27

When Zamfir saw the boy's eyes, he stood transfixed. The horrible thing was, the gold was spreading. He stood practically incapable of motion. He wanted to cry for help but couldn't.

Derf had enough problems anyway- he had a rare skin condition and his skin was as brittle as paper which meant that he had to be home-schooled and live in isolation. Unfortunately for Derf, his parents had strange beliefs about medicine.

They're into that horrible Bob B. Soxx cult, Zamfir thought, and in the time it took Zamfir to form a thought, Derf had become a living tower of paper. His face took on a thin, waxy quality. As a matter of fact, not only was he made of paper, he even had a subtle watermark.

Creepy, Zamfir thought.

Derf's bones were becoming more visible by the second. Zamfir was unclear on how fragile the boy just was anyway, and how much worse he had become, just now.

The boy's eyes gave him a quality of menace but the rest of his face looked more desperate and scared.

"Do you need a --- a blanket?" Zamfir asked. How can his parents just put him out the door? Those Bombardes, they're really engaging in cruel and unusual punishment. Zamfir left Derf, hands folded inward, and walked up the suburban stone path to the front door. He rang the bell. Derf's dad answered.

"Hi Jim," said Zamfir. "How are you?"

They had met a few times previously at parties. Jim Bombarde struck Zamfir as an odd guy. Portly, with a shorn head and spotty beard, he looked like a bum, and the illusion would have been complete if not for the Pulitzer on the mantle. Was there even a physical statuette called a Pulitzer?

Now that you mention it, Zamfir thought, what does it look like? I really don't recall getting a good look at it last time, I was here, at that one birthday party.

Brief images of the Oscar, the Emmy, the Grammy, the Golden Globe, the MTV Music Award and a few other awards passed through Zamfir's mind, as did a vague sense of guilt for getting so sidetracked when there was a kid with gold eyes sitting outside on a pile of leaves, getting turned to paper.

Zamfir held his head in anguish! And Mr. Bombarde gave him a look somewhere between disdain and amusement and tolerance, but the tolerance was wearing thin. Mr. Bombarde peered pretentiously over his little round glasses.

"Zamfir the mailman," he said. "How ya been."

Zamfir straightened up slightly and said, "Jim! What are you doing to that child? He's turning to paper out there!"

Jim looked over his glasses, with no discernible emotion, out the door at his son.

"Zamfir," he said slowly, "What you have to understand is that Stanley's skin is as strong as iron. The weaker he looks, the more translucent he gets - he's actually getting stronger and more resilient, not less."

Zamfir blinked.

"The only thing wrong with this picture is that he's sitting there on that pile of leaves, looking like a statue. I sent him out to play. Stanley!" shouted Mr. Bombarde over his snail shoal sweater and his little specs. "I told you to go outside and play!"

The child said nothing, and then the scene grew even stranger, as Derf began to dissolve from human form into a viscous mass of molten gold.

Zamfir cried aloud!

Jim seemed unconcerned. Now resting on a pile of leaves was a moving plate of thin gold leaf, hugging the contours on the leaves, gradually flowing to the earth and essentially of one autonomous shape, except for the fact that it did gradually collect things, burrs and brown dust, like someone trying to chew gum and eat food at the same time.

"Oh my god. Oh my god!" cried Zamfir.

"He's bluffing," Jim said.

"Your son just ... went away! Don't you care?" cried Zamfir.

"He'll be back," Jim said. Jim stayed put while Zamfir danced around the entryway. What would it be, that first press of contact? Like the human sacrifice desiring the volcano, Zamfir felt a sick fascination with the blob of death. Would it be unbearably hot, like molten lava? Would he get turned to gold, like Midas? Would it be instant death? Would he fall into the gold like quicksand?

The gold made a hideous sllllllp on the walkway, like metal, running water and a mottled rodent scampering away from a predator. Zamfir was apoplectic. As the gold leaf approached the front door, Zamfir instinctively hopped up on a nearby Poorboy chair. Like someone scared of a mouse, he silently prayed this Otto-from-Berserk would just not choose to pursue him, because he didn't give himself very good odds if it did.

The gold leaf blob formerly known as Derf did not begin eating away at the legs of Zamfir's chair. It passed the entryway and went into the hall.

Morbid curiosity fought with the desire to flee inside Zamfir's mind. He almost ran like hell, then decided to see what the thing was up to, where it would go.

Jim stood his ground the entire time, a stoic fat lighthouse.

Zamfir realized at this moment that he didn't like Jim. At the birthday party there had been enough of an ensemble cast of friend that Jim's snobby negativity hadn't stood out.

Zamfir noticed Jim hadn't so much as turned his body around to watch. He stared straight ahead and his little moustache crept up his nose. Zamfir followed the gold around the corner. It was heading for the fireplace and Zamfir noticed on top of the fireplace, two little statues.

One showed a staid, professorial man, cast in gold, his back bent, his tie dangling, little tufts of hair sprouting from his shorn, gold head. He spoke. And his finger was raised: he made a point. Next to the statue of the old man was a familiar gold statuette, looking straight ahead, indistinct of feature, neutered of groin and instantly familiar as an Oscar.

Zamfir did not waste any time contemplating the Oscar. He was both horrified and amused that apparently gold seeks more gold, with a methodical golden drive.

When exactly did Jim win an Oscar, he wondered.

Was it strange, callous, to be having passing thoughts about "normal" life, in the middle of a crisis?

No, it's only human, he thought and leapt up on the couch, just in case. The puddle ascended the brick fireplace, shining, glinting and covered the Oscar like a fumigation tent. Zamfir suddenly was extra glad it hadn't touched him, when he saw how effortlessly it ate the Oscar statue. Swoop! In moments it was once again an unbroken flat surface on the mantle - the Oscar was gone.

"It ate your Oscar, Jim!" Zamfir cried, hoping that would get a rise out of the old lug, desperate for some kind of human acknowledgment of the bizarre.

"It's starting on your Pulitzer!"

After it methodically ate Jim's Pulitzer Prize, the blob crept down the mantle slightly to the place where it opened up into the chimney. Defying gravity by apparently sticking to surface, the blob vanished up the chimney and was gone.

"Jim! Your son!" said Zamfir.

"He's bluffing" Jim repeated.

"He went up the goddamn chimney!" Zamfir said.

"He'll be back," Jim said.