Tom had started his day off normally, trading a poem of 24 lines and a rather clever ending for a hard boiled egg, two pancakes and a side of roasted Brussels sprouts from a large pan that had been seasoned with garlic and pepper. Pleased at the resulting breakfast (yet still unsatisfied in wishing his work would be spared the fire), Tom had returned to the docks in high spirits only to discover someone had stolen his boat.

This is only what Tom believed to have happened, to tell you the truth. In fact the very mother who had on several occasions complained about the noise of Tom’s engine had finally decided to act against the airwave polluter. She had covertly wandered to his spot on the dock and unbolted the engine from the boat with a socket wrench she’d brought just for the occasion, letting it sink to the murky floor not 10 feet down. She had then cut the rope mooring the boat to the dock, disposed of said rope, and capsized what was left of the now lightweight row boat with simple leverage, letting the rest float to the bottom.

Tom could not see his boat for the murky river water in his way.

It must have been towed or else floated away somehow, he told himself, but who would tow his boat away? Surely not the cafe owner. He eyed the woman who was guilty more than once, however her preoccupation with her children seemed alibi enough. She was crawling with swarms of the same centipede like creatures and they mocked Tom, calling to him and waving their bodies rudely. Tom shook his head and looked elsewhere; surely he would have heard a tow boat. It must have come loose and floated downriver. After walking up and down the shoreline for a few hours he found himself asking questions around the dock, which got him nowhere. Nobody had been paying attention to his boat, in fact most regulars did their best to ignore the fanfare by which it entered every morning, a courtesy Tom generally appreciated and extended in kind. It was his downfall this morning however, and he ended his search with nothing but half-hearted apologies from strangers.

Tom had been noticed for the first time today by the cafe owner’s daughter; she had been serving a nearby table when he was glaring thoughtfully at the guilty woman and her children. She had even noticed the tense way his voice sounded, like it was swallowing at the same time it was forcing pleasantry, as he asked about the whereabouts of his boat.

This left Tom in a predicament he hadn’t thought would be necessary unless his health was failing; he would have to go into the nearby town. Once there he’d have to buy a new boat, something he would first have to get money for. In order to get money, Tom would either have to contact relatives and plead for assistance or find work enough to save for one. He knew this meant leaving the serenity of the river, something that made him uncomfortable, impetuous, and frustrated enough that he even considered just sleeping on the docks all day. Coming to the conclusion that the owner of the property wouldn’t allow it (and thinking it may risk the already wide berth he was given in terms of earning meals) Tom steeled himself and began, on foot, the walk towards civilization.

This was, of course, the last thing Tom wanted to do. As he walked along the road, on the right hand side, he tried keeping his eyes off of his path. Roads were an oddity to Tom; because he knew they were necessary to modern commerce he couldn’t complain at their existence, but for as long as he’d experienced hallucinations a singular creature took ownership of roads.

Along the entire length of any road, where now the edge of the pavement met the dirt and growth of neighboring woodland, legs like that of hundreds of man-sized cockroaches erupted as he passed and disappeared as he left, making the road seem like an endlessly suffering upside down bug. This bug’s only goal, it seemed, was to keep pace with him as he walked up and down the pavement. This made walking into roads particularly unsettling for Tom, but he could close his eyes and traverse the short gap without feeling anything. Once he was on the asphalt he could keep his eyes forward and ignore altogether his companion nightmare, with the exception of noticing passing traffic, whose presence also spawned legs directly on both sides. This was made slightly more uncomfortable because cars, at least as far as Tom could see, left trails of sickly orange light that would burn the legs. This filled the air with rank and sickly fumes, as well as causing the legs to stay in place instead of disappearing once he passed the area. New legs would sprout and consume the burned ones. This, and what the legs did with roadkill, were things Tom tried to ignore.

After what would have been a pleasant walk for your modern-day hiker, Tom arrived at the small tourist town nestled against the river. Upon visiting the hardware store and being directed to a boat rental company, then being directed from the boat rental company to a nearby boat dealership (with laughably expensive sports boats), then going to the town’s docks and asking if anyone had a spare rowboat they could part with, Tom had no leads.

If the woman who had sank his boat had been any form of reasonable this could have been avoided; Tom would have respected any requests she’d made of him had she asked. He was always considerate in that once he was within rowing distance of the café he would cut off his engine and paddle in, despite the choking fumes that gave him a mild headache. Instead, she’d decided the only form of action that wasn’t beneath her was to sink his ship; as Tom arrived at the small town, she was at home drinking a mimosa to her success. 

She thought to herself: "Asking that weirdo to be more considerate would have been such a nightmare, I couldn’t have done it. If he had just been more considerate in the first place," she would think to herself, "this embarrassing situation need never have befallen him." 

Unfortunately for Tom, these were her last thoughts.

Sinking Tom’s boat was the most exciting thing that had happened to the poor woman in ages up to that morning, and it was the second most exciting in light of her present murder. Police would find her skull smashed open in a matter of hours, her body slumped over a spilled mimosa at her family vacation home down the street from the dockside café.

Tom, however, would spend the day asking the local mill for spare wood, the local hardware store for parts, the local boat rental for defective units, and any passerby with a rowboat if they would part with it. This was the height of summer, and tourism was booming. He entertained the notion he could offer himself as a tour guide in exchange for a boat, until he realized he knew only a few things about the local tourism scene. Tom tried mooring boats for tips at the docks, but he was thrown out after the dock manager noticed. Tom would have tried writing something, or even drawing up a lost boat ad, but all of his paper had been tucked under a shirt in his boat. He found himself lying on a park bench, looking up at the sky out of habit. He knew from experience drifters were not looked kindly upon and usually avoided this kind of bench habitation, but he needed a break. He allowed himself to drift to sleep. 

Tom was woken up by rough hands lifting him and pulling him into a vehicle. He began to yell with a start, but a firm knock to the head and a pair of handcuffs later and Tom was in the back of a police cruiser. Tom, woozy from the hit, looked up to see glowing eyes on antennae and tusks protruding from the faces of both officers. While he had no certification or credentials in entomology, he could tell by the way the scissoring protrusions rubbed against each other that the officers were hungry. He just hoped, as he closed his eyes in dismay, that they would sate themselves without the need for violence. 

It was not an unreasonable preference at all.

Next Chapter: Holes in a Picture Book, By Tom