AND OF THE GIRLS ARMY THAT FOUGHT BESIDE THEM

IN THEIR BATTLE AGAINST THE CONFEDERACY OF THE CLAN OF THE AGIVECENNIANS

By Henry Joseph Darger

The author of this exciting story

She turned a few pages. The manuscript was entirely handwritten, not typed like Lionel’s scenarios and photoplays. There were lots of crossed-out words and splotches of spilled ink. “What’s it about?”

“It’s an adventure story. Very thrilling. You can read it if you want.” He pointed at the chair.

“Maybe another time,” said Pin. “It looks pretty long.”

“I’m going to be very famous. When the editors see it.”

He rummaged in the desk drawer and pulled out several large sheets of butcher paper. Each was filled with brightly colored figures—girls, mostly, but also men in gold-and-purple military uniforms, and many, many flowers. Some of the girls wore dresses, purple, yellow, red, but others were naked, with very white skin and black or yellow hair. Many seemed to belong to the same family—their faces matched, their dresses and shoes matched, even their hair. The girls always seemed to be running: from giant flowers that had legs, from a tornado, from a sofa falling from the sky. But mostly they ran from the men in uniform.

Strangest of all, some of the girls weren’t girls, but boys dressed as girls, or girls with boys’ bodies, ram’s horns, and rainbow wings like butterflies or bats. Staring at them, Pin clutched the bed beneath her, as though it had started to move.

They looked like her, or she looked like them. Something in between, something she didn’t know the name of but recognized. A lightness filled her, the way it had when her mother had cut her hair and she’d first put on boys’ clothes. She opened her mouth and let the lightness escape, almost surprised not to see a bubble or a balloon floating away from her, like in the pictures in front of her. How could one feel like this and not be flying? Like the Aerostat or a balloon; like Harriet before she fell.

Pin set the pages on her lap to examine them more closely. She recognized many of the faces—they all had the exact same features, those of one of the Teenie Weenies in the comic strip.

“Do you trace them?” she asked Henry.

“It’s allowed.” He sounded offended.

“I know. I just meant—they’re so good.”

She pored over the next sheet, and the next. More Blengins. A boy traced from Buster Brown. A cave that looked like the interior of Hell Gate. Balloons with eyes and teeth like piano keys.

Pin stopped at a picture of a pair of gigantic hands choking a girl with a grey face. Liquid spilled from her mouth, and her eyes were wide with an expression Pin had never seen on someone who was alive. She quickly pushed it to the bottom of the stack.