The Three Peggs

Mr. Pegg was a very crazy man.

He had been crazy since he was very young, and his name was Ronnie Pegg instead of Mr. Pegg. He only owned one book, and it was about him. Whether this is one of the things that drove him crazy, or it was a product of his madman’s imagination blurring the boundaries of real and fantasy in his child’s mind, he didn’t know, nor would he have thought to ask. As far as he could tell, he’d had that book since he was born, and it functioned for him as well as any other piece of the small patch of normality that he called his waking life. It was as real to him as he was to himself. So real, that sometimes, he was sure that it was Ronnie who was reading a story about him, instead. The fact that he WAS Ronnie never crossed his mind, really. Both life and his fantasy were nothing more than stories to him, written in the first person for an intended reading audience of one. The world was an autistic squalor of white noise outside his head, and if he didn’t feel like looking it in the face, he could change the channel. He could pick up another book.

And so there were two of them.

Ronnie Pegg lived in a dark, ugly city. He didn’t have to go to school, and he knew this. None of the other kids that lived in the apartment building he walked to and from every day went to school. However, Ronnie liked school, and he went every day of the week. Then, on the weekends, he’d read his book, which was always changing, as alive and kinetic as the progression of real life. He took care of himself, since his mother had a terrible illness that caused her to inject herself with needles and sit around watching television whenever she was not working, and he kept to himself. He was content to be that way. His other self had lots of fun, always, whenever he opened that book. The Ronnie Pegg of his story book was a little cartoon boy in a little cartoon world, just like the pictures in the book. Everything was reasonable, soft-edged, and forgiving. And it was pretty, of course, and that was what Ronnie liked most about living there: all the Technicolor glory of the gaudiest of day-glow comic books and advertisements was in every atom of that place, and it burned away layers of overcast skies and ugly, wet concrete adorned with a thin sheen of garbage from his eyes like Saul’s proverbial scales. Thus made binary, Ronnie went to school, other Ronnie frolicked in fields that changed color with the time of day, and time passed. Ronnie Pegg became Ron Pegg, but Ronnie the little cartoon boy stayed young, and it was with this schism that Mr. Pegg first noticed he had a multiple personality.

When he was less of a boy and a bit more of a young man, Ron Pegg found a chapter about himself in the middle of a thick book that explained the finer points of making a horror movie in the 1970’s. He was not surprised. In fact, he’d been expecting to come upon something like that for quite awhile.

His mother had died some time back. It made Ronnie cry, but Ron was indifferent. Ron hadn’t realized how much she’d done to help out around the place until she was gone. It became inconvenient for him later when she was not around to clean things or do laundry and the house began to smell. He figured that most of the smell was probably her body, which had been sitting on the couch, dead, for quite awhile now. Ron was not quite sure how long. He knew he had to move it sooner than later, and welcomed a retreat of his consciousness into the bright, juvenile world of Ronnie, but Ronnie’s world was dark, and the child was withdrawn, mourning.

It was in that darkness, then, that Ron sat as he hacked through the putrescence of green veins, gray meat and white shards of bone with a hand saw he had stolen from a construction site. It needed to be done, of course. That was how they always disposed of bodies in movies. He didn’t really think to call the police. He was sure they’d tell him he’d done something wrong. That’s what people usually said, whenever they said things to him, and he preferred to take care of himself, and keep to himself, as he’d always done. He was bothered that he could still hear bone cracking and the grating of the saw over the quiet murmur of a child sobbing while he was inhabiting Ronnie, but it was tolerable, at least, and he was soon finished.

She fit in a garbage bag, which fit in an open manhole in the courtyard of the decrepit apartment compound where he lived. With the whole affair behind him, he went to the movie theater and saw the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time. He bought two tickets, but Ronnie didn’t watch it because he wasn’t old enough.

Not long after that, he found himself staring at his own name in a column of text, skirted by a photo of Dennis Hopper from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and wondering how many chapters he’d get, and what type of story it was. Secretly, he knew the answer to the latter portion, but he kept it to himself. No use upsetting Ronnie.

The story was what he’d wanted it to be, and it changed while what he wanted changed. Ron Pegg navigated dark worlds full of treacherous and awful things, but always would he overcome them, and in that did he find his joy. The terrible things of the world are not so frightening if one truly knows that they are no match for oneself. The sickly green and gray of the real life gore he’d been made to endure that once was replaced by the black ichor of computer-animated monsters and madmen. By dwelling on them, he’d separated himself from that place in time when he’d buried his dead mother the only way he knew how and buried himself deeper in his besieged, increasingly disassociated mind.

To keep the apartment and stay fed, Ron got a job working for the construction company he’d stolen the hand saw from. While his body worked, his mind snuck off into the land inhabited by the other Ron and slew things of darkness in many a dramatic tale. Sometimes he’d read it from the book, and sometimes he’d just imagine it. He couldn’t tell the difference. He spent so much time battling back the evil minions of his imagination that he hardly even noticed when he was no longer Ron but Ronald, or Mr. Pegg, to you.

And so there were three of them: little Pegg, middle Pegg, and Mister Pegg.

Mr. Pegg was a janitor. He’d stopped working construction when his inattentiveness had made him a hazard to have on a job site. A janitor can afford to run entirely on gross motor, and that’s just what Mr. Pegg did. Sometimes he lived as Ron, in his edgy, angst-ridden world of violence and drama, and sometimes he’d smile softly and barrel through the age-old, pastel dreamscape of little Ronnie the cartoon, but more and more often, he was just staring at things; out of focus and surreal in the unfamiliar light of the real world. He didn’t feel like he belonged in the world of Ron or Ronnie any more. He was past due to stumble on another Ronald in another story. This one would be named Mr. Pegg, and he’d…..

Well, Mr. Pegg wasn’t sure what he’d do. Mop floors, perhaps. That was all he could imagine a man who was exactly like himself doing. Slowly, he realized that even if he did find a story about Mr. Pegg, it wouldn’t matter. It’d only be a story, and for the first time in his life, he was able to tell the difference.

It was exactly then when he found this story.

It was typed, in Times New Roman font, size 12. The printer that had produced it left pink stains on the page in streaks from an ink cartridge on its last leg.

He’d found this document next to a waste paper basket, which he emptied before he began to read it. He was surprised that, this time, the character it made him into wasn’t a fantastic exaggeration of his innocence, or a tougher-skinned alter-ego, or anything romanticized at all. This time, the character was actually him, as he existed strictly in the real world, and the story was as new to him as any he’d never read before. He’d never considered living in the real world before. He wasn’t even aware that he was crazy until the first sentence told him so, and, entranced, he stood next to his janitor’s cart and read on.

The difference between fake stories and real stories is that a fake story has a plot. The plot is a predetermined sequence of events that the character drifts through until he or she arrives at a conclusion, which is where the story or chapter ends. The real story, however, is a life, Mr. Pegg’s life, in this instance. It was narrated by his actions, instead of an author, and it was all Mr. Pegg could do to read about himself reading until, for the first time in his life, the story reached out and told him what to do.

Maybe he was telling himself, really. The mind of a madman can trick itself into playing tricks on itself, and it could just as easily be that this piece of paper is blank, and that Mr. Pegg had chosen to tell himself the truth instead of a story this time, as he stared into its crumpled, ink-stained whiteness. Either way, he didn’t know what else to do but obey when he read this line:

Ronald Pegg, you must find the sword.

What sword, you may ask? Well….

Ronnie had never seen the sword, but he knew where it was, and he had decided he’d never see it. It was under ground, and he didn’t want to hurt the ground. The place where he’d have to dig was his friend, and he didn’t even like to step on it, much less dig in it.

“You promised!” said the ground to Ronnie then, as if it knew what he was thinking when Mr. Pegg read this part of the manuscript. “You promised you’d never do it again.”

A large ugly scar of lifeless dirt divided the colorful patch of living grass. Ronnie could still remember how the pieces of grass had screamed that day as they were uprooted by Ron’s shovel.

It was Ron’s sword, of course. Ronnie had no weapons like that in his world.

Ron had had many swords, but this was a very certain sword, and with all he’d had, he had never needed to seek it out again. That sword had done its job.

“Leave it be,” Ron would say, if he were reading this, but he was not.

Mr. Pegg was reading this, and he had no idea where the sword was, nor what it was. He had forgotten. He assumed Ronnie would have to find the sword, but there are some things in the life of the three Peggs that they could only do together, and it would have been impossible for just one of them to do with that sword what would need to be done.

Ronnie found the place where Ron had left his shovel in the only time his older counterpart had visited his realm. He heard his patch of grass sigh, and he started crying. He liked that grass. It was the only grass in his small realm. He couldn’t imagine very much being in one place at any time. He’d seen it on television, but the scope and vastness of epic green fields escaped his young imagination. That grass was his only grass. It was his friend.

“I’m sorry!” said Ronnie.

The earth gasped under the hissing spade. He’d had to do it, of course. It was part of the story.

****

“When the Æsir saw that the Wolf was fully bound, they took the chain that was fast to the fetter, and which is called Gelgja 'Thin', and passed it through a great rock—it is called Gjöll 'Scream'—and fixed the rock deep down into the earth. Then they took a great stone and drove it yet deeper into the earth—it was called Thviti—and used the stone for a fastening-pin. The Wolf gaped terribly, and thrashed about and strove to bite them; they thrust into his mouth a certain sword: the guards caught in his lower jaw, and the point in the upper; that is his gag. He howls hideously, and slaver runs out of his mouth: that is the river called Ván 'Hope'; there he lies till the Twilight of the Gods.”

----as told by Snorri in Brodeur's translation.

The Wolf had existed in all worlds, and in all times.

In fits of dehydrated delirium brought on by drinking sea water on extended nautical trips to far lands unseen by human eyes, early Norse explorers had learned of him and had read his stories from the lips of gods. They called him Fenrisulfr, who is also known as Fenrir, who is also known as the Wolf.

Fenrir lies trapped by a chain forged of the sound of a cat's footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, bear's sinews, fish's breath, and bird's spittle. For countless ages he has lay on his back in and grown painfully bigger with each passing moment. He’d long outgrown the cavernous lair that’d originally housed him, and the bulk of his body now displaced earth whenever it increased in size. He could not move, nor did he desire to. The pain of the blade planted in his face turn desires to rage and rage to madness. He could not see anything, or hear anything, or feel anything except that pain. It was his whole world and the only thing he could bring himself to desire was its end.

The ways into the small bubble of open space that surrounds the hilt of the sword protruding from the center of Fenrir’s bottom jaw are many, but they are rarely ever discovered. It was a unique thing, then, that the little Pegg was able to locate it. Middle Pegg said he’d been looking everywhere for where the sword might be in his world, and little Pegg told him that he’d of been able to find it, if he ever took a second to talk to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Ronnie said to the ground, again, as it bled dirt into his shovel.

It wasn’t long before the hole was deeper than the little Pegg was tall, and his shovel broke through the bottom of the earth. Carefully, little Ronnie Pegg lowered himself into another story.

His appearance had changed, he was sure. He dared not look down at his hands, which had always been plush and soft, but now felt hard, and strong, and not at all like a little cartoon boy’s hands should feel. Norse leathers creaked on his body, and bits of metal clicked together as he slowly climbed down the wall of the small cavern.

Light from the phosphorescent world above poured into the cave and illuminated a small square patch of rock on the floor. There, in the middle of that square of alien light, was the hilt of the sword, protruding from a broad, smooth expanse of dusty rock. The metal was black and hideous with age. The little Pegg thought it might snap off in his hand, but he pulled, and it held steadfast and in one piece as it came shrieking from the rock.

The cave shook violently, and the rock beneath his feet turned to gravel, and the gravel to dust. He could feel it shift under his feet, as if some monstrous thing were moving beneath the rock debris. As quickly as he could, the terrified little Pegg bolted up the cave wall, almost slipping, but never quite being shook loose.

Back in the safety of his world, he peered into the hole he’d dug. An enormous red eye peered back at him. The ground around him still shook as a gargantuan, terrible voice spoke.

“SO YOU RETURNED TO FREE ME,” it said. The eye, seemingly as large and bright as the burning sun, but ever more terrible, blinked and narrowed as it spoke. “LITTLE PEGG, LITTLE PEGG, LET ME IN.”

“In where? How do I do that?” Ronnie was terrified. His voice reached a high-pitch, panicked keel as he frantically pleaded with the monster he’d unleashed.

“THE SWORD. YOU MUST USE IT TO SEVER THIS CHAIN. IT IS THE ONLY THING THAT MAY CUT IT.” The light flashed across a lustrous ribbon in the deep dark of the hole. It sat someplace beneath the eye, strung around, presumably, the neck, and perhaps protruding from the mouth, as it was being presented for cutting. “CUT IT. LET ME INTO YOUR WORLD, AND I WILL LIVE THERE.”

“But!” Ronnie gasped, trying to control his shaking. “But there is no room! You should stay there! Please!”

“THEN I’LL HUFF, AND I’LL PUFF, AND I’LL TAKE THIS WORLD IN.”

Ronnie screamed shrilly as cyclone winds stole the breath from his mouth. The grass slid into the whole, as did the dirt, as did the few trees, and great, amorphous expanses of colorful, gentle open space. The hills dropped into that hole, as did the sky. Then, it was quiet, and Ronnie was gone.

“No, no, no, no!” screamed Mr. Pegg, crying piteously. His voice echoed off the freshly swept ceilings and freshly polished floor of the sterile, institutional vector of his employment. “Ronnie!” he sobbed, but he could not recall a single detail of the endlessly narrated tale in which Ronnie had lived. It was Ron that he found, when he retreated into his imagination. Mr. Pegg was devastated, but Ron, who knew what would happen next, was preparing.

The enormous black blade which had pinned the Wolf’s mouth shut was in his hand, freshly fallen from the high place far above his own world of story where the little Pegg had lived. The little Pegg’s world was small, and frail. Ron felt that he could defend his own, larger realm much more admirably, and this is why, as usual, he was not afraid when the ground split open and the great, red eye of a monster peered into his.

“MIDDLE PEGG, MIDDLE PEGG, LET ME IN,” Fenrir roared.

“So there you are,” said Ron. “Just under the ground the whole time. If I’d of known, I could have buried that sword in your jaw without having to involve the little Pegg at all.”

“IT WAS YOU.” The world-devouring beast spoke matter-of-factly. He knew whom he was up against. “THAT WAS YOUR STORY?”

“That was your story, monster. When I bound you, I was only visiting it.”

“YOU BETRAYED ME. YOU KILLED ME.”

“I did what needed to be done, and by this sword I shall do it again.”

There was a brief moment of silence as the Wolf gathered the chain into its mouth and pushed a loop of it closer to the opening in the earth.

In the garish red light of a horror movie’s savannah sun, the chain glimmered white. Middle Pegg raised the black certain sword and, after whirling around to gain momentum, sent it sailing as far from him as he could.

“WHY DID YOU DO IT,” demanded Fenrir.

Ron knew the Wolf was not talking about him throwing the sword, and he would have answered, had his words been able to rise above the roar of rushing winds spiraling into the great crevasse surrounding Fenrir’s gargantuan and insatiable maw.

He’d done it because she had thrown away the book. She threw away all of his books, really, but not that one. That one had had Ronnie in it. He’d done it because she was the Eater of Worlds. She was Fenrir. She tried to destroy little Ronnie’s world, and so Ron had to stop her. But most of all, he’d done it because that was what happened in the story. Odin had foreseen that Fenrir would swallow the world at the end of all things, and knew then that the beast would have to be bound. And so he was.

Mr. Pegg wandered aimlessly down streets that would have been familiar to anyone who pays attention to things enough to remember them. A glistening mask of tears covered his dirty face, and each of his breaths was punctuated by a sniffle as he sucked soiled snot back into his nasal passage.

The old apartment complex he still lived in was not far from the college. In the time it took Fenrir to inhale Middle Pegg and his entire world, he’d arrived there, and made his way into the courtyard.

The manhole that’d so long remained open in his youth had long since been covered by a wooden planter, where a haphazard tangle of weeds and sickly flowers were in bloom. When he was working construction, he’d taken the time to build that planter himself, though he scarcely remembered it. He took a large black crowbar that he used to chip ice and turn the valves on hot pipes in the guts of the college and used it to smash the boards in some places while pulling them apart in others.

The long black of the old sewer seemed viscous, and living. A thick, evil scent poured forth, but no great red eye blinked and stared from its abyssal depths. Mr. Pegg, eyes watering now from grief and the overwhelming stench of the sewer, felt rust flake away under his fists as he gripped each ladder rung on his way into the belly of the beast. There was a flashlight on his belt at all times, right next to his keys. He lit up the inside of the tunnel in a single circle of halogen brightness, battling back darkness that’d been left undisturbed for over thirty years. He didn’t look long before he saw her.

Shining white was the chain he’d wrapped around that moment in his mind. Slowly, he felt it coming undone under the blade of a sword the Middle Pegg had been sure he’d made lost in his final moments, and the pain he felt upon remembering was nearly tangible.

The garbage bag had worn thin, perhaps even tearing open under the strain of impact when it’d hit the bottom of the sewer after leaving his hands at the top. He stooped down and retrieved her skull, still trailing dry, stubborn sinews and tendons that’d once been a throat. Stuck in the bottom of it, thrust at an upward angle, was the sword: an old serrated kitchen knife, about nine inches long and black with age. Mr. Pegg stared into the empty sockets where her eyes had been as he pulled it out. This was Fenrir. This was his Wolf; a woman long dead who’d once been his mother. She used to shake him, when he was somewhere deep inside the world of Ronnie. Mr. Pegg hadn’t remembered that until just then. She wanted him to wake up, or to snap to, and she said so all the time. She wanted him to live in the real world, and she thought the best way to do this was to throw away the book about little Pegg and his illustrated world of happiness. And so, with his head resting in a story he’d found in Norse mythology, the Peggs had killed her. It wasn’t just one of them. There were some things all three of them had to do together, after all, like when, a few days later, they’d cut her up and buried her. Using the sword was something they’d done together, losing the sword was something they’d done together, and then finding it again was something they’d done together.

“….Let me in,” whispered Mr. Pegg to himself, since his mother the Wolf could not have said it. Fenrir could not have been there. He was not real.

And suddenly, Mr. Pegg could very clearly see the difference.

Even in death, his mother had managed to end his worlds, and, for the first time in his life, Mr. Pegg was alone in his head. She could not end this one, however. This one is reality, and it will not end, nor will it step aside in exchange for places more forgiving, and malleable. This place is not what you make of it, it’s what it makes of you and Mr. Pegg, on understanding this, nodded his head, dropped his mother’s moldering skull, and began to climb back out of the Wolf’s den. Reality, he figured, was a fine story to live in. He’d learned that much. Nobody could take it away from him.

Sword in hand, Mr. Pegg rose triumphant into the soft afternoon sun and stared up into the real sky for the first time in his life. It was bigger, brighter, and more blue than he could have ever imagined.