I Don't Know What to Call This

"It was a dark and stormy night on the Bering Sea. Lightning struck the waves and glanced from cloud to cloud like a loosed Jack Russell Terrier after a three-month stint in a full body cast, brilliantly lighting the roiling water like a flashbulb of electrifying intensity, or even just a camera flash, only faster, pushing the darkness back into its hole just for the instant it crackled. Thunder rolled its threatening but innocuous symphony, echoing in the trenches of the ocean's tumultuous surface just exactly as a ping pong ball would bounce down a long, dark alleyway where a lecherous, rather malnourished man waits, glittering knife in hand, for the young boy to chase his ball into the darkness. Yes, that is exactly what the thunder was like."

"Are there going to be Shrieking Eels? Because I would really like some notice if there are going to be Shrieking Eels," plied the old man listening to this sultry tale of weather's romance.

"Hush, Uncle Bo, there are no Shrieking Eels. That is another story entirely, and William Goldman would quite possibly not really like it very much if I borrowed that element of his masterpiece for my own telling. Now let me continue. We were just getting to the first character."

"Anyway, you get the idea about the stormy part. It was also very dark. Dark as the eyes of a Great White shark, or a giant squid, or a Barbie doll. Well, not a Barbie doll, but more a sort of traditional sort of doll, with those dark buttons for eyes, you know the ones. The darkness was thick, and encroaching, and leering, and somewhat voyeuristic, as most darkness is. Why do you think it comes up to watch while married couples-"

"Ah, finally the good stuff!"

"If you don't quit interrupting, Uncle, I'm going to leave, and then you'll be all alone with that matronly nurse who wants to bathe you. Do I make myself abundantly clear? As in like crystal decanter, sort of clear? I'll do it, you know I will, you lecherous old fart."

The slim old man, grown thin from years of Ensure through a straw, shrank back into his armchair. He did not want the matronly nurse to bathe him. She always tried to scrub his bits too hard, and her hands were rough from decades of cleaning and wielding that horrible, horrible scrubbing brush. Bo nodded, letting his nephew (who wasn't really his nephew at all, but we may or may not get to that a little bit later. It depends whether or not it comes up again, we'll see) continue unchallenged.

"Where was I? Oh, yes, the darkness. It was very intense, frightening in its intensity actually, and in some spots, where even the lightning was afraid to venture, even just the little leftover tendrils, it lived. It had lived for years. Or, well, it seemed like years. Because really it had only been something like around ten hours or so, because it was still autumn and the sun still came up. Anyway, that's not actually relevant. What is relevant is the small boat that thrashed this way and that, floundering in the bullying, smashing waves much like a flounder flounders on the butcher's block just before its head is chopped, rendering it a meal instead of a little animal to feel sorry for.

"In the boat there was a man and a dog. The man was dead, which really made him a corpse of a man, and the dog was not, which made him the lone survivor. The dog we shall call Jerry, even though that was not his name, but since the only man who knew his name is now dead, a corpse, we will just have to make do. Jerry was just now having to make a really very tough sort of decision for a dog. It had been over a week since his owner had fed him, or even moved, actually, and Jerry was beginning to get very exceedingly hungry. He really did love his owner, and was quite exceptionally loyal, but the corpse that had recently—give or take a week—been his trusted master was really starting to smell incredibly appetizing.

"So appetizing was the scent, in fact, even dampened and muted by the endless rain—I did mention the rain didn't I? No? Well, yes, it was raining, too. Quite common in storms, I think—and splashing salt water, and so terrible Jerry's hunger, that he was just about to finally take the first of many much anticipated bites, when a great crash and a subsequent, and very loud, rending rent the air. It made itself noticed even above the never-ending crashing and slapping noises of the waves, the booming exclamations of the thunder, and the rumbling of poor Jerry's stomach.

"The boat had just landed atop a large rock in the sea, you see, and that rending was the rock, which was sharp, you see, tearing a great rent in the hull of the boat. So great was the force that the two (the boat and the rock, that is, not Jerry and his master's corpse) collided with each other with, in fact, that Jerry's master's unknowing corpse was flung far out to the port (which is the left) and lost forever. Jerry himself was somehow flung right the opposite direction, which was starboard (that is right, which is logical, since it is, last I checked, the opposite of left), and into the briny depths of the forming trench.

"Much to the poor Labrador Retriever's surprise, though, it was not sea that he found his ever-so-suddenly-fortunate paws touching, but stone! For the boat had crept nearer and nearer to the shore, and the rock upon which it met its inevitable demise was, in actual point of fact, only one of many at the base of a large, looming cliff. This cliff was so large, so looming, that it defies description by either of these terms, and instead I feel compelled to simply note that this cliff, or cliffs as they were in actuality, were insane. Insanely tall, insanely craggy, insanely wide, insanely impenetrable, insanely unclimbable—especially for the four-legged canine at their foot! In short, pretty utterly insane. They might, in fact, even be called Cliffs of Insanity, if one were not afraid of copyright infringement or other-"

"I have to use the bathroom," interrupted a small, wizened elderly man sitting in the group of armchairs next to the ones occupied by Uncle Bo and his visitor.

"That's it! I'm going. I can't stand these damned interruptions any longer! I will come back next week to finish the story, Uncle Bo."

But Uncle Bo was already fast asleep, a small trail of chocolate-flavored Ensure slowly oozing from the corner of his slack mouth.

_~_~_~_~_~_

Edit: I'll be posting random short writings here, most of which will be posted elsewhere first, probably, so they may not be in order.

SOMEWHERE IN TIME, there is a turtle. This is a universal truth. Of course, you are thinking to yourself, there are many turtles in time. That is correct. This particular turtle, however, occupies a very peculiar space in time. Yes, you read that right. A space, in time. Many scientists will tell you that space and time are two separate things, and so the very idea of a space in time is preposterous. This is why scientists don't get laid very often.

In fact, time and space are not mutually exclusive, but quite the opposite. Without one, the other could not exist. But really, all of this is mostly irrelevant. The point is the turtle. This turtle is unique, in that is occupies a small space in time, that is constantly changing. The interesting thing about this is that the turtle never quite knows where he is, when he is, how long he has been there, or how long he might stay. This is because all of these variables are constantly changing.

Why is this the case? No one knows, least of all the turtle. In fact, all the turtle knows is that he would really rather have stayed in that one nice place with the grass and the pond. I blame quantum.

At this moment (which is a misnomer of epic proportion, and also not very specific, but I don't want to break anyone's brains with science), the turtle had suddenly appeared in midair twenty thousand feet above the Earth's North Pole. For a brief instant that might seem comical to an observer, had there been anyone observing that spot of the atmosphere twenty thousand feet about the polar ice cap, the turtle hung in the air much like a beer can tossed up in the air hangs for a nanosecond at the apex of it's arc, before plummeting gently back down. Which is precisely what the turtle did next, though a great deal less gently.

Bugger, thought the turtle, just before it hit a polar bear on the head, knocking both creatures unconscious. Then the turtle, having served its cosmic purpose, blinked out of existence again, to appear three thousand years earlier on a planet called Moxamig, which was at the time was inhabited by gaseous sentients that communicated via smell, despite lacking olfactory organs.

IT WAS THE day before tomorrow, and the one after yesterday. It was the sort of day that just screams decadence, the sort of day that yells debauchery, and the sort of day that moans of sweet nothings and whispers kisses in your ear between licks at the metaphorical lolly of life. The sky was filled with candyfloss clouds, the kind you just know would taste of sugar, with circling terns laughing giddily high above the gentle surf, which surely would taste of blue raspberry lemonade.

Rainbows, possibly made of Skittles and sherbet, shone faintly in the mist upon the distant hills, remnant of the early morning damp. The sand of the beach sparkled, effervescent and light-hearted. If sand could giggle, if sand could taste of tapioca, this would be that sand. Far out in the dancing waves—their hearty and earnest two-step keeping time to the rhythm of some unheard beat—dolphins cavorted, leaping hither and thither, splashing and frolicking like small children around a May pole.

Resting on a small blanket, multicolored and soft as spun sugar, lay three small packages. The wrappers were of marvelous appearance, depicting a man in a purple top hat, and the name Charlie & Wonka. It was chocolate; delicious, creamy, smooth . . . everything chocolate could and should be. I carefully unwrapped the first of the trio of sweet surprises, my mouth watering. No longer did I see the colors of the rainbows, hear the laughing of the terns, or smell the tangy scent of the surf. The glittering, giggling sand, the chortling, frolicking dolphins, even the deep, soft laughter of the sea disappeared in my intense concentration. It was glorious, the suspense, the anticipation of that heavenly gift to my taste buds. This would be the best sweet in the history of sweets, surely, in the very history of eats!

Of course, as with most happy and carefree stories such as this, there is a sad ending: reality. To my startled alarm, I awoke, to find myself chewing heartily upon my sheets, which tasted absolutely nothing like a chocolate bar.

IN THE VILLAGE of Sleepy Ewe, in the south of Wales, there lived a sheep. Well, there quite a lot of sheep, but only the one is relevant. This sheep was, despite what you are probably thinking, based on the name of the village, a ram. At the particular moment that this narrative takes place, (henceforth to be referred to as the present, so as not to complicate matters) this ram was drowning in the river Garlic. Yes, the river was called the river Garlic. These were not the most creative of people, and generally they named things after whatever they saw first.

A philosophical question often asked by those given to flights of philosophy is, does every animal have its own Death? A personification of its own, just as us humans (assuming, for now, that the reader is human) have a tall human skeleton in a long dark robe wielding a scythe? It is generally assumed that the one Death is enough, and deals with animals when he is not too busy tending to human spirits. There are those, however, that are quite firm in their belief that every sort of animal has their own Death; for instance, that there is a Death of Ravens, who presumably is a skeleton of a raven in a feathery cloak, and possibly holds a very small scythe in one bony talon.

Dammit, I'm ripping off Terry Pratchett again.

Anyway, so there is this ram, drowning, when on the edge of his blurring vision, he sees a dark figure. It is a large ram, or at least the skeleton of a very large ram, and it is staring comfortingly in the general direction of the riverbank, quite the wrong direction. There was no scythe to be seen. Some deep-ingrained instinct told the ram that this was a bad sign, since in his admittedly somewhat limited experience, dead sheep didn't move. There was something distinctly unsettling about the way this (very large, did I mention that?) ram was treading water with his skeletal hooves.

BAAAA BAAA BAAAAA BA BA BAAA it said, speaking in capital letters, still looking the wrong way. If you think about it, really think about it, you will realize why.* Then the drowning ram continued to drown, and its spirit wafted up out of its body like a dark breeze off the moor, and it went to the place where the spirit of dead rams go, which is of course not known to me, being only your humble narrator.

So what is the moral of the story, you ask? Only that somewhere, probably busily digging through a university library, industriously putting off that paper he should be writing that is due tomorrow, there is a philosopher that is right. But don't tell him I said so.

*Desiccated skeletons don't generally have much in the way of, oh I don't know, eyeballs.

Name redacted fled fearfully before the wrath of name redacted. Name redacted was afraid for his censored life. Name redacted laughed gleefully, enjoying the chase, and shouted out to name redacted, "I shall catch you and then censored your censored censored, name redacted! You cannot be free for long, you censored censored!"

It was terrifying. Name redacted ran hard, but it wasn't long before his wooden leg gave out, catching in a gopher hole and splintering beneath him. "Censored! You never take me alive, name redacted! You're a real censored!"

"Yes, my little one-legged censored, I'm AM a real censored. You should have noticed that a censored long time ago, name redacted. Now you will not live to censored regret it!"

"You can take my life, but you can't take my censored!"

"Your censored is nonexistant, name redacted. Look around you, you censored little censored! What do you see? Is ANYONE censored? No! Because I have taken their censored! Your censored is already mine, you pathetic censored!"

Name redacted shivered in fear, pulling a simple but sharp dagger from a concealed sheath in his jacket. "Don't come any nearer, name redacted! I'll censored myself!"

Name redacted sneered. "Go ahead and do it. Censored yourself, you censored censored. I could care less, name redacted."

So name redacted censored himself. Many grieved for the loss of his life, including name redacted, name redacted and even the censored name redacted.

Please post more of this _____.

Thanks! And okay . . . how about now?

STEPPING OVER THE dead bodies strewn haphazardly across the street, the man in the heavy oilskin duster never looked down. His eyes, barely visible beneath the wide brim of his Aussie drover's hat, were focused on the woman standing in front of the still-burning Macy's a hundred yards down the way. Her dress was diaphanous, little more than a few layers of gossamer overlapped across her hips and chest, with trailing ribbons connecting to one another in a subtly teasing network of fine silk.

Her hair was red, the sort of red that glows like a sunrise over the sea, and flowed over her shoulders, shimmering in the reflected light of the flames licking at the mannequins in the window behind her. She seemed oddly unaffected by the heat, her gaze turned up to the sky, a sad smile gracing her beautiful face. The sharp contrast of her glowing locks framing the porcelain skin set off the highlights in her emerald eyes, showing a haunting mix of playfulness and ancient wisdom.

The man in the duster strode closer, the shotgun in his right hand held low, both of the dual barrels aimed at the asphalt of the street, never once looking away from his prize. Then, with only a deep distant rumbling as a warning, the world seemed to implode. As one, the sky fell in, the earth erupted beneath his feet, and fire swept the streets in a tidal wave of blistering heat.

As the ground lurched below him, buckling and quaking, his footing was lost. He barely had the presence of mind to put his weight into a dive that took him under the hulk of a blown-out bus before the wall of flame was upon him. Pulling his duster tight around his body, and his hat down low over his face, he huddled in the shelter of one large wheel even as the force of the firestorm pushed the bus along the curb, the long bare wheels scraping the buckled pavement, sparks flying.

Then the ground exploded, a huge, horned head rearing up from the depths of the earth, dirt and sewage cascading from ruddy brass scales. A roar so loud it shook the city came from its rippling maw, and the great wyrm pushed the remainder of its huge snakelike body to the surface. Snapping at the air with thousands of teeth housed in a circular mouth at the end of a long neck, surrounded by horned protrusions, it hovered nearly vertical for a moment before crashing lengthwise onto what remained of the city street.

Almost before the earthwyrm's call was complete, it was answered by a higher, almost flute-like call that filled the air as a song fills the heart. This worried the man underneath what was left of the bus more than the wyrm. He looked cautiously around the the wheel his back was against, and up, and there it was. Perched atop the Bank of America building was a beautiful monstrosity. Huge feathered wings spread from a deceptively slight—though still large—body, and a beaked head sat curiously cocked atop a long, sinuous neck. Sharp eyes darted hither and fro, taking in the motionless corpses below and nearly catching sight of him before he quickly withdrew.

As if this wasn't enough, the source of the fiery maelstrom that had only just ceased then made itself known. A lumbering shape the size of a tractor trailer drew slowly nearer, closing in from beyond the still shape of the red-headed goddess. She stood, calmly, unbothered, waiting, not having moved an inch. She did not turn her head to watch the approach of the creature to her left, did not spare a glance at its broad-shouldered bulk, at the six legs that carried it forth, at the leering mouth that now drooled flaming saliva.

All the man in the duster could think now was, "Shit, I've got two shells left and three monsters. Not counting the redhead. Time to do something crazy."

Then he rolled out from beneath the bus and to his feet, squared his shoulders, flipped the shotgun to level at his hip, drew back both hammers, and started walking.

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What happens next? You decide.