The Corduroy Mtn. Atlas Head Over Heels Eric Beeny Then time came when the whole world's water swallowed the whole world's land, all except for one spot, one tiny patch of land big enough for one person to stand on. All the world's people built a ladder, seeing the water advancing toward them from all directions, and they figured that to be the best way out. The ladder wasn't strong enough, and first the rungs snapped, and then the support beam things the rungs tight-roped across themselves to buckled. Under the weight of everyone in the world who had a chance to climb the ladder it collapsed, and everyone in the world who'd climbed it fell on top of one another. The ladder wasn't nearly tall enough anyway. The water was getting closer, slowly rushing inland, and they looked at it and got scared and started trampling each other. One of all the world's people, Stacks, suggested they make a ladder out of themselves, and he offered the woman standing next to him a boost up onto his shoulders. Her boyfriend got offended and went to kick Stacks in the balls, but she grabbed his pantleg. He stopped, and she convinced him to help her up onto Stacks' shoulders and then to climb up onto hers, and then Stacks had everyone else in the world climb up onto her boyfriend's shoulders. Everyone said, "Okay." All the world's people started climbing each other as the whole world's water was in the distance slowly rushing from everywhere toward them, thinning out some as it reached the shore of their shrinking island. Whole cities, neighborhoods, buildings, homes, schools, hospitals, movie theaters, community centers-the whole scene was a full scale model of a miniature disaster. The water stopped at Stacks' feet, and he tried to not think about it or flinch under the weight of the world's population he was kind enough to let go on over him. Stacks held his breath until the water stopped at his feet, and it went over his ankles a little and then he blew all that air out, hoisting his brows and blinking real fast. The last person to climb the human ladder got to the top of the sky. It was a teenager named Gorman. He climbed onto the shoulders of a heavy-set politician who hoped he would be the first one out. The hole in the ozone was basically a submarine hatch. It was just out of Gorman's reach over his head, and for a second he thought about jumping up to grab hold of the ledge, but then he thought that was stupid. He yelled down for everyone in the world to stand on their tiptoes, and by the time it got all the way to Stacks the guy who wanted to kick Stacks in the balls's girlfriend said, "Tears for Fears rocks." "What?" Stacks said. The girlfriend looked up at her boyfriend and said, "What?" Then "What?" was the message on its way up toward the submarine hatch of a hole in the ozone, to the guy, Gorman, up there stretching and who couldn't reach the ledge of the hole, and who thought maybe jumping would do it. It was like a rosary of echoes climbing a prayer's noose up out of a sewer. "Stand on your tiptoes, I said," he said. "Keep it clear." An estimated 6.5 billion people passed that message down carefully like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a sip of water, spitting it into each other's mouths and hoping the person below them didn't drool or swallow it. The message made it down and arrived missing not one drop, nor did it contain new drops of anything superfluous like saliva or tears, and Stacks used all his strength to get up on the tips of his toes under all that weight, and everyone else in the world got up on their toes, dug them into the shoulders of everyone else in the world they were standing on, including that guy Gorman, the teenager, at the top. Gorman stretched out and, with the extra height he got from the world on its tiptoes, he touched the lip of the hole in the ozone, and there was a hatch, a manhole closed over the sewer the world was. It was real dark all the way up there. Gorman felt like he was in a submarine. "Be careful," the heavy-set politician Gorman stood on said. Gorman popped the hatch and took a deep breath, and his face got sucked off his head, his whole body slurped out into space. Down below no one had any idea what was happening, and they all tried keeping as still as they could to prevent the human ladder they were from wobbling. More than 97% of the world's population was afraid of heights. They were surrounded by water. A lot of people were thirsty. The politician under Gorman held Gorman's legs and got sucked out into space with Gorman, and the person under the politician clutching his legs got sucked out. One by one, beads from the rosary of echoes were popping off, rungs from the human ladder flung out into orbit like splinters floating in water around a bowling ball. Lots of people down below had to pee. "What's happening?" Stacks yelled. Everyone was anxious, holding on tight, clutching the legs of whoever stood on their shoulders, clamping the heads of whoever's shoulders they stood on between their ankles. One by one, the whole human ladder and all its rungs got sucked up like coke through a straw, snorted like coke through a rolled-up dollar bill. The boyfriend on his girlfriends shoulders, and her on Stacks' shoulders, they didn't let go in time and they got sucked up with the rest of the world's population, but the girlfriend's legs slipped out of Stacks' hands. "No," Stacks yelled. The hatch slammed shut after the girlfriend got sucked out. Stacks stood there a moment, looking around. He was the only person left in the whole world. He wondered if maybe the boyfriend and girlfriend got sucked up so forcefully he simply couldn't hold on to the girlfriend's legs and they were torn from his grip, or if maybe he really just let go, on-purpose like. He didn't think he could answer that question honestly. He looked down at his feet, water covering them up to his ankles. He heard a faint sound, like someone screaming, getting closer. He looked up, and the heavy-set politician hit the Earth like an asteroid, landing face-first in shallow water near where Stacks was standing, shaking the ground, splashing big waves toward Stacks. Stacks jumped back. He slowly walked over to the politician's probably dead corpse, and nudged it a little with his foot. The politician didn't move. Stacks turned him over. He nudged him again with his foot. The politician's eyes opened wide. "AHHH," Stacks yelled, afraid. "UHHH," the politician's dead corpse went. Stacks sat on the politician's dead corpse. He rested his elbow on his thigh, and his chin on his closed fist. He thought hard about why he might've let go on purpose. The sun was going down, and it was getting cold out. previous | next Added to The Corduroy Mtn. on November the twenty-third in the year two thousand and eight.