short story: bargey barge is in charge

Imagine that’s the last thing you hear before you die. It sucks as much as you think it would. Like, what the hell, who is this guy, I have things to do, and then you’re dead and it’s over and all you can think about is the sad irony of a life lived only to end abruptly in the firm grip of a man apparently named Bargey Barge who is, apparently, in Charge. And then you wake up in the dark and wonder if it’s heaven or hell or whatever but turns out you’re just on a barge, and Bargey is there and he keeps saying Bargey Barge is in Charge and no matter what questions you ask or how much you scream at him he just stands there and keeps saying it.

And then next thing you know you’re walking around on the barge saying “Bargey Barge is in Charge,” like an idiot and wondering what it means while stars glide past overhead and waves slither by beneath you. And it definitely doesn’t mean anything and you know that but you can’t stop thinking about it and Bargey is right behind you like the whole time just breathing or whatever he does. He doesn’t like cough or sneeze or anything like that; he just breathes kind of gruffly and shallowly and if he’s really excited to say he’s in charge he might grunt for like five minutes beforehand and you’re just standing there thinking “Oh no, here we goooo….heee’s in chaarrrggee,” and waving your hands around you as if dismissiveness were any form of actual escape; and then you realize he is in Charge and you cry for an hour on the floor at his wet feet.

I’m not even sure if I actually died for real or if I’m just somewhere between or if I’m still alive but don’t know it. I’m thinking about jumping overboard but I don’t know if it would do anything and if it did I guess that would suck too. They never actually said whether Bargey would kill me. They just said he would get me. 

I wish dad hadn’t tried to scare me so much when I was little. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up here if years of prank calls, Halloween masks, and window tapping hadn’t taught me to take everything as a joke. So when Mom told me Dad had “gone to be with Bargey” I just assumed he’d finally convinced her to play along with his stupid games and that he was working late or something. And then the next morning I wake up and Mom’s gone too. Weird thing is, though, they’re not here. So maybe they left me and Bargey only really got me. Or maybe I’m dreaming. Or maybe I was dreaming and I’ve just always lived with Bargey and I made the rest of that up.

No idea. Anyway, Dad had told me about Bargey several times before this. We’d be skipping rocks on the river, or walking up to the lighthouse to look at the river, or the river would be flooding downtown and we’d be talking about the river, and he’d tell the story of Bargey Barge. A very short story, actually. Basically, there’s this guy named Bargey Barge, and he used to work on a barge, and then he was pushed off by his captain for absolutely confidential reasons, and now he haunts this barge and uses his big spotlight to try to find people along the coast or on other boats or wherever and then he says Bargey Barge is in Charge and then he gets them. 

So I guess he got me. But it doesn’t even make sense. Not like Dad’s story made sense, but I wasn’t even near the river. I was running around the house calling everyone I could think of to try to find out where my parents went. Next thing I know it gets really bright outside like God decided to play around with the dimmer switch and then I couldn’t see and I was gone and now I’m here.

I wonder if there are, like, other Bargeys and other barges, and like maybe that’s where my parents are, but not every Bargey could be in Charge at the same time, right? Unless they’re just each in charge of their own barge, but how could that same story even occur more than once, and why would they all be named Bargey? Or maybe Bargey is like the Trinity and he’s three Bargeys in one but instead of three there’s like a million of them. Or it’s like the Borg from Star Trek and Bargey the spirit is like the cube and the Bargey the humanoid is like the individual assimilated Borg.

And if it’s like that am I a Bargey-in-Training? Am I gonna end up like him, with blue-grey puffy skin, moss covering my body like a thousand infected scabs? I seriously hope not, but at the same time if there are multiple Bargeys and I become one then maybe they have some kind of council meeting I can go to where I might see my parents again, albeit in Bargey form. But then I feel like all we’d be able to say to each other is Bargey Barge is in Charge and so we’d just hug and cry and say that over and over again. Is that where we’re headed? Is it better than where we were before?

I feel Bargey’s sopping palm on my shoulder, and he’s not getting me, he’s getting me. And we get it.