes like us - luckily, Kowalski's Davis track must have lulled him into a deep sleep.

I turned to Private; the gold sparkled in his eyes, but it was just reflected there, the glow hitting up against his irises and bouncing back out. I briefly worried that he wasn't enjoying his birthday present, so I decided to cut straight to the coup de grace. "If there was anything you wanted in the whole wide world, what would it be?"

Private seemed to light up with a different sort of glow. "I think I'd like to be a meaningful and valued member of this team."

"Oh." There wasn't much I could say to that. "Well, we got you something else."

I motioned with a flipper towards the thoroughly unassuming break room at the very back of the vault. Private followed my gaze and tilted his head. "A vending machine?"

"Not just any vending machine." His confusion was almost laughable. "The last remaining home of those succulent but chemically hazardous bits of popped heaven called…"

I waited for him to finish my sentence. He didn't disappoint. "Cheezy Dibbles!"

"Happy ding-dong birthday, you little scamp," I said, winking and handing him a gold coin. He let out a little delighted squeal, hopping up to give me a peck on the cheek. He repeated the gesture for Kowalski and Rico, though Rico seemed to be having too much fun kissing him, grabbing him by the cheeks and pressing his beak violently up against his own. That could mean something, or nothing at all. It was hard to tell with Rico, and I didn't have the patience to try to wrestle with logic for any definite answer.

While Private skipped over to the vending machine, the others waddling along behind him, I stayed where I was, glancing over the stacks of bullion along the left wall. I could feel something pulling at me, like my gut instinct, but bigger, more external. There was a strange black gap between the glowing bars, a hole in the fabric of whatever it was that held this golden world together. Like the missing pieces of model ships or the ends of ruined analogies.

I found myself drawn towards the hole.

As I neared its mouth, I could see that it was really more like a dry well, descending into the darkened space beyond the walls of the vault. There was a thin, grey tomcat waiting for me inside. I didn't know how he got there or where he came from, but somehow it felt perfectly natural for him to be there. He looked me over with his sharp green eyes, then turned and bounded down the passage, his tail swaying behind him.

What does one do in these types of situations? I shrugged and followed the cat.

The floor of the tunnel, or the side of the well, whichever, felt cool and slimy under my toes. The cat had disappeared into the dark, but within a few seconds of walking, I had, too, so I assumed he had to be nearby somewhere.

The tunnel (or well) wasn't too long, and predictably, there was a light at the end of it, a dusty incandescent bulb perched on top of a lamp with no shade. Next to the lamp, the Sheep Man sat in a faded red recliner, his short arms laid on top of the armrests like fillets of fish.

He was short for a human and squat, and wore a full sheepskin pulled over his head. The arms and legs and hood were fake, but the two horns on his head were real enough. He reminded me of a guy I used to know by the name of Randy, though I couldn't picture this Sheep Man in any petting zoo. He glanced up at my approach. "Yougotacigarette?"

The Sheep Man spoke rapid-fire, and it took me aback for a second. Luckily, years of interpreting Rico had made me fairly good at listening-comprehension. "Obviously not. I'm a penguin, after all."

The Sheep Man snorted. "Typical. Youdon'tthinkaboutanyonebutyourself."

I narrowed my eyes at that. "Well that's just not true. I think about my team all the time."

"Maybe." The Sheep Man wrinkled his pug nose. "What'stheothershortfatone'sname?"

"Private." I paused. Did he just call me short and fat? I felt like he did. "Hey, this is all muscle-"

"Privatedidn'twanttocomehere. Icouldtell." The Sheep Man cut me off with an irked look. "Iwishyouweretaller. Lookingdownatyouishurtingmyneck."

That first thing he'd said struck a chord with me, but I tried not to let it show. "Is it really?"

"Plusthewoolgetsinmyeyes."

"Ah."

The Sheep Man scratched his stomach. "Whatareyouherefor?"

I frowned. It was a stupid question. "The Cheezy Dibbles, obviously."

"That'snotit."

"Isn't it?"

"Naaah." He looked at me critically. "You'reherechasingalady."

"Now you're just making stuff up."

"Youwouldn'tbeinhereifyouweren'tchasingsomething. PlusIcansmellherperfumeonyou."

"You mean Lady Danger?"

The Sheep Man shrugged. "Idon'tknow. I'deaseoffthegasalittleifIwasyou,though."

I didn't come here to get advice from a man in a sheep suit. I wasn't quite sure what I came here for anymore, but it wasn't that. I started to get angry. "What do you know? I'm the leader of the best team of covert operatives on the planet. The elitest of the elite, cream of the corn on a platinum cob."

The Sheep Man snapped his teeth. "Iknowalotmorethanyou. AndIdidn'twantyourresume." He leaned back in his recliner, taking a deep breath. "Sorry. Sometimesanalogiesmakemeangry."

"Oh. In that case, I guess I should go."

"Iguessso." The Sheep Man shifted in his chair. "Nicetalkingtoyou,anyway."

I turned and made my way back through the well-tunnel until I was standing in the golden vault again. For some reason, I felt uneasy.

By the time I rejoined the boys in the break room, Private had gotten stuck in the vending machine. This had happened once before, and wasn't entirely unexpected. Still, the uneasiness I'd felt after talking to the Sheep Man had been building, and was nearing the point where it became suffocating. I didn't know how to deal with it, so I decided to ignore it for now, but I could feel it rumbling under the surface. I turned to Kowalski. "How much is he?"

"Three dollars and fifty cents."

"That's outrageous. Even for Private." I started thinking of ways to get him out of the machine without paying. The unease just got worse and worse until I felt like I needed to crawl out of my own skin.

Rico looked like he had something to add to our conversation, but whatever it was he never got to say it. One second he was just standing there, the next a pink and purple tentacle shot out of the machine and sucked him in through the slot at the bottom.

Kowalski jumped back, his flippers flailing. "The machine is alive-"

A tentacle wrapped around him as he was speaking, and he disappeared into the machine, the slot cover slamming closed with a metallic thump. I was becoming annoyed. "I don't like your attitude, vending machine," I said testily. "Or your prices." The thing was starting to get close to ruining my night.

The vending machine didn't seem to care. I felt it watching me closely, observing. Maybe it had been watching me this whole time. Maybe that was the reason for my uneasiness.

At any rate, the uneasiness did have the effect of making me unsurprised when I felt a cool and slimy tentacle wrap around my chest and pull me into the machine. A taut spring was at my back, and my face pressed up against the glass of the display. I couldn't see any of the others, but judging from the sounds they were making, they were all somewhere above me. They sounded a lot less unsurprised than I was.

Eventually, the vending machine started moving, breaking through the wall of the vault and bounding into the night sky, to be gradually pulled up into a darkened helicopter hold. Since it was too dark to see anything, I closed my eyes.

Somehow I guess I'd known this would happen. It was just my luck.

Author's Note: Welcome to the world of magic realism! If this is your first time here, you should stop by more often. We have deep running metaphors. Also there are cats.

This chapter was actually almost harder than the Shakespeare one, because even though I don't have to write in blank verse anymore, this is my first time writing magic realism, so I kept stopping and thinking 'Good Lord this is too weird.' But nothing is too weird for Murakami! That's why this scene struck me as so perfect for his style, because when I was watching the movie and saw the vending machine come to life, I started to wonder if this was really still the same movie and not some kind of segue into Wonderland.

Since Murakami's books are all translated, adopting the right tone for this chapter was an issue. I ultimately based it off of Birnbaum's translation, because it just feels so hip. Also, this chapter's in first person POV because almost all of Murakami's work is like that, but all the other authors I have lined up so far write in third person, so the perspective's gonna change next chapter.

(Also also, I recommend looking up the 'Haruki Murakami Bingo' sheet, because I ticked off a pretty good number of spaces.)