The Fiddlers

We asked for a second chance. Begged. Pleaded. And many other synonyms for begged besides.

Please, we said. We screwed up, sure. We’ll give you that. But give us a second chance. Please.

They sighed. They grumbled. They put their “arms” “akimbo.”

Come here, they said.

We came there. We’d learned, long ago, that when the fiddlers said, Come here, the most prudent course of action was to come there, and quickly. They pulled up a colossal spreadsheet on a mammoth screen. The spreadsheet was so elaborate and expansive it was hard to get our bearings. We felt we were drowning in a vast sea of numbers, mathematical symbols, and inscrutable hieroglyphs.

You want a second chance? they said.

Yes, thank you, we phewed. Thank you so much.

You were given a second chance here, they said, pointing to a cell on the spreadsheet representing a date that was more than two hundred and fifty years ago.

And a third chance here, they said, indicating June 4, 1864.

They showed us our fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chances.

Wow, that’s a—, we began, after they’d retracted their “arm.”

But they’d only been catching their “breath.”

They proceeded to show us our seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, and twenty-sixth chances.

We waited for a beat. Two beats. Three.

Wow, we said, finally. That’s a lot of chances.

And that’s before you decided it would be a good idea to put a lifelong grifter, compulsive liar, adjudicated rapist, and all-around amoral fuckwit in the Oval Office, they said.

But we voted for—

Twice, they said.

We bit our tongues. We saved our breath. To them, what mattered was what we’d done as a collective. Together we had created this mess. And a reckoning was coming. Was here. The fiddlers must be paid.

Please, we said, backing away. Give us a twenty-seventh chance. Please.

The fiddlers looked at the spreadsheet. They clicked their claws and scuttled toward us in unsettling sidelong fashion. This would be messy, no doubt, but their eyes, being on long stalks, could be averted rather easily.