Sheila Slinkypaw

and the Penguin

 

Kevin J. Guhl

 

 

Gene concerned me. He never took off his head.

I never saw him without his outfit, never heard him speak. At the end of the workday, he just seemed to evaporate. I began to wonder, perhaps through 110-degree delirium, if Gene actually was a giant penguin.

I pushed aside my anxieties and sat across the lunch table from him. His flippers rested flat on the wood grain. His black eyes peered beyond me over his pointy, yellow beak. Like the cat I portrayed, I couldn’t hold back my curiosity. I nodded politely, my stiff kitty whiskers shaking. Then I lifted my fuzzy paws to my head and unscrewed it. The fierce Florida heat encasing me dissipated. I hoped that, for once, Gene would remove his own head.

He remained motionless. I rested my googly-eyed kitty head on a chair, slipped off my front paws, and greedily sipped a water bottle that sweated in my palms. The park instituted safety measures on days like this. We entertained guests for 20-minute shifts between cool-down sessions backstage. Gene had no water before him, no portion of Thursday spaghetti from the cafeteria. He never took off his head during breaks, never ate or drank. It seemed inhuman. Granted, there were times I felt inhuman, too.

“Hi… Gene? I’m Cindy. You don’t mind me joining you, do you?” I smiled toward his slightly open beak. I knew Gene’s real eyes peered out from shadows inside the penguin’s mouth. He rotated his head, aiming a frosty penguin pupil in my direction. Logically, Gene had looked away and was choosing to ignore me. But it felt as if he watched me through his dead costume eye, telepathically dissecting my forehead.

“It’s a roaster out today!” I squeaked.

The penguin maintained his silent icy stare until I felt like an intruder. Each prolonged second of silence shrank me further beneath his towering disdain.

My glowing confidence fizzled, and It started again… I fought the instinct to dive under the table. My heart sputtered. My hands turned frosty and tingled. I gulped in panicked breath and my teeth rattled. The slightest social conflict kidnapped me and drove me down this terrible road. I sought the best cure I knew: I jammed on my costume head and pulled on my paws. Immediately the fear relaxed its grip.

When I wore my powder blue kitty costume, I didn’t feel like my skeleton wanted to flee my flesh screaming from every awkward conversation. When I put on the fur, I wasn’t playing Bartley the Cat, cartoon sidekick to Chauncey the Dog, I was truly Sheila Slinkypaw, princess of the domain of Graystone Manor overlooking a stony North Sea coast, surveying with a self-satisfied purr all that was hers.

Gene twisted his head slowly back around and leaned forward. His beak bobbed up and down. I thought he whispered something. I strained to listen but heard nothing. He straightened and resumed gazing at the wall as though I had never been there. The patch of white fluff over his chest didn’t appear to move, as if he didn’t breathe.

I stood up. “Have a good lunch, Gene,” I weakly offered. “I need to go back out.”

I had thought Gene might understand me. I thought he was like me, out of sync with the world, someone who could use a friend. But I didn’t know who or what he was. I left him sitting alone in the lunchroom.

 

 

I had worked at the world’s most famous amusement park for two years since taking a break from college. I had slowly learned that chatting with my co-workers, in limited doses, wasn’t so bad. I had even gotten to know a few of them. Like Kayla, who portrayed a ballerina crocodile. We often worked the same hours, and I liked hearing about her boyfriends. One day in the dressing room I asked her about Gene.

“Removing your head is a biological necessity if you don’t want to melt. And he never eats or drinks. How does he not pass out?”

Kayla brushed bronze curls from her face and braced herself crookedly on the arm of the couch. Her wide, tutu-covered tail and haunches always threatened to roll her over. The crocodile head grinned hungrily at me from the coffee table. “He probably just wants to keep to himself,” Kayla said. “Maybe he’s on a diet and it’s making him cranky.”

I frowned and fought the urge to throw my kitty head back onto my shoulders. “You don’t think it’s strange that we never see him out of the penguin suit?”

“I don’t think Gene’s the only one who likes to stay in costume. Perhaps he’s a method actor,” she suggested.

 

 

I wandered into our backstage office during some downtime the next day. Trying to be causal, I brought up the matter of Gene to Brenda, who managed all the plushie characters.

“I keep hearing good things about Gene. He plays Icy the Penguin. You know, the one that turns off the light in your fridge when you close the door. Not Gene, I mean, Icy. Do you know him?”

Brenda broke away from her laptop and scrunched her freckled nose. “Gene. Gene…” she said. “Yes. Model employee, arrives early, always in character, good with the kids.”

“He is always in character, isn’t he? What does he look like?”

Brenda blew air from her nose. “Sandy hair, perhaps?” She squinted at me through narrow glasses and nodded at the digital clock above the doorway. “Cindy, are you still within the timeframe of your twenty-minute break?”

It was always eggshells with Brenda. The slightest thing would prompt her to suggest I should be more like Tipper McGee, a shining example for all of us. Tipper had played Dina the Dragon for 18 years. Until she stopped coming to work one day.

 

 

A week later, a police officer showed up asking about Gene. I was in costume, cooling off in our secret staging area behind Frost Castle in Dragon Land. I pretended to stare somewhere else with my cartoon eyes while straining to hear the conversation through my kitty mouth hole.

“His aunt and uncle have filed a missing person report,” the officer said gravely. “When did Gene last show up for work?”

“Oh, I’m pretty certain he was here Thurs… Wednesday.” Brenda clenched her clipboard. “It was at least a few days ago. I’m not totally positive.” She looked nervously over her glasses.

The officer pitied Brenda with a smile. “Why don’t we go have a look at the records?” Brenda nodded and promptly led the officer toward the office.

I covered my mouth with a blue paw. I was sure I had seen Gene at lunch. It wasn’t just anyone in the penguin costume. He had sat there wearing his head and avoiding conversation as usual. I had the urge to barge in and announce that Gene was in the park.

But what if it had been somebody else? Or another day? I pictured Brenda marking another check in the “inept” column on her clipboard.

I had to make sure it was Gene. I tilted up the nose of my kitty costume and gave my water bottle a deep kiss. Then I pulled my head down and checked that it was secure. You never let the guests see you without your head. You were depicting a beloved animated character. Shattering that illusion was the worst sin a park employee could commit, and grounds for instant termination. I checked the tightness of my head once more and walked out into the blazing sunshine.

I cut through Candy Plains, hoping no one would notice my unauthorized exodus from the mythical, perfect suburbia of Green Grass Estates. I pawed past a herd of giant gummy worms into the ice sculpture garden, Gene’s most frequent posting. Clear plastic lions, hot rods and world monuments drizzled water from tiny pores to appear legitimate. No penguin was in sight.

A teddy bear and dog in astronaut costumes handed out star-shaped lollipops to a flock of children in neighboring Spaceship World. Beneath a patriotically painted rocket, a life-sized statue of the Park Creator beckoned guests with an outstretched hand.

“Welcome to our vision of the future,” the Park Creator beamed with grandfatherly warmth. “It’s yours to take. Dream it, grasp it, embody it.” The silver statue moved almost imperceptibly atop its tall pedestal. It captured some small essence of the departed Creator. The mechanical mannequins and puppets made by the park’s engineers grew more lifelike every year.

Staring upward and fixated on the Park Creator was a large, plushie penguin. I slinked across Spaceship World, onto milky blue tiles that glittered with glassy stars. I stepped lightly behind a plywood astronaut and peered out the hole carved for the face. The penguin laid his flippers on the statue’s pedestal. His beak flapped slowly as though holding a conversation.

Cameras snapped loudly. I turned to find a giggling couple staring at their phones. No doubt posting their “cat astronaut” photos on social media. Photos of me, in the wrong section of the park. I foresaw hawk-eye Brenda finding them and swooping down on me, claws extended.

The penguin turned. His pupils, black voids, found my own eyes inside the cat’s mouth. Feeling naked, I shuddered. He pulled his flippers from the pedestal and waddled carefully backward.

“Wait,” my voice creaked. “Gene?” He reacted to the invocation of his name like I had exhaled fire. He crashed into the rocket and darted around it. I pounced past the startled couple in hot pursuit. My tail streamed out behind me.

A toddler stepped into my path. I leapt onto a bench, trying for an air of feline grace but instead tripping over my fluffy feet and falling onto the path.

My head loosened and began to slide off. The anxiety oozed right in. Leave Gene alone. What will you say when he takes off his head? How will his real eyes size you up? My heart slapped my ribcage and my fingers became icicles. I yanked my head down urgently. Sheila Slinkypaw’s determination washed back over me. I’m going to help him. I’m going to solve this mystery.

I clambered to my feet, front paws outstretched for balance. The crowd roared with laughter and clapped. I rushed out a curtsy and slipped through gaps in the audience.

Gene disappeared into Workaday World — toy dump trucks and bulldozers, workers in bright orange helmets and pastel overalls, business people wearing spherical heads printed with simplistic faces, plastic skyscrapers. A door slammed in the alley beside Take-A-Break Theater, home to the famous “Workaday World” ride. I ran in but found the alley penguinless. At its end, faux brick plates hid the theater’s employee entrance.

The door creaked open and a yellow beak poked slowly out into the sunshine. Black eyes shimmered behind it, and seemed to grow larger upon seeing me. Gene retreated back inside and the door swung inward. I raced forward and grabbed the door just before it closed.

Inside, the sudden shift from dazzling sunshine to darkness blanketed my eyes. Gradually I saw a hallway stretching out into murky darkness, hulking piles of broken-down puppets stacked against the walls. Workaday World was the oldest ride in the park. Its bowels harbored the mechanical workshops that birthed all the automatons we worked with. The engineers tinkered away in dank workspaces; their obsessive ingenuity created new inhuman wonders every day.

One-way tinted windows lined the hall. Through them I could see guests flying by in tiny propeller planes on a sunken track. The planes halted before a scale replica of the Royal Palace of Madrid. A platoon of puppets popped up from the floor. Three-feet tall. Plain wooden heads shaped like pumpkins. Bulbous, pink cheeks. Glassy eyes with onyx, Pac-Man pupils. Beak-like noses and savage smiles.

The puppets’ limbs resembled dry twigs, flailing around and swimming inside business suits, overalls, and other work attire. Their glimmering, porcelain teeth clak-clak-clakked. Their jaws flapped in time to “Work, work, work, it’s a workaday world!” – paean to a never-ending, global workday.

A door squeaked ahead of me. I caught sight of Gene’s stark white penguin belly as he wobbled off into a room. I sprinted down the hall and heaved open the door.

A single, dim bulb hung from the rafters. Its dull illumination outlined metal tables piled with tools. Standing motionless under the gently swaying bulb was a giant penguin.

“Gene?” I said. He actually replied, although it was as faint as a mouse squeak.

My whiskers twitched. Going further into the workshop seemed like stepping off into an empty swimming pool. But I moved across the wide, nebulous space. I was Sheila Slinkypaw; I could do this.

The penguin’s eyes glowed like dim, dark stars in the incandescent light. Gene didn’t react to my approach. I leaned in, kitty nose almost tapping his beak. My claws lightly grazed his fluffy feathers. His face was invisible behind the mesh in his beak. “What did you say?”

“Work,” he whispered in a voice like sea breeze grazing shaky dock timbers on the edge of an oncoming storm. “Work, work, workaday world…”

I stood back and my tail drooped. “What do you mean?”

The blank wall behind Gene whooshed aside. The hanging bulb swung shadows across the workshop. A burst of brightness from a newly revealed room nearly blinded me.

Inside the hidden room, translucent ceiling tiles cast jade light on several mannequins. I thought they were mannequins. They were human size but not dressed like presidents or Hollywood stars. I could clearly see the two in front. One was a middle-aged woman with a Dina the Dragon t-shirt. I thought I knew her… “Tipper?” The other was a young man in his ‘20s in dress shirt, jeans, and sneakers. a sandy shade of hair that seemed familiar…

Their skin was incredibly detailed – tiny hairs, blemishes – but the green illumination gave them an awful, sickly tone. Their arms were raised, fingers clawing. Their bloodshot eyes were wide and partially rolled back into their skulls. Their mouths were cramped into sneers.

The light dimmed out and something scraped the wall behind me. I spun around and saw murky shapes looming, blocking the exit. It was Dina the Dragon, Hilda the Ballerina Crocodile, and Astronaut Burt Venturion. Loveable childhood icons, smiling costumed characters, but I broke out in sweat worse than during August’s peak discount season.

Burt came at me, toothy grin and determined eyes pressed against the glass of his space helmet. He lumbered forward and awkwardly swiped glittery space gloves at my feline eyes. I dodged backward and almost fell on my tail.

But something caught me, something that felt vaguely soft and fluffy through my paws. I twisted around and saw Gene’s pointy penguin beak in my face. He wrapped his flippers around me and squeezed my sides with painful force. I heard the crackling of ratchets from inside his costume.

“Grasp it,” Gene softly whispered. “Embody it.”

He lifted me off the ground. I clapped my paws around his penguin head. He paused, unable to see. Then he squeezed harder. I squealed and bunny-kicked backwards, ripping Gene’s penguin head clear off his shoulders. I stared. I dropped the head.

Poking out from Gene’s costume was a head the size of a softball, of thickly varnished wood. Sprigs of black hair stood up stiffly on his scalp. He glared at me with white, googly eyes. Flat eyebrows on thin pegs pointed crossly down over pie-shaped, pitch-black pupils. Gene’s lips were bright red paint, twisted into an hysterical grin. His teeth were ivory dominos. His wired jaw clacked up and down, warbling the song “Workaday work work, workaday work work!”

I screamed. Gene waddled closer. His jaw snapped closed against the claws of my front paw. I yanked my arm away, popping the hinge under his bulbous cheek. His mandible dangled wildly from his head. He kept singing.

Dina the Dragon, Hilda the Ballerina Crocodile, and Astronaut Burt Venturion shambled closer. Dina reached for me with stubby, webbed fingers. I dodged down the nearest aisle.

But the plushies closed in. I ran my paws over the tools on the table for a weapon. There was a large metal tube. Maybe a fire extinguisher. That would fend them off. I held it aloft, squinting through my mouth hole to see its outline in the dark.

I pressed it against my snowy chest. Furiously, my kitty toe beans searched for dials or levers. Something loosened, and I held it up and waved it wildly at the approaching Hilda. But what came bursting out of the tube was a brilliant flame.

A butane torch! The crocodile bopped backward, knocking over Burt the astronaut and Dina the dragon. I leapt over them with the clumsy grace of an overweight house cat.

I smirked and congratulated myself. Then Gene came waddling at me, and I held out the torch with a threatening gesture.   But he ran right into it like a penguin to a flame, and in a second Gene’s head was ablaze. The varnished wood grain smoked. His plastic eyes went wide and began to melt. His broken mouth emitted a high-pitched shriek. He backed into the others, and their costumes ignited. They ran, carrying flames throughout the workshop. Fire spread up the walls.

I smashed through the door into the outer hallway and switched off the torch. Through the one-way glass, the park visitors rode blissfully on. My stomach dropped.

Fire alarms, my frenzied mind spat out, are always near a door. I turned back to the shop entrance and saw a faint, rectangular outline on the wall. I smacked it with the torch and sirens shrilled. The ride slammed to a halt and all the lights in the building blazed.

I exploded out the hidden entrance into the searing sunlight. Holding the torch was no longer a good idea and I quietly tossed it back through the entrance.

Confused park-goers and employees swarmed around the marquee of Take-A-Break Theater. The park’s own fire truck, housed in a dayglo orange station down the block, screamed its way forward. A burly firewoman in a rubber jacket herded me back toward the opposite curb with a wooden barrier.

Smoke seeped from the hidden entrance like a secret wound. Masked firefighters pulled open the door and ran inside. The crowd wasn’t sure if they were watching a show or reality. There was a tap on my shoulder and I turned to see another fright – Brenda. She clutched her clipboard and stared at the ride, heat waves distorting her crinkled red hair. Then she narrowed her eyes at me. “What happened???” she hissed. I felt like I was already on trial.

“I don’t know! I was only looking for Gene!” I had to come clean, in some way, although I couldn’t explain or comprehend what had just happened.

Brenda fixed her steely gray eyes on me. It felt like the hairs of my costume stood up. “No one can find Gene. The police are searching for him,” she said. “Another officer came by looking for Kayla. Have you seen her?” Brenda looked back at the smoldering building before us and the fear that seemed to graze her senses fully engulfed my own…

The burning crocodile in the tutu… Burt and Dina… Those strange mannequins in the hidden room. The one that resembled Tipper, the one with sandy hair. None of them were real, right? They were just gruesome mannequins, costumed animatronics, weren’t they? I felt my lungs had ceased operating. If they were real, they were already dead. Killed by …

“Cindy,” Brenda said. I turned, and saw her expression had reverted to its usual sternness. She was frowning over her cell phone. “Did you leave your designated park area and allow guests to take your photo?”

 

 

I don’t work at the park anymore. I never went back after the fire. Workaday World, the ride, burned completely to the ground.

It never made sense. The firefighters got there within minutes. They should have been able to stop it, to save the park’s most famous and historic attraction. It’s like they let it burn down. It was a huge news story, but no deaths were reported.

I tried to call Kayla. She never answered. Weeks later, her father called. “Kayla hasn’t been home or to work,” he told me. “Please, do you know where she is?” I wished there was something I could tell him that made any sense.

I moved back home to Minnesota, hundreds of miles away. Back to my parents’ house, back to the cold. My new costume is a powder blue skirt and a starched white apron, my character a perky waitress who pretends that she cares.

The tin-plated diner I work at is precisely 3.6 miles from the center of the curb in front of my parents’ ranch home. The driver’s side of my rusted Dodge hatchback is exactly 55 of my footsteps to the front door. I can be through the living room, down the hallway and inside my bedroom locking the door inside eight seconds.

The cat waits on my bed, her plushy blue arms and legs folded neatly. Her head grins a warm welcome, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I slipped out with her in the confusion after the fire. Brenda left voicemails, asking me if I took the costume. “This severely cuts into my departmental budget!” she yelled. I never called back. I changed my phone.

The kitty is mine, and she is me. I step into her paws. I zip her fur tightly closed around me. I place her head over my own and welcome the darkness. Only a small tunnel of bedroom light filters through her sharp teeth. I slip down onto the floor against my bed, pull my legs to my chest and hug my fuzzy tail.

I see them constantly, even while I’m awake. They spread out, trudge slowly down the street in their costumed feet. They hide their twig-like bodies inside characters we’ve loved from an early age. The mechanical frames in their suits crush unsuspecting throats just like Gene almost shattered my ribs. Within plushie heads, their sharp jaws clak-clak-clak. Their squeaky voices harmonize: “Work, work, workaday, Workaday World!”

My parents think I’m back to my old ‘antisocial’ self, spending all my free time in my room. They quietly feel guilty, like it wasn’t just a fluke of my own damaged brain.

But they don’t see what I do: The mascot that stands outside the chicken place in town, always in costume, always on duty, late into the night when the restaurant is closed. Scattered online reports of missing park employees going back years. Park merchandise stores in local malls with strangely realistic mannequins. And the ever-present TV commercials for new park locations opening around the country.

I won’t be replaced. I won’t become a statue like the real Gene, my skin putrid and glossy, my eyes erupting in petrified horror. They’ll think I’m one of them, but I won’t be. I’ll be me, my true self… Sheila Slinkypaw, princess of the domain of Graystone Manor overlooking the stony North Sea coast. I’ll never take off my head. They’ll never know. They’ll never find me inside.