Crobson & Crobson
Original absurd, satirical and funny fiction. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut, Adams, and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO).
Crobson & Crobson were the premier real estate agents for properties located next to train lines in the city’s southeast. Crobson & Crobson: We Sell Where It’s Loud as Hell.
The Crobson brothers were outside a FOR SALE townhouse dressed in purple velvet suits which they wore rain, hail or recession. The brothers were always matching, except for times of grave disagreement during which Hitch, the younger brother, wore a polka dot pocket square. That morning, fortunately, the two looked identical.
“Before we go in,” said Dom to a young couple looking to buy, “would you concede that it’s incredibly noisy out here? You’re rational people, I hope. You’re not too arrogant or fix-minded to make obvious concessions - noise being obvious to the eared, yes?”
As Dom spoke, the young husband moved his head like an old bunny-ear antenna. He was searching for that magical spot where the real estate agent’s words might sound over the Frankston line train passing only metres away. He couldn’t find it though, so he waited for the screeching static to subside before asking Dom to repeat himself.
It was one of those funny moments in life: a man saying it was loud not being heard because it was loud. When Dom explained what had happened, the adults chuckled at the small moment’s harmony. Then Dom tore the pram from the young woman’s grip.
“But doesn’t that only prove my point? Because of the noise you couldn’t hear me claim it was loud. Would you concede that? I hope you’re rational. Consider this before you answer: I’m a loud speaker, by nature. You might think I’m yelling right now but this is me talking. This is me yelling. Imagine how loud it must have been just now for you to not have heard me: a loud speaker. Quite loud, would you concede?”
Should he have stopped, perhaps let go of the pram?
“My father - our father - had large lungs. When we were growing up he said, ‘Boys, be careful with these lungs for they are loud and you will be heard.’ When he died, he donated them to the Monash School of Medicine. I saw one inflated there: a lung the size of a slow cooker, being played like a bagpipe. My point is that if my father was loud because of his lungs, and I have his lungs because I’m his son, then it stands to reason that I too am loud, which means that the train was very loud. Do you concede, or do you not believe in heredity? Do you think humans are just randomly generated?”
Hitch peeled his brother’s fingers from the pram handle. The brothers had a secret signal for those (rare) moments when Dom needed to refocus, so once Dom released the pram, Hitch massaged his right shoulder, bringing his brother back.
The property had a front yard large enough to fit a small outdoor setting or a child’s plastic slide. Given the proximity of the trains, however, the area was less useful as a place to read the paper or play and more a space perfect for enhanced interrogation. In the yard, the four adults and the pram crowded, protected by the barbed wire against the tracks, as Dom explained the property’s vitals (number of bathrooms, bedrooms, size in sqm, etc.). He was cut off by another train, and then, in the new but brief silence, Hitch’s phone rang.
In that velvet suit, he suddenly resembled a man at the races who had lost it all and was searching for the nearest cliff, hoping, praying, that atop that cliff was a pharmacy and a liquor store from which he could buy too many sedatives and too many liquors. These he could sling on the streets for a gun and a bullet and peace.
Naomi - the wife - asked if Hitch was okay, but he seemed too flustered to notice. He apologised, tripped, and excused himself. “A deeply personal matter,” he said before jogging through the gate and around the corner, leaving Dom alone with the clients.
Dom would do his best to continue the showing. Inside, the property’s newly remodelled kitchen and bathroom were spacious. The open-plan space bore little resemblance to the courtyard outside. The interior was so bright and modern that the young couple quickly forgot about Hitch’s strange departure.
“What’s the asking price?” said the husband. He was at the foot of the spiral staircase gazing at the living area, already imagining Naomi by the fireplace.
Dom closed the front door so hard the baby screamed.
“Before giving you the price,” he said over the crying baby, “there’s one thing we must do. We - meaning the three of us and your infant - must remain in silence for an hour. While the trains run quite frequently, the windows face away from the train line so we can’t be sure whether one has passed unless we wait. You would hate to buy this property thinking it is quiet inside only to find out later that it is loud, very loud.”
The couple’s eyes met. Dom felt their enthusiasm wane. He locked the front door.
“Mark, would you concede that trains run more often than hourly on this line? Here I’ll show you the schedule.” Dom handed Mark and Naomi a laminated metro schedule. “Every ten minutes each way. That’s every five minutes outside, twelve trains an hour, plus VLine and cargo trains. Do you agree? It’s simple arithmetic. Good. So, if we wait one hour many trains will have passed and, if we don’t hear them, then that means the new insulation I mentioned earlier has kept the noise out. Do you concede? You’re reasonable people, yes? I don’t want to do business otherwise.”
The couple nodded. In the ensuing silence, Naomi tried to whisper to Mark but Dom raised a finger each time. Naomi wanted to discuss mortgages. When the baby stirred, the couple refused to concede that locking ‘it’ in the closet would reduce noise. Their lack of logic baffled Dom, and he wore his bafflement as an hour-long scowl.
Growing up, Hitch loved to walk. One of his earliest memories is of walking independently for the first time. Even now he can close his eyes and see chubby legs extending and striking the pavement - bare legs because he’s in a nappy. It felt like a miracle to walk, a miracle that implied a thousand more. The world had become possibility-full and Hitch, that eighteen-month-old explorer, was found five kilometres away staring at the setting sun, considering his new place in things.
Leaving Dom at the two-bedroom townhouse, Hitch jogged along the tracks towards the nearest station. Naomi had wished him well with his personal matter, so it was her he thought of as he jogged - ducking low branches, leaping shopping carts at pace.
He imagined her smile, a smile that made him forget about the train and his brother and the property, even the ground itself. Naomi had this way: she glanced at her baby in the pram with such frequency that it seemed like the world was the thing she glanced at, and the baby was the world. Does that make sense? It was like the universe had shrunk to one face, one tiny face soon to expand and age and whither while her love lived on, immortal. Does that make sense?
Trackside, the universe again became possibility-full. Hitch imagined his wedding to Naomi: Naomi and Hitch are getting hitched, they would say.
At the reception, Naomi and Hitch are whispering ear-to-ear. Dom’s in his best man suit doing his best man speech. He’s forcing the guests to concede that love is real because they can all see it. He’s forcing them to concede they have eyes. He’s refuting Descartes’ cogito ergo sum on the grounds that eyeballs can see love and no devil, demon or demigod can fake true love, or do you believe love is so fickle? He’s waving off Hitch’s hand on his shoulder. He’s asking people if they question this union. He’s asking who among them worships Satan. He’s turning to Naomi. He’s far too strong.
Hitch arrived at the train station. He dumped his bag on the platform and took in several deep breaths. He checked his watch; two minutes to the next train.
The yellow line that runs the length of the platform had several gaps. Hitch wondered if these gaps are where the people jump or whether they jump anywhere. When our time comes, do we care for such things? Do we respect the lines in our time of dying or does dying bring out the non-linear? Does that make sense, he wondered.
He shook free the thought; he was just delaying what needed to be done.
In the centre of the platform, a woman stood holding her bag like a kettlebell. She had the same sweetness Hitch saw in Naomi - a smiling woman on her lunch break, no doubt a network of friends and family and colleagues on her mind.
When Hitch approached the woman, she smiled and then faced the gap in the yellow line. Hitch hated this part of the job, but it was his to do and his alone.
From his bag, Hitch removed a small Ziplock bag. He unzipped the lock and tossed the contents - a white powder - on the woman’s head. There were ten to fifteen people on the platforms and when a critical mass turned to the woman’s screams, Hitch yelled:
“SARS! That woman has the SARS! Remember SARS? Well, it’s back. It's among us here on this platform. It may be our ruin.”
Passengers sprinted to all four exits, some leaving bags, others their friends. It would be hours - hours spent alone in a giant quarantine facility in Avalon - before the woman found out the unknown substance was baking powder. It would be years - never - before she trusted a stranger, and nearly half that before she smiled again.
With the station empty, Hitch was able to contact Metro HQ. Over the intercom he explained that a woman had deliberately infected people with SARS. He kept saying, “This place is not safe. Does that make sense? Oh, and there’s a fire too.”
He set the bins alight and dropped to the track basin and sprinted at the city and felt his blood pump and his feet spring off the railway sleepers and he smiled at the miracle of movement until, from around the bend, the angry train appeared.
He dropped to one knee and searched the bag for the pistol, the silencer, the cartridge. He loaded the gun and shot the station’s signal lights but the train kept coming. There was no time to wonder how the driver failed to see the shot-out lights or the man in a purple velvet suit. Instead, Hitch steadied himself and fired at the passenger side window. The bullet punctured the glass. The train’s brakes came to life like the screeching of a thousand maternity wards filled in one delivery.
He was running toward a spray-painted line on the tracks. This was the no-go line the Crobson brothers determined last night. Beyond this point even a rickshaw could be heard from the spacious two-bedroom townhouse. Hitch reached the line, set his feet train-side and waited, his heart trying to punch its way free.
The train was slowing but not fast enough. The tracks began to shake. Hitch could have taken two casual steps in either direction, left or right, but he wouldn’t. Instead, he turned his shoulder to the train, as though this might stop it from crossing the line. If this was the end, then so be it. He knew that if his brother Dom was in the same position then he would also dig his shoulder in, and that similarity was enough for the move to make sense, enough for almost everything in this world to make sense.
With the force of a tsunami, the three hundred tonne snake slid until, inches from the welcoming real estate agent, it seized, kissing the man’s shoulder with no force at all.
These attacks occurred frequently thanks to Crobson & Crobson, and each time the Victorian Government was forced to apologise for the delay and rally the replacement buses. But beyond the delays, the attacks gained little attention. The PM&C economists responsible for determining the government’s response found the attacks surprisingly had no negative impact on ‘happiness’, which they measured using the closest known proxy: property prices. So, the government was content to claim the delays were due to ‘ongoing works’ and crack on with other important business.
There was only one instance of the attacks themselves making the news. A train driver had sent photos of a bullet hole in his window to the Herald Sun. They printed a one-page spread, in which the driver attested to the shooting, but maintained his attacker was a lovely man who gave him a polka dot pocket square to dry his tears.
Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction and prose. Literary influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald. That’s all we have time for, folks.
One of your more believable tales.
Another good one Luke !