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by M.K. Hobson
Fantasy, 32 pages.
Originally Published in Realms of Fantasy, 2007
(1) Rate this Story Jeremy Schutz, manager of the Edelweiss Village Putt-Putt Golf Course, had a far more highly developed sense of responsibility than the average minimum wage employee. Because of this, the fact that that he’d forgotten—or to be brutally honest, neglected—to empty the course’s trashcans the night before filled him with such guilt that the simple act of parking his Ford Festiva in the Employee of the Month spot (being the only employee, his literal right to it was ongoing) filled him with the kind of damp, soggy remorse one typically gets from mooning a busload of nuns.
To be fair, he’d had his reasons for his dereliction of duty. And they were good reasons, for they centered around Becky, and anything that centered around Becky was good—at least in Becky’s opinion, and having dated her for over four years, Jeremy found that keeping his opinions perfectly synchronized with hers was not only gallant, but imperative.
For one thing, there hadn’t been all that many customers at the Edelweiss Village Putt-Putt Golf Course the day before (just the regulars, Mrs. Mielcarz and the albino twins) so it wasn’t like the trash cans had been overflowing when he’d left. Just a snowflake-smattering of mustard-stained corndog wrappers, a Diet Pepsi can or two. And (more pressingly) he had been running late for a date with Becky at the Red Dog Anti-Imperialist Coffee Collective.
“Unpunctuality is the passive-aggressive acting out of an oppressive capitalist mentality.” Becky had merged Marxism and feminism into an entirely new dialectic that she called Marxifism. “What have you got against the People, Jeremy?”
Jeremy didn’t think he had anything against the People, but if Becky said that he did, it certainly did give him something to think about.
Sighing with remorse and regret, he stepped out of his Ford Festiva and unlocked the back door of the Snack Shack. He hurried into the cool, musty-smelling darkness. It was 9 a.m., and the course didn’t open until 10, so there was plenty of time to attend to unfinished business before Mrs. Mielcarz could be expected to arrive with her putter in its case of crimson silk.
The Edelweiss Village Putt-Putt golf course contained 9 holes, par 2 each hole, one tricky dogleg on the third and a mean borrow on the seventh. But, of course, no one came to improve their golf skills. They came for the crazy fun of the brightly colored little buildings. The course was a medieval German village fantasy of thatched roofs, half beam construction, windmills, bridges, fake little sheep, and painted children in lederhosen and suspenders. Just the kind of village you’d want to hit a little white ball through. The centerpiece of the course was the big castle, a blue-and-white fantasy like the Cinderella castle in Disneyland, all turrets and spires, based on the castle of Ludwig the Mad, an Austrian nobleman.
Jeremy ran everything at the course. He sold tickets, he adjusted the mechanisms, he freed balls when they got trapped, rented out the clubs and balls, and emptied (or was supposed to, he thought with a twinge of guilt) the trash every night. As the golf course wasn’t really very heavily trafficked, even on weekends, it left him with a lot of spare time on his hands. He enjoyed his job. It was easier than slinging burgers, that was for sure.
Once inside, Jeremy flipped on the lights and opened the register. He tied on his apron, which read “Edelweiss Village—You’ll Have a Ball!” He placed hot dogs on the tines of the rotating hot-dog machine and put fresh buns in the bun warmer. He dumped two equal sloshes of oil and corn into the popcorn machine. He went into the closet, opened the breaker panel and switched on the music (a constantly looping soundtrack of cheerful polka music piped through speakers hidden under rocks) and the fountains (the course had three) and the attractions (the windmill on hole 2, the ball elevator on hole 4, the maddening, oppositionally-sliding tiles on hole 8, and the rising and lowering drawbridge of Ludwig’s castle.) Then Jeremy slunk out, guilt still gnawing at him, to attend to the trash.
The round, cedar-ribbed trash receptacles were set in discreet locations around the course. As he’d expected, the trash in them was sparse, nothing more than an stray popcorn bag or a shredded candy bar wrapper. Nonetheless, he removed the liner bags, stuffing them into a larger meta-bag, then relined the cans with fresh plastic. But when he got to the last trash can, he found that it was empty. Its plastic liner was gone, and the rusty bottom of the can’s metal interior stared up at him. He drew his brows together. He’d lined the can yesterday, and no one other than him could reasonably have been expected to have removed the trash.
Then, it caught his eye. A clear trash bag, caught fluttering on the closed drawbridge of Ludwig’s castle. It was empty, but it could be seen from the streaks of ketchup -- [End of Preview.]