Midnight Jolt Run

The Wall

“Mother, why do you believe in magic?”

I remember, while growing up, thinking how silly it seemed that mother would place a saucer bowl out for the pixies, and whisper a prayer thrice while tossing a pinch of salt over her shoulder whenever she needed some extra luck.  Ours was an age and a kingdom of reason, though superstitions seemed to be growing every year and an acceptance of magic became almost commonplace.  Finally at the age where my curiosity and frustration could no longer be held in check by mere politeness, I asked her outright.

She blushed deeply, turning her normally rosy pink cheeks a more crimson shade as she did.  “The Wall, honey.  Everyone believes in magic since the Wall appeared.”

“What wall?” I huffed.  I had heard of this ‘wall‘ whispered of before, but every time I asked for clarity, I was met with blushes and giggles and all manner of infuriating silence.  More often than not, I heard the words my mother then said to me:

“I’ll tell you when you’re older, honey.”

Well!  Clearly I did not appreciate that.  I was tired of being treated as a child (I was almost twelve at the time!)  I made such a scene at the dinner table that evening that my father sent me up to bed without more than a crust of bread, and I sulked for three days, refusing to come out until hunger finally wooed a more patient and reasonable mood out of my anger.  

My parents both assured me, and my younger brother, that they would take us to see the Wall one day, but they explained that it had to have been magic, and we should just accept it as truth until we saw for ourselves.  I suppose I forced myself to accept that explanation to be as good as any…after all, if these foolish grown-ups were believing in magic, a child wasn’t about to change their mind just because she read rational stories and took a shine to learning about the natural, rational world.  

Finally, in my third year of middle-school at the age of seventeen, my forgotten curiosity was rekindled when I learned of an after-class club, populated by a number of mousey but otherwise reliable friends and fellow students.  They named it the Genie Hunter Club, and over the course of a few boring afternoons, I found myself sticking through their hushed and whispered plans on how one might obtain a Genie.  Would he (or she?) come in a lamp like the old stories?  Maybe a stone, or a sarcophagus like they buried people in three kingdoms over, closer to the mud and salt plains.  Inevitably, the conversation moved away from the boring task of planning expeditions and reasoning how much gold would be necessary to bribe the secret societies and government officials guarding the secret paths to the Genie, and move to the wishes that he (or she) would surely grant.  

“Remember,” advised Sallah Cherm, a tall girl from senior class who was the defacto leader of the group on account of her age.  “We suspect two wishes.  Maybe three.  And they must be phrased carefully.  The most careful words you’ve spoken, lest another Wall happen!”

My ears perked up and I cleared my throat.  Most of the girls in the group jumped at the sound.  I’d usually spend the hour or so after school reading books or doing my homework while they prattled on about magic and mystery, so some of them must have forgotten I was even there.  

“Wall?  What wall?” I asked.  “Why does everyone whisper about this damn ‘Wall‘ like it’s something I should know about?”

Sallah smiled as the rest of the girls blushed heavily like I had seen a hundred times before.  “Over in the country of Yean, across the silver lake, there sits an impossible thing.  So outright strange and…and…” whatever tale she had borrowed her pretty words from was lost to her memory beyond that introduction.  “It’s a giant wall of Dicks.  So a Genie or something must have been involved, because there’s no other way a bunch of dicks got put into a wall.”

I found myself laughing.  This was the explanation?  This is why all the adults suddenly believed in magic?  This is why everyone had stopped talking about their travels to the land of Yean and other Eastern countries around their children?  What rubbish!  

But then Sallah pulled out a photograph from one of her study-books.  Our photographs and cameras were still a new technology at the time…the image was blurry and vague…but it looked real enough that I stopped laughing and examined the tall, black shadowy block with renewed interest.  It cut through a field that had no reason to have a wall, and yet was tall and substantial enough that it could only be a clever trick of the light…or a real, giant wall of stone.  Or, perhaps, some other material, even if I did not subscribe to her explanation.

“Alright,” I conceded, handing the photo back to her.  “There’s a wall there.  Why does everyone think it’s magic?  Why two or more wishes?  Who in the Nine Kingdoms would wish for a wall like that?”

Trelana, a bookish girl with olive skin, answered for the group.  “Say you had a Genie, and the first wish you made was something simple, like…maybe…riches beyond the Kings of the Land.  What would you do if the Genie granted your wish in a way that you didn’t like?”

“I think I could learn to live with however a wish like that was granted,” I laugh, but as I looked around at the shaking heads around me, I felt foolish.  A heartbeat later I began to think about what a wish like that would entail.  

“What if a pile of gold and silver and jewels appeared…out of the sky…and crushed you?  Or what if the treasuries of all the Kings suddenly went missing and their furious Knights found you rolling around on a pile of the combined wealth of the world?”  Trelana clearly had thought about this a lot.  “Even if you were very specific about where and how and what the wish was about, there’s a lot of room for interpretation.”

“Yeah, what if you wished for the hand of your sweetheart in marriage?!” Ralchan, a pimply girl from second year whispered.  “And then the Genie granted your wish, and you were suddenly married to a hand cut off at the wrist!”

“Or maybe you wished for long life and-“

“I get it,” I sigh, exasperated.  “But then…why a wall?”

Trelana nodded.  “After the first wish was granted, and you became furious with the Genie who just condemned you to death, or chopped off the hand or heart of the person you loved…the general, accepted theory was that the second…or third…or last wish was something said in anger.  Almost certainly, whoever the Wisher was, said:  Go Climb a Wall of Dicks.“

I find another laugh building in my chest, but it fades under the serious, solemn look from the other girls.  For a while, I entertain that they’re just messing with me…but honestly, half of them don’t look capable of this kind of elaborate joke.  

So, that night, I returned home and asked my mother.  She laughed it off as an embarrassment, but confirmed the tale.  Over in the Kingdom of Yean, bordering their lands with Dramack and Rostal, a nine-hundred mile long wall appeared some twenty years ago, and instead of bricks…

“Dicks,” confirmed my mother.

It was next year that I made my pilgrimage to the Wall.  As passed the border check of Yean’s western frontier by carriage, the bored looking man at the gates just turned to me and Trelana and Sallah and nodded.  “Here to see the Penis-Wall, then?”

Our reaction must have pleased the man as he began laughing.  “What’s so funny?” I demanded, feeling anger replacing my embarrassment as quickly as the latter had come.

“Oh, relax ladies, it’s fine.  We’ve gotten pretty accustomed to the sight of it these days, but I like to poke a little fun at the tourists.  Please, enjoy your stay, but remember that the Wall is not to be approached.  You’ll see the rules and regulations as you get nearer to the city.”

And just like that, a few more miles into the kingdom, we began to see a shape on the horizon.  A huge, block of shadow that indeed might be the grandest wall in existence.  And as we get close enough to see it is made of some kind of flesh, not stone, I find myself whispering what very well could have been that second wish:

“Go climb a wall of Dicks…”

And thus, the Wall came to be.

It’s huge and like nothing else on this planet.  As a proper wall of dicks should be, I suppose, for why would any magic that could create such a monument constrain itself to a simple five-by-ten section of fence?  A hedge to deter horses jumping over it?  No.  Restraint certainly wasn’t in the blueprint for this wonder.  

It stretches nearly nine hundred miles from the great Bone Mountains making the spine of the world, all the way to the Green Coast that is beyond the curve of the very planet itself even from the highest peaks.  It bisected the old maps with such unerring purpose that no less than four Kingdoms had to renegotiate their borders to the Wall’s whim.  A necessity, I can assure you, for as well as its length, the height is some three hundred yards straight up like a turgid stalk, and seventy yards thick at its girthiest points.  

Instead of bricks and mortar: dicks.  An impossible interlocking web of crotches that seem to blend into each other, and yet, offer such dizzying array of diversity in shape, size, colour and other such features that it was decided unanimously that every single penis in existence must have been copied and represented here in surreal, timeless fashion, like some archive of members stretching beyond the limits of understanding.  Thankfully, whatever twisted magic that made the wall had the foresight to endow it with a living force, so that we did not one day have hundreds of miles of rotting, festering flesh blighting the land.  In the early days, would-be conquerors tried to destroy sections of the wall, risking everything on the chance that destroying a penis on the wall might destroy one owned by the demolishers themselves.  But always, the wall returned…growing and repairing as if alive.  The remaining unsavoury mess of shattered phalluses made harm to the wall an almost unthinkable endeavour unless emergency transport through had to be arranged.   

I spent the next few years in the country with my school friends, learning about the Wall, chasing rumours about Genies, and immersing myself in the curious culture that grew up alongside this impossible thing.  

The most immediate effect of the Wall is how much shade it casts.  No plants save for the tallest of trees can get enough sunlight to thrive, so there is a natural line of barren, mossy soil that follows the wall like a tidy bush of pubic hair.  Some buildings had been destroyed by the initial onslaught of the thing as well, so towns and cities had to be remade with a safe border to the wall in mind.  Most of my nights were spent at the Cock’s Walk…an appropriately named inn famous around the world for having been cut clean in half by the Wall.  Whatever the Innkeeper lost in way of riches or wares when the Wall came, however, had been easily replaced by the volume of curious travelers placing down their coins at the bar, watching the wall behind the oak ale barrels gently sway and twitch with a life of it’s own.  

It’s not all bad, I suppose…most see it as a blessing regardless of the profitable tourism element here.  After the initial shock wore off and prude sensibilities were done being offended, the men of the land began to realize just how normal and average most penises were.  It was no longer some secret shame or great achievement to have or lack an inch here, or a bit of girth there.  And any debates on shapes, grooming or curve/angle seemed downright silly.  After you’ve seen thirty million dicks appear in your backyard, the taboo was pretty much over.

Women, too, responded more or less favourably, and some bachelorette parties still make pilgrimages to the Wall of Dicks, laughing and giggling and pointing out their favourite or the ones that look familiar.  Are the dicks indeed recreations of actual ones in the world?  We may never know…but of course there are legends that if a man can find his own penis in the massive jumble of others, he might grasp the organ and make a wish.

It’s a little sad that the King had to make such quests illegal, but I suppose watching half his kingdom’s able-bodied men spend countless hours climbing a wall of trouser-snakes was too much for his pride to take.  

Women too are banned from actually interacting with the wall.  Oh, some run up and risk the three-copper-piece fine by grabbing a todger or delighting in a quick kiss on the tip of a particularly healthy looking specimen, but for the most part the novelty has worn off as the years go by.

Cautionary tales spread among housewives of overzealous women sneaking out in the middle of the night to make love to the wall…(after all, what magical wall of dongs would be complete if the members could not perform?) and found themselves pushing out a babe made of brick nine months later.  Men and Women, particularly who had seen disease in the whore houses of the land, cautioned about touching the wall for the simple fact that we did not know if it could be made, accidentally or on purpose, to transmit disease or lice.  

Even so, though, as my school friends ran off to chase Genies on the opposite side of the wall (balloon travel over it was a budding industry now) I found myself enamored with the people and the land and extended my visit for another season.  

In whispered conversations late at night in the Inn, I learned that despite the law and risk, there were indeed women who visited the Wall on a regular basis.  Some came before their wedding nights to learn to handle a penis with some deftness, while others still enjoyed the thrill of breaking the law without actually, technically, cheating on their loved ones.  Some men came to the wall, not to seek their matching member, but because the Kingdom of Yean was not as progressive as some, and looked poorly upon those who fancied other men.  It was a secret meeting place for many, especially out in the fields where the patrols were less and the freedom to explore the Wall and fellow wall-watchers was greater.  

Were the tales of brick-babies real?  I began to suspect not…but the general consensus was that if magic could make a giant wall of penises appear, what really was certain in the world?  But for some, the Wall was indeed a blessing for the birthing of children.  Women, heartbroken by their husbands infertility, or death, or any number of other reasons to want a baby but being unable to go about it the usual way, often came to the Wall.  Particularly well hidden sections of the Wall out in the countryside became secrets passed on and shared…especially when a fine specimen or virile patch of the barrier was found within the first few feet from the ground.  

I tell this tale now with found memories.  Many years of my girlhood were spent chasing reason and logic, and it wasn’t until I became a woman that I realized I could also have magic in my life.  Perhaps not in the form of a chased Genie granting me wishes, but in the many months of stories I earned, friends I gained, and joy I experienced watching the people around the Impossible Wall share what wisdom and blessings they thought it gave them.  As for me?  I’m a lot more open and tolerant of strange things…which I can tell you has been a blessing in my life to this day.  It may be absurd, but I’m glad that magic exists in this world…even if we never see another example of it, I believe a Giant Wall of Dicks is quite enough proof for now.  

But of course, just as my mother and father were careful about when they told me of the Wall, I had to learn not to let the tales out in polite conversation here, beyond the Wall’s shadow.  Not everyone would understand, and certainly, there is still an element of embarrassment that we live in a world with such absurd, but wonderful things.  I doubt that it will ever go away entirely.

And that, son, is why I never speak of your Father.  Now hurry up and finish your broccoli, it’s almost bedtime.

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Studio Shinnyo 2017.  Khattam-Shud, EOF.