Alice, Smiling

When she was eight, Alice Henderson briefly held the world record for filling her mouth with marbles.

Forty years later, the rat fur gray carpet at the expo center mocked her.

Suffocating in a crowded, hollow echo, she silently pleaded with every passerby not to speak to her, then ragefully chewed at the inside of her mouth when they obeyed.

Lame.

She was just so extraordinarily lame.

Because she wasn’t the first. 

And she wasn’t the current reigning. 

And she wasn’t even Marina Olfstrom who suffocated trying. 

She was Alice Henderson, the briefly held.

Alice Henderson, the who?

Alice Henderson, the … oh, sure.

-

Every year she spent more money on her booth at GOATcon than she ever made. 

Printed new headshots to sign even though she never ran out.

Stayed up all night with Tiff and Franco tying together little satchels of hand painted marbles to sell pretending she wasn’t going to end up giving them all away for free.

Every year, she almost believed that that one thing she did that one time that felt like it mattered actually did.

At least this year she didn’t get stuck next to the actual goats.

-

Geoffrey Durgin was the real marble star.

Alice could still feel his cold, slippery hand in hers on the day of abdication.

At the time she almost felt sorry for the greasy, gangly preteen whose skin was more blinding than his braces. 

He needed it more than her.

Now, as she glared at the marbled mylar balloons looming in the distance over the cubicled maze of record holders and breakers and their adoring fans summoning them in his direction, she seethed.

Geoffrey never abdicated.

Anytime someone came close, he added just one more.

Seems hardly fair, as your mouth does get bigger as you age … doesn’t it?

Yeah.

… probably.

-

But it wasn’t just that.

Geoffrey wasn’t the same pathetic pimple popper anymore.

Geoffrey was marbles.

Durgins were marbles.

Kleenex.

Band-Aids.

Cokes.

Durgins.

Geoffrey Durgin was photographed on yachts with presidents and foreign diplomats and Hollywood stars.

He dated eighteen year old runway model girls in public.

He dated eighteen year old runway model boys in secret.

He had villas on islands where planes couldn’t fly over.

He tipped either zero or one thousand dollars.

He was the man.

The man made of marbles.

And Alice had handed it to him.

And Alice was going to take it back.

-

She knew money could buy records.

Alice had never stopped filling her mouth with marbles.

She had beaten Geoffrey’s record ten times over.

But nobody would certify it.

Not with Durgins filling their pockets.

But, here.

There were too many eyes.

Not all of the thousands of people at GOATcon could be bought.

Right?

It would need to be an ambush.

-

She didn’t remember leaving her booth.

She didn’t remember navigating the grid.

She just kept her eyes on those giant, tacky marbles in the sky and suddenly found herself locked in Geoffrey Durgins gaze.

For only the second time in her life.

-
Alice.

He said it so comfortably, so earnestly.

She didn’t think he would know her.

Every year she came to this convention, she would not so casually graze by his booth to see if he might beckon her over.

If maybe there was a world in which they were professionally chummy.

Comrades or colleagues or peers, even.

They weren’t.

He didn’t.

She would sometimes sit at her booth and look up, feigning surprise at his approach.

He was never there.

Nobody was ever there.

But now here he stood, knowing her, saying her name to her face.

-

Geoffrey.

Just Geoff.

Ugh.

How are you, Alice?

Let’s go.

What?

Let’s do this.

Do … what?

You and me. All the marbles.

A whoop rang out beside them.

Murmurs traveled along his infinity line.

Uh. That’s an intriguing offer, Alice.

It’s not an offer, Geoff. It’s a challenge.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Uh. Ok, ok. Um. Not here, though, right? Let’s, uh, let’s give it an - an official showcase, yeah, yeah? Isn’t that what you all want? A showcase of champions.

The response was tepid, so Alice quickly countered in her best hype man.

Or do you want a one time only champion versus champion face off right here, right now? 

They liked that.

Well, uh, we’ll need judges.

No shortage here, right? 

Guess not.

And so it began.

-

A flurry of photos were taken.

Alice sidled up next to her nemesis, who was now beginning to increasingly resemble the dweeby gawk monster she handed her future to.

His smile still slickly veneered.

His eyes still devastating with a sinister charm.

His biceps bulging with every flash.

But Alice knew the secret his hands held.

She tickled her fingertips into his palm.

His skin shuddered.

She gripped his chilly, clammy flesh with glee.

A ripple surged her body.

A steady, centering, impossibly endless breath descended from her nose.

Her jaw unhinged.

And she held up hers and Geoffreys hands as if two opposing boxers at the end of their match. 

A booming and raucous applause burst from the ocean of attendees.

-

The marbles were quickly set in a glass urn like candy for a child's lavish birthday.

The judges assembled all around them at intensely serious vantage points.

An earth shattering hush fell among the airplane hangar of a room.

Geoffrey, the reigning champion, would get choice pull.

So Alice, the former, went first.

-

Seafoam.

With an elaborate white swoosh running through the center.

It was painful to admit how elegantly crafted Durgins were.

She licked it first.

Porcelain smooth.

A buttery warmth.

Salt.

Metal.

Lust.

Alice had always been unorthodox.

She let her tongue cup the orb and then slid it back along the roof of her mouth.

Most marble eaters build front to back.

As Geoffrey would.

He chose an onyx and slate beauty that looked like sex gritted between his pearly teeth and pale pink lips.

Alice slid her marbles as far back as they could go.

Favoring clogging up her throat and forcing her posture into a chest-heaved power stance.

Geoffrey resumed chipmunking, ever leaning forward to hold his marbles at bay.

-

One.

By.

One.

-

Beads of sweat.

Sighs.

Heartbeats.

Gulps.

A fervor.

A fever pitch.

A reckoning.

-

They were each one marble away from the record.

And, obviously, they both met it.

Alice with a brick red bubbled glass gem.

And Geoffrey with a lavender and blush delicacy.

It slid so easily into the mass of colorful swirls and splotches threatening to blitz from behind the gates of his teeth.

Maybe she had underestimated him.

Just because he had paid his way into blocking so many others from snatching his crown didn’t mean he hadn’t spent just as much time progressively honing his craft.

Her breath shortened every so minutely.

Shit.

Alice knew better than this.

Each exhale must be longer than the one before.

Any deviation from the pattern meant the jaw could tighten. 

And with a mouthful of marbles, a jaw must stay loose.

So, she pushed a long stream of warm air from the back of her head out through her nose and looked up into Geoffrey’s eyes, nodding him along.

He nodded back, respectfully, and she saw his ears twitch up ever so slightly.

This translates to a smile among marblers.

And she felt her eyes mimic the sentiment.

They were not enemies.

Or, they did not have to be.

They were the only of the other that existed in the whole of the record breaking community.

In the world, really.

-

And then, Geoffrey’s face changed.

A civilian wouldn’t have been able to discern it.

A brief panic.

A denial.

A desperately trying to reverse.

A flare of the nostrils.

A clenching of the jaw.

The skin of his neck squeezing.

His Adam’s Apple plummeting.

His eyes widening.

And then, the lurch.

The crowd, as if choreographed, gasped backwards.

-

A heave.

And a heave.

And a heave.

And at first it’s just one.

A solitary marble.

Pinging the floor below and sliding quietly until it circles to a halt.

Geoffrey Durgin.

Fallen from grace.

This is followed by the spewing.

-

Cries of grief scatter the onlookers, all of them Durginites.

An orgy of hatred and disgust and pain and pleasure ensues.

They begin hurling jabs of misogyny and queerphobia and racism and self harm at Alice.

And also hurling the marbles from Geoffrey’s mouth that have pooled the floor beneath them.

The ones they aren’t putting in their own mouths, anyway.

Or rubbing along the curves of their faces. 

Or on their chests.

Or down the fronts of their pants.

Or down the back.

Or onto someone else.

Some have started writhing on top of them.

-

Few, other than the ever dedicated judges and the hunched over and panting Geoffrey Durgin, have caught Alice quietly slipping a simple, totally unexceptional pheasant brown marble into her mouth with ease.

But after the judges nod to each other and raise up Alice’s arm in victory, they do notice her reach back into the urn and scoop up an extra three marbles just for good measure.

And pop, pop, pop each of them into her mouth.

And, with that sly and simple action, the entirety of GOATcon is a Henderstan.

And she floats among their cheers.

-

And she smiles.

She doesn’t remember the last time she did this.

Sure there were giggles here and there with friends.

The occasional good job at work.

A burgeoning crush.

But a wild, guttural, carefree, beaming kind of smile.

A whole body smile that lifts you up into a rainbowed sky.

That was a brand new kind of feeling for Alice Hendserson.

She liked it.

She’d stay in it.

So she threw back her head and sent her arms wide and let herself be.

-

Alice felt the marbles sliding down inside of her like a march.

Rhythmically pulsing her intestines.

Infiltrating her blood.

Digging their way into her bones.

Spilling out her nose.

Popping from her ears.

Pouring like tears from her eyes.

Bloating her belly.

Bulging from her skin like extra vertebrae.

She felt the crush of the concrete slab of a carpet beneath her.

And she gazed longingly, gratefully into the staring faces of her fans.

The shock, the horror, the awe.

To be in her presence.

-

Panic grew panic as everyone began slipping and tripping in a clamorous rush out of the convention center.

Marbles flooding like a plague underneath their scattering feet.

Ankles sprained.

Arms broken.

Chins crushed.

Noses bloodied.

-

And amidst the torrential chaos, lay Alice, smiling.

Because when she was forty eight, Alice Henderson briefly held the world record for filling her mouth with marbles.

And nobody would forget.