The NonPlussed
Book One
of
The Canticles of The Waricle
and
The Far Flung Hunger
Page 1
Persona Non Grata -
DickJackson Jones - first-and-a-half American half-Black astronaut space shuttle commander
Ramona Tostada - first (later remanded to zeroth) Mexican astronaut mission specialist
Roger Dodger - kiss ass white boy in space and first white boy on Mars
Pinot Nois - Chinese peasant and homebrew inventor of the Long March Firecracker, China's primary HLV
Charles Blanc - first French Vietnamese civilian astronaut
Pyotor the Ivan - First Tsar of the Confederate Parts of the American Union of Southern Georgia
Walks Carefully On Eggshells Like A Bear - Russian double agent adopted by Navajos at birth
Mrs. Bojangles - Canadian high school algebra teacher
Sir Ferlin Goolsby - President of the United States of America and Baja, California
Stardog - lead singer for Stardog Champion, a Seattle based band from American annexed Baja, California
Dreyfuss Marlowe - 7-Eleven cashier and heroin addict with a heart of gold from Austin, Texas
Ignatius Quedge - demon from hell and Dreyfuss Marlowe's alter ego and tormentor
Bad Friday - shipwrecked Rapa Nui serial killer
Purl Ashblaque - gunslinging grunge wizard, summoned by Dreyfuss Marlowe to battle Ignatius Quedge
Little Big Junior - American AM radio talk show personality, founder of the Little Big Brother Tea Party party
Generalissimus Nathanial Warbottom - reluctant Marshal General of the CPAUSG armed forces
Twit and Twat - two highly intelligent African Grey Parrots constantly bumbling into Deus ex Machinas
Olivier Bustier - Engagé Volontaire in the French Foreign Legion and sole survivor of the Gay Bomb
Thaddeus Thomas - Amish inventor of the Pulverizorator, the Ultimate Farming Implement
Sabathius Malachi - Amish usurper of the Pulverizorator, repurposed as the Ultimate Death Dealer
Mung Bean - retarded Mongolian physicist and winner of Nobel Food Prize for splitting the ham burger
Dem Witt - country bumpkin and Coordinated Information Apparatus liason to the Apparatchik Chicks
Ricardo 'Dick' Queso de Cabeza - Columbian freedom fighter and stupid asshole
Phuc Sum Yun Gy - South Korean grammar Nazi and Best Paladin WOW gamer, savior of the human race
Ashley Davis - Praetor to Emperor Cannibalus the Starvling
Emperor Cannibalus the Starvling - Dark Lord and Emperor of the Infinite Realm of the Far Flung Hunger
Xdfhitef - 'The Stupidest Genius', an alien demigod exiled from the 13th dimension, aka the devil, Lucifer, Satan
God - God, aka Yaweh, Jehovah, Jesus, The Father The Son and The Holy Spirit, The Holy Trinity
Ball - just the cutest kitten, ever
Page 2
A fast and furious story filled with action and intrigue. Oh. It will all end in tears for everyone.
Friday, July 28, 2017
Jim drives to Madam Maybelles
Lucky y'all, get to read the first page of my book.
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Dempsey Witt - Dem to folks who knew him, Dim to his friends - was taking the scenic route to work today. It was a fine, almost spring morning in southern Georgia, in January. The January dandelions were letting go, the January honeysuckle was in the air, and the smell of almost springtime in January was blowing in the wind, as fine as nostril wine... It's almost spring! Dempsey thought-yelled to himself.
'Almost is all you need!' Dim sang out loud, to the tune of a hundred year old Beatles song that was squeaking out of the old dashboard radio of the pickup he was driving to work. Dim was in a pretty good mood that morning, for a dilapidated old bootlegger. He hardly even noticed any of the potholes as he bullied the old 'lectric Ford pickup down the well neglected oil roads of southern Georgia, USA... well neglected in the upkeep, but well familiar in the driving of. That's the way that the oil roads of back country USA had been for the last hundred years, and Dem was sixty-six years old and could vouch personally for a bunch of those years. 'Oil roads were made for runnin' moonshine,' his dad used to say. They were the arteries and veins of it - and right now, Dim was the beating heart that was pumping the vital hooch to the vital organs, Like Buckeye Buck. If Dim was the heart that pumped the hooch, then Sheriff Buckeye Buck was definitely the liver that did the processing. Sheriff Buck, that is. He was the organ that filtered the hooch that Dim delivered, so that it was provisioned fairly and according to the Law of the Land. Buckeye Buck was the hooch accountant, the county liver... yeah, there we go! That's the analogy we were looking for!
That's what Dempsey Witt was thinking that morning as he trundled to work over those ragged potholes. Work for Dempsey Witt was running hooch, and running hooch was work for Dempsey Witt - Dim, as he was known to his friends, Dem to just folks - and he'd never known anything different for his whole life. Later on he'd maybe think about how strange all of that seemed in retrospect, once seen outside of his world of rural Georgia, after the universe had exploded in his face, but whatever future that was gonna be, Dempsey Witt had no idea of it right then. He had hooch to deliver today, and not some time hence.
So, it was a fine, spring-like January morning in Southern Georgia that Dempsey Witt - Dim to his friends, Dem to just folks; he always liked to make that clear - pulled his old hooch laden Ford 'lectric into the front yard of Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis. It was 7:00 AM, and only just seven hours past the state mandated closing time of any and all reputed houses, be they ill or well. Dim (we'll just call him that from here on, ok?) cut the juice to the Ford and parked for a while, waiting. After a couple of minutes the front door of Madame Maybe's cracked open by just a smidge, and an amplified caterwaul issued forth.
"BEELZEBUB IS A PRETTY GOOD GUY!"
Dim rolled down his window and hollered back.
"AS FAR AS DEMONS GO!"
And again, from the crack in the door -
"BUT HIS BROTHER BAAL..."
"LORD DON'T HE WAIL!" Dim yelled in reply. He was close to cracking up. And again, from the crack in the door -
"AND BAPHOMET..."
And now both of them together!
"IS JUST PLAIN PSYCHO!"
The front door to Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis slammed open. Half a dozen gun barrels poked out, pointing in all directions, like some kind of Looney Tunes ensemble.
"We gothcher dead to rights!" came the challenge.
Dim had stepped out of the truck and was already at the tailgate. "Dead to rights?" he laughed as he fiddled with latch. "You don't even know what that means, you asshole!" The tailgate clunked open. "Gitcher fat ass out here and help me with this moonshine!"
Sheriff Buckeye Buck of the county of southern backwoods Georgia, state of Georgia, USA, lumbered forth.
.
.
.
Dempsey Witt - Dem to folks who knew him, Dim to his friends - was taking the scenic route to work today. It was a fine, almost spring morning in southern Georgia, in January. The January dandelions were letting go, the January honeysuckle was in the air, and the smell of almost springtime in January was blowing in the wind, as fine as nostril wine... It's almost spring! Dempsey thought-yelled to himself.
'Almost is all you need!' Dim sang out loud, to the tune of a hundred year old Beatles song that was squeaking out of the old dashboard radio of the pickup he was driving to work. Dim was in a pretty good mood that morning, for a dilapidated old bootlegger. He hardly even noticed any of the potholes as he bullied the old 'lectric Ford pickup down the well neglected oil roads of southern Georgia, USA... well neglected in the upkeep, but well familiar in the driving of. That's the way that the oil roads of back country USA had been for the last hundred years, and Dem was sixty-six years old and could vouch personally for a bunch of those years. 'Oil roads were made for runnin' moonshine,' his dad used to say. They were the arteries and veins of it - and right now, Dim was the beating heart that was pumping the vital hooch to the vital organs, Like Buckeye Buck. If Dim was the heart that pumped the hooch, then Sheriff Buckeye Buck was definitely the liver that did the processing. Sheriff Buck, that is. He was the organ that filtered the hooch that Dim delivered, so that it was provisioned fairly and according to the Law of the Land. Buckeye Buck was the hooch accountant, the county liver... yeah, there we go! That's the analogy we were looking for!
That's what Dempsey Witt was thinking that morning as he trundled to work over those ragged potholes. Work for Dempsey Witt was running hooch, and running hooch was work for Dempsey Witt - Dim, as he was known to his friends, Dem to just folks - and he'd never known anything different for his whole life. Later on he'd maybe think about how strange all of that seemed in retrospect, once seen outside of his world of rural Georgia, after the universe had exploded in his face, but whatever future that was gonna be, Dempsey Witt had no idea of it right then. He had hooch to deliver today, and not some time hence.
So, it was a fine, spring-like January morning in Southern Georgia that Dempsey Witt - Dim to his friends, Dem to just folks; he always liked to make that clear - pulled his old hooch laden Ford 'lectric into the front yard of Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis. It was 7:00 AM, and only just seven hours past the state mandated closing time of any and all reputed houses, be they ill or well. Dim (we'll just call him that from here on, ok?) cut the juice to the Ford and parked for a while, waiting. After a couple of minutes the front door of Madame Maybe's cracked open by just a smidge, and an amplified caterwaul issued forth.
"BEELZEBUB IS A PRETTY GOOD GUY!"
Dim rolled down his window and hollered back.
"AS FAR AS DEMONS GO!"
And again, from the crack in the door -
"BUT HIS BROTHER BAAL..."
"LORD DON'T HE WAIL!" Dim yelled in reply. He was close to cracking up. And again, from the crack in the door -
"AND BAPHOMET..."
And now both of them together!
"IS JUST PLAIN PSYCHO!"
The front door to Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis slammed open. Half a dozen gun barrels poked out, pointing in all directions, like some kind of Looney Tunes ensemble.
"We gothcher dead to rights!" came the challenge.
Dim had stepped out of the truck and was already at the tailgate. "Dead to rights?" he laughed as he fiddled with latch. "You don't even know what that means, you asshole!" The tailgate clunked open. "Gitcher fat ass out here and help me with this moonshine!"
Sheriff Buckeye Buck of the county of southern backwoods Georgia, state of Georgia, USA, lumbered forth.
Marion meets Ignatius
Just an excerpt. Dreyfus meets his heroin dealer for the first time. This is also a description of what a stomach agony feels like to me when it's coming on.
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.
.
Dreyfus patted himself down and located his cigarettes in his right front hip pocket, then did it again for his lighter. He stopped walking and pulled a smoke from the pack and cupped it up to his face with both hands to shield it from the wind. After a couple of faulty flicks, he turned around, away from the wind, so that he was facing the direction from which he'd just been walking. * flick, flick * Then there was a sudden flame, well shielded from the wind by the brunt of his back and by his little two-handed cave. The lighter flame was brilliant to Dreyfus's dark adjusted eyes and left a stark, orange afterimage imprinted upon his retinas. It took about half a minute for it to fade, and when it finally did, Dreyfus was just about to spin aroud and resume his walk when he thought he saw a shadow of something just barely beyond the floating blue gauze left behind by the brilliant orange. Something... unfriendly, was the only word he could think to describe it. Something that was moving toward him.
Suddenly Dreyfus was flat out terrified, and the thought of looking up to see what was moving toward him rendered him completely paralyzed and unable to move. Instead, he just stared at the bright cherry of his cigarette and tried to take a small measure of comfort from the light of it. As he stared, it seemed as through the cherry was shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller, but also brighter and brighter. As it shrunk, the surrounding blackness collapsed into it, making it ever smaller but ever brighter, until all he could see was one excruciatingly brilliant pinpoint of orange, surrounded by a thick, suffocating darkness that pulsated, like a reverse ripple effect, moving inward and collapsing in shrinking waves toward him at the center.
This is what it feels like to play hide and seek with the devil, Dreyfus thought to himself. Or was it tag? Playing tag with the devil? Was that the game he was playing? Had been playing, for the last fifteen years? With the devil? Was that really what he'd been doing? He could hardly credit the thought...
Suddenly it felt to Dreyfus as though he'd been torpedoed, right in the gut and just below the belly button. It was like a dense, liquid compression wave that expanded, but instead of moving outward, it went DOWN. Not down as in toward his feet or the ground, but into another direction of down that went deep inside of him. Down through a dimension where local gravity is expressed in units of pain, and altitude is measured in painful increments. Down down down went the compression wave, compressing and liquifying and squeezing his guts ever downward toward some hard, flat surface of smooth, limitless agony that lay waiting below. Dreyfus felt it all in exquisite detail as it happened, and it even seemed to him as though he could hear it... a rumbling deepness that vibrated like a subwoofer, going lower and louder until it passed beyond hearing and crossed over entirely into pain. Dreyfus's world had suddenly collapsed into a singularity of simple feeling. No need for fancy grammar, parts of speech, sentence structure, or complex rules of rhetoric. The language of this place consisted of just one word-like concept... suffering.
Terrible. It was terrible. The awfulest... just the worst, the very worst, ever. Simply acknowledging the reality of the vague shadow that he'd actually seen which precipitated this dip into tangible agony made his eyeballs want to scream forever. Yet, despite the reality of being inside such an impossible horror, the thought of his eyeballs screaming for eternity - two eternally pissed off eyeballs inside of his sleep deprived head, constantly bitching inward at his shriveled, unslept brain, for all eternity - made Dreyfus chuckle under the ocean of pain, just a little. Suddenly it was the funniest thing he'd ever known, and simply because it was all wrapped inside the absurdity of this evil, insidious, unrelenting suffering. Dreyfus laughed out loud! Why? Because it was hilarious to him, and at that moment and because of that moment, it was just the funniest thing, ever.
That's when Ignatius realized that things were starting to go not exactly the way he had expected. So it was that the demon made his first fully fledged, fully physical, fully stereotypically demonic appearance, in the flesh, fully real and fully there, and pulled forcibly into physical reality by the insipid yet undeniable laughter of the object of his torture.
.
.
.
Dreyfus patted himself down and located his cigarettes in his right front hip pocket, then did it again for his lighter. He stopped walking and pulled a smoke from the pack and cupped it up to his face with both hands to shield it from the wind. After a couple of faulty flicks, he turned around, away from the wind, so that he was facing the direction from which he'd just been walking. * flick, flick * Then there was a sudden flame, well shielded from the wind by the brunt of his back and by his little two-handed cave. The lighter flame was brilliant to Dreyfus's dark adjusted eyes and left a stark, orange afterimage imprinted upon his retinas. It took about half a minute for it to fade, and when it finally did, Dreyfus was just about to spin aroud and resume his walk when he thought he saw a shadow of something just barely beyond the floating blue gauze left behind by the brilliant orange. Something... unfriendly, was the only word he could think to describe it. Something that was moving toward him.
Suddenly Dreyfus was flat out terrified, and the thought of looking up to see what was moving toward him rendered him completely paralyzed and unable to move. Instead, he just stared at the bright cherry of his cigarette and tried to take a small measure of comfort from the light of it. As he stared, it seemed as through the cherry was shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller, but also brighter and brighter. As it shrunk, the surrounding blackness collapsed into it, making it ever smaller but ever brighter, until all he could see was one excruciatingly brilliant pinpoint of orange, surrounded by a thick, suffocating darkness that pulsated, like a reverse ripple effect, moving inward and collapsing in shrinking waves toward him at the center.
This is what it feels like to play hide and seek with the devil, Dreyfus thought to himself. Or was it tag? Playing tag with the devil? Was that the game he was playing? Had been playing, for the last fifteen years? With the devil? Was that really what he'd been doing? He could hardly credit the thought...
Suddenly it felt to Dreyfus as though he'd been torpedoed, right in the gut and just below the belly button. It was like a dense, liquid compression wave that expanded, but instead of moving outward, it went DOWN. Not down as in toward his feet or the ground, but into another direction of down that went deep inside of him. Down through a dimension where local gravity is expressed in units of pain, and altitude is measured in painful increments. Down down down went the compression wave, compressing and liquifying and squeezing his guts ever downward toward some hard, flat surface of smooth, limitless agony that lay waiting below. Dreyfus felt it all in exquisite detail as it happened, and it even seemed to him as though he could hear it... a rumbling deepness that vibrated like a subwoofer, going lower and louder until it passed beyond hearing and crossed over entirely into pain. Dreyfus's world had suddenly collapsed into a singularity of simple feeling. No need for fancy grammar, parts of speech, sentence structure, or complex rules of rhetoric. The language of this place consisted of just one word-like concept... suffering.
Terrible. It was terrible. The awfulest... just the worst, the very worst, ever. Simply acknowledging the reality of the vague shadow that he'd actually seen which precipitated this dip into tangible agony made his eyeballs want to scream forever. Yet, despite the reality of being inside such an impossible horror, the thought of his eyeballs screaming for eternity - two eternally pissed off eyeballs inside of his sleep deprived head, constantly bitching inward at his shriveled, unslept brain, for all eternity - made Dreyfus chuckle under the ocean of pain, just a little. Suddenly it was the funniest thing he'd ever known, and simply because it was all wrapped inside the absurdity of this evil, insidious, unrelenting suffering. Dreyfus laughed out loud! Why? Because it was hilarious to him, and at that moment and because of that moment, it was just the funniest thing, ever.
That's when Ignatius realized that things were starting to go not exactly the way he had expected. So it was that the demon made his first fully fledged, fully physical, fully stereotypically demonic appearance, in the flesh, fully real and fully there, and pulled forcibly into physical reality by the insipid yet undeniable laughter of the object of his torture.
Jim driving the moonshine
This is the beginning, again, starting with the last one, and then continuing. Here you go, the first glimpse of SuperSuze.
.
.
.
Dempsey Witt - Dem to folks who knew him, Dim to his friends - was taking the scenic route to work today. It was a fine, almost spring morning in southern Georgia, in January. The January dandelions were letting go, the January honeysuckle was in the air, and the smell of almost springtime in January was blowing in the wind, as fine as nostril wine... it was almost spring in January, in southern Georgia.
'Almost is all you need!' Dim sang out loud, to the tune of a hundred year old Beatles song that was squeaking out of the old dashboard radio of the pickup he was driving to work. That was a good one, Dim chuckled to himself. He was in a pretty good mood that morning, for a dilapidated old bootlegger. He hardly even noticed any of the potholes as he bullied the old 'lectric Ford pickup down the well neglected oil roads of southern Georgia, USA... well neglected in the upkeep, but well familiar in the driving of. That's the way that the oil roads of back country USA had been for the last hundred years, and Dem was sixty-six years old and could vouch personally for a bunch of those years. 'Oil roads were made for runnin' moonshine,' his dad used to say. They were the arteries and veins of it - and right now, Dim was the beating heart that was pumping the vital hooch to the vital organs. If Dim was the heart that pumped the hooch (or mule kick, as his dad used to to call it), then Sheriff Buckeye Buck was definitely the liver that did the processing. Sheriff Buck was the organ that filtered the 'lectric honey - as his mom used to call it - that Dim delivered, so that it was provisioned fairly and according to the Law of the Land, according to Buckeye Buck that is, who was the hooch accountant, the county liver... Yeah, there ya go! That's the analogy he was looking for!
That's what Dempsey Witt was thinking that morning as he trundled over those ragged potholes. Work for Dempsey Witt was running moonshine, and the running of it was work for Dempsey Witt - Dim, as he was known to his friends, Dem to just folks - and he'd never known anything different for his whole life. Later on he'd maybe think about how strange all of that seemed in retrospect, once seen outside of his world of rural Georgia, right after the universe had exploded in his face, but whatever future that was gonna be, Dempsey Witt had no idea of it right then. He had hooch to deliver today, and not some time hence.
So it was a fine, spring-like January morning in Southern Georgia that Dempsey Witt - Dim to his friends, Dem to just folks; he always liked to make that clear - pulled his old hooch laden Ford 'lectric into the front yard of Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis. It was 7:00 AM, and only just seven hours past the state mandated closing time of any and all reputed houses, be they ill or well. Dim (we'll just call him that from here on, ok?) cut the juice to the Ford and parked for a while, waiting. After a medium-sized while, the front door of Madame Maybe's cracked open by just a smidge, and an amplified caterwaul issued forth -
"BEELZEBUB IS A PRETTY GOOD GUY!"
Dim rolled down his window and hollered back -
"AS FAR AS DEMONS GO!"
And again, from the crack in the door -
"BUT HIS BROTHER BAAL..."
"LORD DON'T HE WAIL!" Dim yelled, close to cracking up. And again, from the crack in the door -
"AND BAPHOMET..."
And then both of them together, "IS JUST PLAIN PSYCHO!"
The front door to Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis slammed open and half a dozen shotgun barrels poked out, pointing in all directions, like some kind of Looney Tunes ensemble.
"We gotcher dead to rights!" came the challenge.
Dim stepped out of the cab of the truck and walked around to the back. "Dead to rights?" he yelled, as he fiddled with the tailgate latch. "You don't even know what that means, you asshole!" Dim yanked the latch up and down furiously about a dozen times, but it wouldn't open. He slapped the tailgate in frustration and yelled to Sheriff Buck. "Gitcher fat ass down here and help me unload these kegs of moonshine!"
Sheriff Buckeye Buck of Podunk county, state of Georgia, USA, lumbered out onto the front porch of Madame Maybe's. "Shut up you dimwit," he hissed, his eyes shifting left and right as he leveraged his considerable bulk down the front porch steps. "What if I was posing as myself as an undercover cop? You don't know who might be hollerin' out the door, hiding in the nooks and crannies and alcoves! Great Godahmighty, son!"
Dim gave the latch of the tailgate one last, exasperated yank and decided to just skip the damn thing. He clambered up over it and into the bed of the pickup and shouted back, "First off, I'm old enough to be YOUR pappy, SON!" Heh, Dim chuckled and thought, I sure get a kick out of myself, don't I? "And nextly, concerning your cornfed paranoia, well... there wouldn't never be no problem of an undercover cop to begin with, would there, you thick country bumpkin! Because you'da justa been POSING as one!" Dim manhandled one of the big aluminum kegs toward the back of the truck. "Kinda like how you're constantly posing as the Sheriff of Podunk county," he added, "when you're really just the Hooch Man for every back-woods whore house and broken down saloon in all of southern Georgia!" Oh boy, Dim laughed down into his chin, he was sure hot today -
Suddenly six girls with shotguns, ranging from about ten to fourteen years of age, burst out of the open door of Madame Maybe's and went charging around where Sherrif Buckeye stood on the steps, like rapids around a boulder, and very nearly sending him tumbling. "You girls... you girls! Dammit, you girls!" blubbered Sheriff Buckeye Buck.
Dim looked up from wrestling with the aluminum keg, just as one of the older girls - about thirteen or fourteen years old, by the look of her - leapt up effortlessly into the bed of his pickup and offered him her shotgun. "Sir, would you mind keepin' a hold of this for me, just for a bit, til me and the girls is done here?" She said.
Dim stared wordlessly at the girl with his mouth hanging open. In all of his sixty-six years, this was probably the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was about 5' without an inch to spare, with dark brown hair that went down to her unusually broad shoulders. She was wearing a tank top, on the front of which was printed the image of a fur covered monster that was lifting up the fur fom it's midsection and pointing to a set of well chiseled abs. 'THE ABDOMINAL SNOWMAN' was printed underneath, in large letters. A long, brown summer skirt decorated with paisleys and flowers flowed down from her waist to her ankles, almost covering the pair of well worn sandals that she wore on her small feet. The girl was obviously in great shape, Dim could tell; simply by observing her arms and shoulders, which were smooth and well defined. She was simply the epitome of youthful exuberance.
"Sir, please? Time's a-runnin' out, and we gotta get this evidence to... to..." The girl looked around frantically for a second, as if she were trying to locate... "To where it's supposed to be!" she suddenly shouted. "And right quick! Please, zillions of lives are at stake!" She gave the outstretched shotgun an impatient shake, and Dim took it from her. Then the girl smiled a smile that could have gone down in history, if history had been paying attention. History was busy somewhere else though apparently, so only Dim saw that smile... that heart wrecking, ship breaking smile.
"Thank you sir!" she said, and then to the others waiting below...
"Girls! Let's get to it! You know what to do!" And with a tchika-tchika THUNK, one of em jimmied the tailgate latch that Dim had been struggling with, and then it was down, and all six of the shotgun girls immediately began unloading the barrels of hooch and rolling them up to the front porch of Madame Maybe's. "Were rollin' over and turnin' states evidence!" shouted one of the younger girls amidst the flurry of activity. Another, older girl shouted, "Shut UP! This is a black op, STUPID," to the younger one who had just blabbed about turning states evidence, whatever that meant.
Dim watched it all with his jaw hanging open. What the heck had just happened? he thought to himself. That smile, from that girl, the beautiful girl... It had poleaxed him! Suddenly Dim was overcome with a feeling of paternal love for her, whoever she was. He knew right then and there that he would die to save her, to protect her, to nurture her... What the heck is happening, Dim stuttered inside his own head. The girl had smiled the most perfectest smile in all of the history of the human race, and... she'd had no idea! How could she have? She was still existing inside of perfect naivety, somehow!
Dim was sure, more sure than he'd ever been in his life about anything, that this girl who had just smiled that miraculous smile had had no idea that she was the most beautiful newborn woman who had ever just crossed over from childhood, through puberty, and into young adulthood. She just didn't know... at all. Amazing!
"Lookit em go," commented Buckeye Buck with a smile, as he finally made his way over to where Dim stood stupidly in the bed of the old 'lectric Ford pickup, now empty of 14 barrels of the bestest moonshine in all of southern Georgia. "They're something, ain't they?" Buckeye laughed. "A tad excitable though, but that's youth. Didja see how I almost broke my neck, with all of them tadpoles scurrying past me down the steps? Lordamercy! Dim? Dim, you awake in there?"
"Yeah, uh... What the heck just happened, Bucky?"
.
.
.
Dempsey Witt - Dem to folks who knew him, Dim to his friends - was taking the scenic route to work today. It was a fine, almost spring morning in southern Georgia, in January. The January dandelions were letting go, the January honeysuckle was in the air, and the smell of almost springtime in January was blowing in the wind, as fine as nostril wine... it was almost spring in January, in southern Georgia.
'Almost is all you need!' Dim sang out loud, to the tune of a hundred year old Beatles song that was squeaking out of the old dashboard radio of the pickup he was driving to work. That was a good one, Dim chuckled to himself. He was in a pretty good mood that morning, for a dilapidated old bootlegger. He hardly even noticed any of the potholes as he bullied the old 'lectric Ford pickup down the well neglected oil roads of southern Georgia, USA... well neglected in the upkeep, but well familiar in the driving of. That's the way that the oil roads of back country USA had been for the last hundred years, and Dem was sixty-six years old and could vouch personally for a bunch of those years. 'Oil roads were made for runnin' moonshine,' his dad used to say. They were the arteries and veins of it - and right now, Dim was the beating heart that was pumping the vital hooch to the vital organs. If Dim was the heart that pumped the hooch (or mule kick, as his dad used to to call it), then Sheriff Buckeye Buck was definitely the liver that did the processing. Sheriff Buck was the organ that filtered the 'lectric honey - as his mom used to call it - that Dim delivered, so that it was provisioned fairly and according to the Law of the Land, according to Buckeye Buck that is, who was the hooch accountant, the county liver... Yeah, there ya go! That's the analogy he was looking for!
That's what Dempsey Witt was thinking that morning as he trundled over those ragged potholes. Work for Dempsey Witt was running moonshine, and the running of it was work for Dempsey Witt - Dim, as he was known to his friends, Dem to just folks - and he'd never known anything different for his whole life. Later on he'd maybe think about how strange all of that seemed in retrospect, once seen outside of his world of rural Georgia, right after the universe had exploded in his face, but whatever future that was gonna be, Dempsey Witt had no idea of it right then. He had hooch to deliver today, and not some time hence.
So it was a fine, spring-like January morning in Southern Georgia that Dempsey Witt - Dim to his friends, Dem to just folks; he always liked to make that clear - pulled his old hooch laden Ford 'lectric into the front yard of Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis. It was 7:00 AM, and only just seven hours past the state mandated closing time of any and all reputed houses, be they ill or well. Dim (we'll just call him that from here on, ok?) cut the juice to the Ford and parked for a while, waiting. After a medium-sized while, the front door of Madame Maybe's cracked open by just a smidge, and an amplified caterwaul issued forth -
"BEELZEBUB IS A PRETTY GOOD GUY!"
Dim rolled down his window and hollered back -
"AS FAR AS DEMONS GO!"
And again, from the crack in the door -
"BUT HIS BROTHER BAAL..."
"LORD DON'T HE WAIL!" Dim yelled, close to cracking up. And again, from the crack in the door -
"AND BAPHOMET..."
And then both of them together, "IS JUST PLAIN PSYCHO!"
The front door to Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis slammed open and half a dozen shotgun barrels poked out, pointing in all directions, like some kind of Looney Tunes ensemble.
"We gotcher dead to rights!" came the challenge.
Dim stepped out of the cab of the truck and walked around to the back. "Dead to rights?" he yelled, as he fiddled with the tailgate latch. "You don't even know what that means, you asshole!" Dim yanked the latch up and down furiously about a dozen times, but it wouldn't open. He slapped the tailgate in frustration and yelled to Sheriff Buck. "Gitcher fat ass down here and help me unload these kegs of moonshine!"
Sheriff Buckeye Buck of Podunk county, state of Georgia, USA, lumbered out onto the front porch of Madame Maybe's. "Shut up you dimwit," he hissed, his eyes shifting left and right as he leveraged his considerable bulk down the front porch steps. "What if I was posing as myself as an undercover cop? You don't know who might be hollerin' out the door, hiding in the nooks and crannies and alcoves! Great Godahmighty, son!"
Dim gave the latch of the tailgate one last, exasperated yank and decided to just skip the damn thing. He clambered up over it and into the bed of the pickup and shouted back, "First off, I'm old enough to be YOUR pappy, SON!" Heh, Dim chuckled and thought, I sure get a kick out of myself, don't I? "And nextly, concerning your cornfed paranoia, well... there wouldn't never be no problem of an undercover cop to begin with, would there, you thick country bumpkin! Because you'da justa been POSING as one!" Dim manhandled one of the big aluminum kegs toward the back of the truck. "Kinda like how you're constantly posing as the Sheriff of Podunk county," he added, "when you're really just the Hooch Man for every back-woods whore house and broken down saloon in all of southern Georgia!" Oh boy, Dim laughed down into his chin, he was sure hot today -
Suddenly six girls with shotguns, ranging from about ten to fourteen years of age, burst out of the open door of Madame Maybe's and went charging around where Sherrif Buckeye stood on the steps, like rapids around a boulder, and very nearly sending him tumbling. "You girls... you girls! Dammit, you girls!" blubbered Sheriff Buckeye Buck.
Dim looked up from wrestling with the aluminum keg, just as one of the older girls - about thirteen or fourteen years old, by the look of her - leapt up effortlessly into the bed of his pickup and offered him her shotgun. "Sir, would you mind keepin' a hold of this for me, just for a bit, til me and the girls is done here?" She said.
Dim stared wordlessly at the girl with his mouth hanging open. In all of his sixty-six years, this was probably the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was about 5' without an inch to spare, with dark brown hair that went down to her unusually broad shoulders. She was wearing a tank top, on the front of which was printed the image of a fur covered monster that was lifting up the fur fom it's midsection and pointing to a set of well chiseled abs. 'THE ABDOMINAL SNOWMAN' was printed underneath, in large letters. A long, brown summer skirt decorated with paisleys and flowers flowed down from her waist to her ankles, almost covering the pair of well worn sandals that she wore on her small feet. The girl was obviously in great shape, Dim could tell; simply by observing her arms and shoulders, which were smooth and well defined. She was simply the epitome of youthful exuberance.
"Sir, please? Time's a-runnin' out, and we gotta get this evidence to... to..." The girl looked around frantically for a second, as if she were trying to locate... "To where it's supposed to be!" she suddenly shouted. "And right quick! Please, zillions of lives are at stake!" She gave the outstretched shotgun an impatient shake, and Dim took it from her. Then the girl smiled a smile that could have gone down in history, if history had been paying attention. History was busy somewhere else though apparently, so only Dim saw that smile... that heart wrecking, ship breaking smile.
"Thank you sir!" she said, and then to the others waiting below...
"Girls! Let's get to it! You know what to do!" And with a tchika-tchika THUNK, one of em jimmied the tailgate latch that Dim had been struggling with, and then it was down, and all six of the shotgun girls immediately began unloading the barrels of hooch and rolling them up to the front porch of Madame Maybe's. "Were rollin' over and turnin' states evidence!" shouted one of the younger girls amidst the flurry of activity. Another, older girl shouted, "Shut UP! This is a black op, STUPID," to the younger one who had just blabbed about turning states evidence, whatever that meant.
Dim watched it all with his jaw hanging open. What the heck had just happened? he thought to himself. That smile, from that girl, the beautiful girl... It had poleaxed him! Suddenly Dim was overcome with a feeling of paternal love for her, whoever she was. He knew right then and there that he would die to save her, to protect her, to nurture her... What the heck is happening, Dim stuttered inside his own head. The girl had smiled the most perfectest smile in all of the history of the human race, and... she'd had no idea! How could she have? She was still existing inside of perfect naivety, somehow!
Dim was sure, more sure than he'd ever been in his life about anything, that this girl who had just smiled that miraculous smile had had no idea that she was the most beautiful newborn woman who had ever just crossed over from childhood, through puberty, and into young adulthood. She just didn't know... at all. Amazing!
"Lookit em go," commented Buckeye Buck with a smile, as he finally made his way over to where Dim stood stupidly in the bed of the old 'lectric Ford pickup, now empty of 14 barrels of the bestest moonshine in all of southern Georgia. "They're something, ain't they?" Buckeye laughed. "A tad excitable though, but that's youth. Didja see how I almost broke my neck, with all of them tadpoles scurrying past me down the steps? Lordamercy! Dim? Dim, you awake in there?"
"Yeah, uh... What the heck just happened, Bucky?"
Another of Jim's hangovers
Dempsey Witt was passed out pretty hard for a Sunday morning, which used to be unusual. If he could've seen himself curled up on the kitchen floor and cradling his service revolver like a teddy bear, he would have been moderately disappointed with himself, what with it being a Sunday morning and all. He used to make it a point to pass out somewhere closer to his bedroom on Sunday mornings, with his service revolver tucked snugly into the waistband of his underoos instead of hugged up under his chin. Nowadays though, simply waking up was a disappointment, and he was always bitterly surprised when it happened.
On this particular Sunday morning however, a ray of sweet sunshine containing the first photons of the gathering dawn gentled softly upon Dim's left eyelid like angeldown. To that left eyeball, the substance of that single spark of hope almost discerned felt like a NAZI JACKBOOT STOMPING ONTO THE LEFT SIDE OF HIS NOGGIN. Dempsey SCRRAHGOUGHLED awake, choking on the snotty boogers of his own wet, ugly snores. With a mighty HAAGGHCK! a slimy fhlurghful PSCHFLOOP'd across his tongue and sphlurpguPHh!'d somewhere over there, across the kitchen.
"OHGODNONOTAWAKEAGAIN" was the sound that fell out of his face, right before he passed out and immediately bounced awake again. Minutes of tauma transpired. Traumatic trauma, severe trauma... trauma like a 900 pound retarded kid made out of sharp edges, that bulldozed through his awareness. Eventually his lips made a moist 'pop' as they came unstuck. The inside of his mouth was dry and sticky. He tried to build up a little saliva by smacking his tongue and lips together. It made a nasty noise, like a dog licking its own asshole. Tastes like a dog's asshole too, he thought.
Dim continued to lie there in the darkness for an interminable moment, blind and with the taste of a dogs asshole in his mouth, and pleasantly surprised, for once. He'd really expected hell to be so much worse than just the world's godawfulest hangover.
Here's a fun fact. Methanol blindness is quite common. Actually, the chances are good that you probably know someone who has been blinded by drinking methanol that was filtered through some old bread that was thrown out by the bread factory.
On this particular Sunday morning however, a ray of sweet sunshine containing the first photons of the gathering dawn gentled softly upon Dim's left eyelid like angeldown. To that left eyeball, the substance of that single spark of hope almost discerned felt like a NAZI JACKBOOT STOMPING ONTO THE LEFT SIDE OF HIS NOGGIN. Dempsey SCRRAHGOUGHLED awake, choking on the snotty boogers of his own wet, ugly snores. With a mighty HAAGGHCK! a slimy fhlurghful PSCHFLOOP'd across his tongue and sphlurpguPHh!'d somewhere over there, across the kitchen.
"OHGODNONOTAWAKEAGAIN" was the sound that fell out of his face, right before he passed out and immediately bounced awake again. Minutes of tauma transpired. Traumatic trauma, severe trauma... trauma like a 900 pound retarded kid made out of sharp edges, that bulldozed through his awareness. Eventually his lips made a moist 'pop' as they came unstuck. The inside of his mouth was dry and sticky. He tried to build up a little saliva by smacking his tongue and lips together. It made a nasty noise, like a dog licking its own asshole. Tastes like a dog's asshole too, he thought.
Dim continued to lie there in the darkness for an interminable moment, blind and with the taste of a dogs asshole in his mouth, and pleasantly surprised, for once. He'd really expected hell to be so much worse than just the world's godawfulest hangover.
Here's a fun fact. Methanol blindness is quite common. Actually, the chances are good that you probably know someone who has been blinded by drinking methanol that was filtered through some old bread that was thrown out by the bread factory.
Jim and the dog again
Well, dimwit, he thought to himself... that could mean several things. The most likely thing is that the eternal darkness of hell is right here and now, and you're at the beginning of it. Either that or you forgot to drain the methanol from that batch of hootch last night and you've finally drunk yourself blind, idgit.
He lay there in the darkness for another interminable moment trying to decide if he was in hell or blinded by methanol...
"THAT GAWDAM DOG!" he hollered out loud, as murky details of the night before came back to him. The sound of his own voice was like an inside-out kick to the head, and his hands jerked up reflexively to catch his eyeballs before they popped out of his noggin. He could feel the skin of his eyelids pulsing against his palms as his eyeballs tried to make a run for it.
...or so retarded hung over that you just forgot to open your eyes, idgit.
Once his eyes had stopped bouncing around inside of his head like a couple of pinballs, he very carefully tried to open his eyelids, and discovered that they were stuck fast. He could feel something dry and crusty rubbing against his palms.
"What's this hairy hogwash??" he whisper-shouted as he scurried backwards on his ass and hands across the kitchen linoleum, reaching frantically for some kind of stable purchase. He finally backed up forcibly against the fridge, which he'd left open the night before after a drunken search for sustenance. The impact jolted a jar of pickle juice perched precariously on the rack above, which tipped over, spilling green vinegary liquid all over his head and onto his eyelids, immediately dissolving the dried crusty muck sealing them shut. His eyes flickered open. He could see!
"I can see!" Dim exulted, and then the pickle juice was past his eyelids and into his eyes.
"I'M BLIND!" he screamed. He scrambled to his feet, one hand furiously trying to punch out the fire in his eyes while the other hand groped around blindly for something to put out the fire that didn't involve smothering it to death with punches to the face. If you can imagine someone doing all of that, then you're imagining him exactly the way he looked while he was doing it.
Dim abruptly recognized the kitchen sink with his thrusting, outstretched hand. "WATER!" he exclaimed breathlessly, and he immediately put both of his hands to the task of making water happen in the sink.... but what happened instead of water was just bad luck. His frantic, jerking hands happened upon the jar of methanol that he'd carefully extracted from the latest batch of hootch the right before, which he'd reserved for some future project involving that gawdam dog, and left safely in the sink to await its purpose. However, being blind, hung over, eyeballs on fire and desperate for relief, Dim completely failed to remember to put the two and two of the previous night together. Instead, he latched onto that jar of methanol, thinking it was cool, precious, fire-quenching water. He upended it upon his upturned face and directly into his pickle juiced, on fire eyes.
The pain was so tremendous that the nerves conducting it from his eyes to his brain actually backed up like a traffic jam. Fully five seconds transpired as he stood there, immersed in a kind of un-feeling... much like what you get when you touch something so hot that your brain freaks out for a second and tries to think that it's freezing. Five seconds of a rapturous, expectant, kind of hot-cold-numb limbo transpired for Dim as he stood there in his kitchen with an upturned jar of methanol held over his hopefully expectant, pain wracked face. Then the traffic jam of nerve endings became a pileup that just kept piling up and piling up and piling up, until it was a 7:00 AM rush hour traffic massacre of pain, pointing with pointy, painful, on fire points that piled up and piled up, pointing right into his eyeballs from every direction, and every direction was ON FIRE!
Dim SHRIEKED, and finally woke up the gawdam dog.
He lay there in the darkness for another interminable moment trying to decide if he was in hell or blinded by methanol...
"THAT GAWDAM DOG!" he hollered out loud, as murky details of the night before came back to him. The sound of his own voice was like an inside-out kick to the head, and his hands jerked up reflexively to catch his eyeballs before they popped out of his noggin. He could feel the skin of his eyelids pulsing against his palms as his eyeballs tried to make a run for it.
...or so retarded hung over that you just forgot to open your eyes, idgit.
Once his eyes had stopped bouncing around inside of his head like a couple of pinballs, he very carefully tried to open his eyelids, and discovered that they were stuck fast. He could feel something dry and crusty rubbing against his palms.
"What's this hairy hogwash??" he whisper-shouted as he scurried backwards on his ass and hands across the kitchen linoleum, reaching frantically for some kind of stable purchase. He finally backed up forcibly against the fridge, which he'd left open the night before after a drunken search for sustenance. The impact jolted a jar of pickle juice perched precariously on the rack above, which tipped over, spilling green vinegary liquid all over his head and onto his eyelids, immediately dissolving the dried crusty muck sealing them shut. His eyes flickered open. He could see!
"I can see!" Dim exulted, and then the pickle juice was past his eyelids and into his eyes.
"I'M BLIND!" he screamed. He scrambled to his feet, one hand furiously trying to punch out the fire in his eyes while the other hand groped around blindly for something to put out the fire that didn't involve smothering it to death with punches to the face. If you can imagine someone doing all of that, then you're imagining him exactly the way he looked while he was doing it.
Dim abruptly recognized the kitchen sink with his thrusting, outstretched hand. "WATER!" he exclaimed breathlessly, and he immediately put both of his hands to the task of making water happen in the sink.... but what happened instead of water was just bad luck. His frantic, jerking hands happened upon the jar of methanol that he'd carefully extracted from the latest batch of hootch the right before, which he'd reserved for some future project involving that gawdam dog, and left safely in the sink to await its purpose. However, being blind, hung over, eyeballs on fire and desperate for relief, Dim completely failed to remember to put the two and two of the previous night together. Instead, he latched onto that jar of methanol, thinking it was cool, precious, fire-quenching water. He upended it upon his upturned face and directly into his pickle juiced, on fire eyes.
The pain was so tremendous that the nerves conducting it from his eyes to his brain actually backed up like a traffic jam. Fully five seconds transpired as he stood there, immersed in a kind of un-feeling... much like what you get when you touch something so hot that your brain freaks out for a second and tries to think that it's freezing. Five seconds of a rapturous, expectant, kind of hot-cold-numb limbo transpired for Dim as he stood there in his kitchen with an upturned jar of methanol held over his hopefully expectant, pain wracked face. Then the traffic jam of nerve endings became a pileup that just kept piling up and piling up and piling up, until it was a 7:00 AM rush hour traffic massacre of pain, pointing with pointy, painful, on fire points that piled up and piled up, pointing right into his eyeballs from every direction, and every direction was ON FIRE!
Dim SHRIEKED, and finally woke up the gawdam dog.
Yet another of Jim's Hangovers
Here's my last bunch of notes and composition. Notice how it slowly but surely falls apart into brain shaking nonsense.
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Sheriff Dempsey Witt of Podunk County, Georgia, had planned very carefully to ensure that he'd never have to wake up with another planet sized hangover, ever again... or wake up ever again at all, for that matter... or so he'd thought. At the moment he was still safely ensconced inside the bowels of sweet oblivion, so he didn't actually give a horses patoot about what he might or might not have planned the previous night while three sheets to the wind and at the end of his rope.
He came to that morning buried underneath an avalanche of murky confusion and with absolutely no idea who he was, where he was, or why the silent depths of sweet oblivion had felt it necessary that he should be vomited back into existence. There was no identity, no ego, no perception, no nothing. For Dempsey Witt, the entirety of his being during those first moments of non-oblivion consisted merely of a familiar sense of resignation, accompanied by mild disappointment. No biggie... just a kind of all encompassing 'oh well'. Plus his head felt like it was crammed full of steel wool, which made any attempt at thinking comparable to having the inside of his noggin scrubbed vigorously with a brillo pad.
After passing out again and immediately bouncing right back to suffocating (I don't think the suffocating part was mentioned earlier, so... yeah, suffocating) underneath an avalanche of murky confusion, Dem became aware of a cold, hard surface pressing uncomfortably against his entire body. He couldn't begin to fathom what it might be, which made the inside of his brain itch like the image of a madman's head fungus. He could feel the cold, hard 'whatever it was' trying to squash his eyeball as it pushed against the side of his face, just pressing and pressing, like some kind of giant, really bad spatula.
::: squashed eyeball afterimages, memory triggered, horror buried in the subconscious, a dream no a nightmare remembered, the imminent arrival of the far flung Hunger from the Eleventeenth dimension, the STARVE-ling :::
A noise like that of a dying, pathetic creature, issued from his throat as a perfectly causal reaction to some insanity-spanning horror that most likely lurked just beneath his conscious memory. No doubt about it... it was definitely like some kind of fucked up Jack-in-the-box.
No likey, he thought. He said it out loud - 'No likey no likey no likey' - and then he shouted - 'ME DEFINITELY NO LIKEY!' He awoke suddenly, as if from a nightmare, and the murky confusion transmogrified into a conscious thing. 'What the heck happened, and what the heck is this crap that's happening!' he screamed inside his own head. Then he passed out.
::: Exposition :::
Consciousness came crashing into his noggin like a forty car pileup.
::: Exposition :::
Well, there was the cold, slick thing he had cradled like a teddy bear against the declivity near the top of his chest, with the long end of it pushed up snugly under his chin. 'Huh', he thought, feeling vaguely repulsed. 'What's this thing?' Although he held it like a teddy bear, it definitely wasn't comforting like a teddy bear ought to be. No, this thing was... could be... comforting, yeah. But not like teddy bear comfort... more like a 'Smite Thine Enemies' comfort.
What the hell? he thought. Never mind, I don't wanna know.
::: Exposition:::
he'd been more and more of a mind to do something about the problem once and for all, but he never seemed to get around to it because he keep passing out at the crucial moment.
::: Exposition on suicide and plans for suicide and screwing up his own suicide :::
What he'd gotten instead was the grandmother of all hangovers.
The inside of his mouth was dry and his lips were spit-welded. They made a moist 'pop' as they came unstuck. He tried to build up a little saliva by smacking his tongue and lips together, which made a nasty noise, like a dog snacking on its own nether regions.
'Tastes like a dogs butthole.' He tried to inhale through his nose and was greeted with the smell of snotty, freshly snored boogers. His eyes were gummed up and crusted over.
::: yada yada yada :::
Dim was definitely disappointed. He'd chickened out again. If he was really serious about blowing his brains out, really, he was gonna have to man up and do it sober.
::: out of order Exposition:::
Ubiquitous, he thought to himself as he heaved and pulsated while trying to catch his breath. Ubiquitous. He'd learned that word some twenty years ago from a science fiction novel that he'd been reading, and at the time he'd thought it a pretty damn cool word. Ubiquitous - meaning ever present, abundant, all over the place, filling the nooks and crannies, just all over everything. The boogers in my nose are ubiquitous, he mused as he threw up all over the kitchen floor. The ubiquitous vomit covered the kitchen floor.
He thought of all the ubiquitous things in his life that he hated. The ubiquitous waking up that happened every day was the worst... then there was the ubiquitous hangover, followed by the ubiquitous passage of time. Inside of that was the ubiquitous dread, from which he observed and followed his own ubiquitous habits, every day, ubiquitously. Oh, how he hated that word. If was just so... pretentious! And ubiquitous!
.
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Sheriff Dempsey Witt of Podunk County, Georgia, had planned very carefully to ensure that he'd never have to wake up with another planet sized hangover, ever again... or wake up ever again at all, for that matter... or so he'd thought. At the moment he was still safely ensconced inside the bowels of sweet oblivion, so he didn't actually give a horses patoot about what he might or might not have planned the previous night while three sheets to the wind and at the end of his rope.
He came to that morning buried underneath an avalanche of murky confusion and with absolutely no idea who he was, where he was, or why the silent depths of sweet oblivion had felt it necessary that he should be vomited back into existence. There was no identity, no ego, no perception, no nothing. For Dempsey Witt, the entirety of his being during those first moments of non-oblivion consisted merely of a familiar sense of resignation, accompanied by mild disappointment. No biggie... just a kind of all encompassing 'oh well'. Plus his head felt like it was crammed full of steel wool, which made any attempt at thinking comparable to having the inside of his noggin scrubbed vigorously with a brillo pad.
After passing out again and immediately bouncing right back to suffocating (I don't think the suffocating part was mentioned earlier, so... yeah, suffocating) underneath an avalanche of murky confusion, Dem became aware of a cold, hard surface pressing uncomfortably against his entire body. He couldn't begin to fathom what it might be, which made the inside of his brain itch like the image of a madman's head fungus. He could feel the cold, hard 'whatever it was' trying to squash his eyeball as it pushed against the side of his face, just pressing and pressing, like some kind of giant, really bad spatula.
::: squashed eyeball afterimages, memory triggered, horror buried in the subconscious, a dream no a nightmare remembered, the imminent arrival of the far flung Hunger from the Eleventeenth dimension, the STARVE-ling :::
A noise like that of a dying, pathetic creature, issued from his throat as a perfectly causal reaction to some insanity-spanning horror that most likely lurked just beneath his conscious memory. No doubt about it... it was definitely like some kind of fucked up Jack-in-the-box.
No likey, he thought. He said it out loud - 'No likey no likey no likey' - and then he shouted - 'ME DEFINITELY NO LIKEY!' He awoke suddenly, as if from a nightmare, and the murky confusion transmogrified into a conscious thing. 'What the heck happened, and what the heck is this crap that's happening!' he screamed inside his own head. Then he passed out.
::: Exposition :::
Consciousness came crashing into his noggin like a forty car pileup.
::: Exposition :::
Well, there was the cold, slick thing he had cradled like a teddy bear against the declivity near the top of his chest, with the long end of it pushed up snugly under his chin. 'Huh', he thought, feeling vaguely repulsed. 'What's this thing?' Although he held it like a teddy bear, it definitely wasn't comforting like a teddy bear ought to be. No, this thing was... could be... comforting, yeah. But not like teddy bear comfort... more like a 'Smite Thine Enemies' comfort.
What the hell? he thought. Never mind, I don't wanna know.
::: Exposition:::
he'd been more and more of a mind to do something about the problem once and for all, but he never seemed to get around to it because he keep passing out at the crucial moment.
::: Exposition on suicide and plans for suicide and screwing up his own suicide :::
What he'd gotten instead was the grandmother of all hangovers.
The inside of his mouth was dry and his lips were spit-welded. They made a moist 'pop' as they came unstuck. He tried to build up a little saliva by smacking his tongue and lips together, which made a nasty noise, like a dog snacking on its own nether regions.
'Tastes like a dogs butthole.' He tried to inhale through his nose and was greeted with the smell of snotty, freshly snored boogers. His eyes were gummed up and crusted over.
::: yada yada yada :::
Dim was definitely disappointed. He'd chickened out again. If he was really serious about blowing his brains out, really, he was gonna have to man up and do it sober.
::: out of order Exposition:::
Ubiquitous, he thought to himself as he heaved and pulsated while trying to catch his breath. Ubiquitous. He'd learned that word some twenty years ago from a science fiction novel that he'd been reading, and at the time he'd thought it a pretty damn cool word. Ubiquitous - meaning ever present, abundant, all over the place, filling the nooks and crannies, just all over everything. The boogers in my nose are ubiquitous, he mused as he threw up all over the kitchen floor. The ubiquitous vomit covered the kitchen floor.
He thought of all the ubiquitous things in his life that he hated. The ubiquitous waking up that happened every day was the worst... then there was the ubiquitous hangover, followed by the ubiquitous passage of time. Inside of that was the ubiquitous dread, from which he observed and followed his own ubiquitous habits, every day, ubiquitously. Oh, how he hated that word. If was just so... pretentious! And ubiquitous!
Early introduction to Jim
I forgot about the story I was writing until I discovered it again when transferring notes from old phone to new. It'd be a shame not to slave over it, since I see most of it in retarded glory in my head, which is weird all by itself. Seeing a story in your head that ain't wrote yet.
The title of it is 'The Nonplussed' which means the completely clueless. The lost. The absolutely confused. That's us, the human race. It's a story about us. And me.
Here's the first few official paragraphs.
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Sheriff Dempsey Witt was supposed to wake up dead on New Year's Day, but he didn't... he only woke up wishing he was dead, which was exactly the opposite of what he'd been going for.
The night of December 31st, 2061 had been just another Saturday night for Dempsey - or Dem, as most folks knew him - and he'd celebrated the new year by doing what he always did on a Saturday night. He got stupid drunk on 190 proof double rectified moonshine and tried to kill himself. A weekly suicidal drinking binge had been his tradition for years, ever since he'd resigned his commission and been honorably discharged from the army. Over the past 20 or so years Dem had come close to punching his own clock on more than one occasion, but invariably he would wind up blacking out before actually getting down to the brass tacks of it... oh, and it didn't help that Sheriff Dempsey Witt of Podunk Country, Georgia, was also a hopelessly cheerful drunk, which only made for bad suicide vibes every time.
The thing was, for as long as he could remember since his mid-twenties, when his mom had married his stepfather, all Dem had ever wanted to be was a soldier in the United States Army. It didn't even matter what branch of the army... driver, pilot, machine gunner, secret agent, thermonuclear planetbuster commander, starship trooper, latrine digger... whatever. His stepfather had been an army soldier, as had his stepfathers stepfather, and his stepfathers stepfathers stepfather before him... on and on in an unbroken line of stepfathers for almost a half dozen generations. It was more than a family lineage that Dem felt he represented, as the sole stepson out of three stepdaughters. It was a chain... a family chain, forged upon the hard, unforgiving promise of lifelong commitment, tempered with the memories of his own childhood saltwater tears, and held together forcibly by the cold-welded links of modern tradition.
Dem had been inspired to join the army when he turned 26, after watching his stepfather slowly devolve into an intolerable asshole after a mishap involving a hand grenade juggling accident.
The title of it is 'The Nonplussed' which means the completely clueless. The lost. The absolutely confused. That's us, the human race. It's a story about us. And me.
Here's the first few official paragraphs.
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Sheriff Dempsey Witt was supposed to wake up dead on New Year's Day, but he didn't... he only woke up wishing he was dead, which was exactly the opposite of what he'd been going for.
The night of December 31st, 2061 had been just another Saturday night for Dempsey - or Dem, as most folks knew him - and he'd celebrated the new year by doing what he always did on a Saturday night. He got stupid drunk on 190 proof double rectified moonshine and tried to kill himself. A weekly suicidal drinking binge had been his tradition for years, ever since he'd resigned his commission and been honorably discharged from the army. Over the past 20 or so years Dem had come close to punching his own clock on more than one occasion, but invariably he would wind up blacking out before actually getting down to the brass tacks of it... oh, and it didn't help that Sheriff Dempsey Witt of Podunk Country, Georgia, was also a hopelessly cheerful drunk, which only made for bad suicide vibes every time.
The thing was, for as long as he could remember since his mid-twenties, when his mom had married his stepfather, all Dem had ever wanted to be was a soldier in the United States Army. It didn't even matter what branch of the army... driver, pilot, machine gunner, secret agent, thermonuclear planetbuster commander, starship trooper, latrine digger... whatever. His stepfather had been an army soldier, as had his stepfathers stepfather, and his stepfathers stepfathers stepfather before him... on and on in an unbroken line of stepfathers for almost a half dozen generations. It was more than a family lineage that Dem felt he represented, as the sole stepson out of three stepdaughters. It was a chain... a family chain, forged upon the hard, unforgiving promise of lifelong commitment, tempered with the memories of his own childhood saltwater tears, and held together forcibly by the cold-welded links of modern tradition.
Dem had been inspired to join the army when he turned 26, after watching his stepfather slowly devolve into an intolerable asshole after a mishap involving a hand grenade juggling accident.
Outline for the Introduction
This story begins with an introduction.
It's told from the perspective of an anonymous narrator - someone or something that has found out about these events after the fact, and is relating them as a story told for the benefit and entertainment of any humans who might be reading it... assuming that there are still any humans around to read it.
The telling of these events begins at a specific, significant time in human history. It's the point when the entire human race collectively goes insane. All intelligent life eventually reaches this threshold, as it's a natural stage in the development of any intelligent civilization. It's a trial that's necessary for survival beyond a single planet existence, and it's totally natural. After successful completion, other trials await... but we won't get into those.
Some intelligent races are able to fight through the insanity and survive, and others don't do as well. They either extinct themselves or bomb themselves back to the starting line.
The telling of this story begins with the human race standing with one foot poised above this threshold. It begins a couple of years into the Trump administration, and right before North Korea launches a preemptive attack on Antarctica. In other words, right as the human race is steering planet Earth straight to hell in a hand basket, and laughing all the way.
It's important to note that the narrator, being whomever or whatever it is, has chosen to tell this story with a sense of humor. Anyone or anything with the will to tell this tale could have made it into a drama, or a sappy romance, or a serious tragedy, or an unbiased report, or a bitter tale of regret... but the telling of this one has been decided by anonymous to revel in absurdity for the sake of absurdity, because it's funny. Because that's important. Because if a story can be told, then it already contains the essence of every possible mood, and it's up to the story teller to decide which mood fits. It's ALL............... subjective.
There. That's the open framework of this story. Now I just have to tell it. Oops, I mean...
Now it just has to be told.
It's told from the perspective of an anonymous narrator - someone or something that has found out about these events after the fact, and is relating them as a story told for the benefit and entertainment of any humans who might be reading it... assuming that there are still any humans around to read it.
The telling of these events begins at a specific, significant time in human history. It's the point when the entire human race collectively goes insane. All intelligent life eventually reaches this threshold, as it's a natural stage in the development of any intelligent civilization. It's a trial that's necessary for survival beyond a single planet existence, and it's totally natural. After successful completion, other trials await... but we won't get into those.
Some intelligent races are able to fight through the insanity and survive, and others don't do as well. They either extinct themselves or bomb themselves back to the starting line.
The telling of this story begins with the human race standing with one foot poised above this threshold. It begins a couple of years into the Trump administration, and right before North Korea launches a preemptive attack on Antarctica. In other words, right as the human race is steering planet Earth straight to hell in a hand basket, and laughing all the way.
It's important to note that the narrator, being whomever or whatever it is, has chosen to tell this story with a sense of humor. Anyone or anything with the will to tell this tale could have made it into a drama, or a sappy romance, or a serious tragedy, or an unbiased report, or a bitter tale of regret... but the telling of this one has been decided by anonymous to revel in absurdity for the sake of absurdity, because it's funny. Because that's important. Because if a story can be told, then it already contains the essence of every possible mood, and it's up to the story teller to decide which mood fits. It's ALL............... subjective.
There. That's the open framework of this story. Now I just have to tell it. Oops, I mean...
Now it just has to be told.
Jim Witt character intro
70 years old. The sheriff of Podunk county, Georgia. Suicidal.
Dempsey Witt, the only child of Vera and Hank Witt, was born on December 31st, 1971 in the small town of Fireworks, Georgia. His parents divorced in 1987 when he was 15, and his mother remarried in 1988 to Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade of the United States Army.
His father Hank was a bootlegger and moonshine runner, known for his specific brand of moonshine, Smokin' Hank's Double Rectified. As a boy, Dempsey spent summers with his father, who taught him everything about distilling spirits, as he expected the boy to take over 'the family business' when he turned 16.
Dempsey graduated from Paul Pewitt High School in June, 1989 and attended Southeast Georgia Community College in nearby Mt. Tolerance, Georgia and studied basic curriculum until 1992. He then went to work at the local fireworks factory, which employed about half of the residents of Fireworks. It was there that he developed a fascination for explosives and, with the enthusiastic help of his stepfather, became quite adept at creating his own explosive devices, from small scale firecrackers to full blown hand grenades.
In1993 Frank Slade, Dempsey's stepfather, was demonstrating an exercise in hand-eye coordination to a group of new recruits by juggling six live hand grenades and taking shots of Smokin' Hank's Double Rectified for each grenade that he dropped (Frank was a long time customer of Hank Witt). Unbeknownst to Frank at the time, one of the six grenades he was juggling had lost its pin, and it exploded when it was at the height of its arc, about fifteen feet above his head. Luckily for Frank, most of the shrapnel exploded outward and not downward, but as he had been looking up when it happened, the shock liquefied his eyeballs, blinding him instantly. Frank had believed that teaching hand-eye coordination to new recruits was an invaluable lesson, and that his drunken grenade juggling method of instruction was superior - the reason being that if you could learn to juggle hand grenades while drunk, just think how good you'd be if you were sober.
When Dempsey learned of his stepfathers drunk grenade juggling accident, he thought it was the funniest and most bad-ass thing he'd ever heard, especially after Frank had wiggled out of a court martial and was honorably discharged. Dempsey began to consider joining the army as a result of his admiration for his stepfather, and a growing feeling of obligation as a stepson.
It was due to an encounter with recruiters at a McDonalds in Atlanta, where Dempsey was recognized by the two recruiters as being the stepson of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade and belittled with questions and assumptions of whether or not he planned on continuing the step-family tradition of drunkerds juggling explosives, that made up his mind. He gave both recruiters the double bird and headed to the nearest recruiting office and joined, right then and there.
He scored in the top tenth of a percent on his ASVAB and was fast-tracked through college for his bachelor's degree and placed in officer training school.
Blah blah blah something else happens.
Geez I gotta do this shit for another dozen characters.
Dempsey Witt, the only child of Vera and Hank Witt, was born on December 31st, 1971 in the small town of Fireworks, Georgia. His parents divorced in 1987 when he was 15, and his mother remarried in 1988 to Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade of the United States Army.
His father Hank was a bootlegger and moonshine runner, known for his specific brand of moonshine, Smokin' Hank's Double Rectified. As a boy, Dempsey spent summers with his father, who taught him everything about distilling spirits, as he expected the boy to take over 'the family business' when he turned 16.
Dempsey graduated from Paul Pewitt High School in June, 1989 and attended Southeast Georgia Community College in nearby Mt. Tolerance, Georgia and studied basic curriculum until 1992. He then went to work at the local fireworks factory, which employed about half of the residents of Fireworks. It was there that he developed a fascination for explosives and, with the enthusiastic help of his stepfather, became quite adept at creating his own explosive devices, from small scale firecrackers to full blown hand grenades.
In1993 Frank Slade, Dempsey's stepfather, was demonstrating an exercise in hand-eye coordination to a group of new recruits by juggling six live hand grenades and taking shots of Smokin' Hank's Double Rectified for each grenade that he dropped (Frank was a long time customer of Hank Witt). Unbeknownst to Frank at the time, one of the six grenades he was juggling had lost its pin, and it exploded when it was at the height of its arc, about fifteen feet above his head. Luckily for Frank, most of the shrapnel exploded outward and not downward, but as he had been looking up when it happened, the shock liquefied his eyeballs, blinding him instantly. Frank had believed that teaching hand-eye coordination to new recruits was an invaluable lesson, and that his drunken grenade juggling method of instruction was superior - the reason being that if you could learn to juggle hand grenades while drunk, just think how good you'd be if you were sober.
When Dempsey learned of his stepfathers drunk grenade juggling accident, he thought it was the funniest and most bad-ass thing he'd ever heard, especially after Frank had wiggled out of a court martial and was honorably discharged. Dempsey began to consider joining the army as a result of his admiration for his stepfather, and a growing feeling of obligation as a stepson.
It was due to an encounter with recruiters at a McDonalds in Atlanta, where Dempsey was recognized by the two recruiters as being the stepson of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade and belittled with questions and assumptions of whether or not he planned on continuing the step-family tradition of drunkerds juggling explosives, that made up his mind. He gave both recruiters the double bird and headed to the nearest recruiting office and joined, right then and there.
He scored in the top tenth of a percent on his ASVAB and was fast-tracked through college for his bachelor's degree and placed in officer training school.
Blah blah blah something else happens.
Geez I gotta do this shit for another dozen characters.
Dickjackson Jones
Dickjackson Jones -
This is the essence of his character, or the nucleus.
* He's a socially high-functioning autistic
* He's a genius with an IQ of 200
* His focus, his passion, his obsession, is everything to do with air and space flight
* He's had no formal schooling beyond the 5th grade
* He's a self-taught aerospace engineer
* He's a self-taught freelance test pilot
* He's the commander of the Flying Turtle
* He began to have recurring dreams about Mars in 1996 when Pathfinder landed on Mars and, he believed, immediately began beaming signals directly into his brain
* He has since suffered with frequent cycles of cluster headaches
* He has a recurring dream of Olympus Mons, a volcano on Mars, erupting and blowing gentle smoke signals of peace into space from its dormant caldera
* He's certain that his dreams of Mars are somehow related to what he believes to be the signal from Pathfinder but he doesn't know why or how
* When he dreams of Olympus Mons it triggers a new cycle of cluster headaches
* After each cluster cycle his dream of Olympus Mons becomes more frequent and vivid
* Each time he dreams, he is on the cusp of discovering the meaning of his dream, and a new and even more intense cluster cycle is triggered, which shatters his burgeoning understanding
* The repeating cycles of almost comprehension followed by agonized confusion is surely driving him insane
* During his brief periods of lucidity between dream/cluster cycles he feels a growing certainty that his dream is telling him that he has to travel to Mars to find an answer for... something, and that his headaches are inflicted upon him by... something, in order to prevent him from taking action against... something
* He understands and takes seriously the possibility that his entire life is merely an insane hallucination resulting from the mental breakdown of a self-stranger with whom he feels no connection or identity whatsoever
* He is capable of displaying absolutely no outward signs of pain when experiencing the Mortal Agony of a cluster headache, which effectively hides his condition from everyone
WHAT HE WANTS
* Dickjackson Jones wants relief from his cluster headaches, so that...
* He can be rid of the pain, so that...
* He'll be able to think clearly, so that...
* He can finally understand what his recurring dream of Olympus Mons is trying to tell him, so that...
* He can FLY.
WHY HE WANTS IT
* He's terrified of an infinite universe that exists without a meaning or purpose
* He's desperate to discover a meaning, a purpose, or simply a reason for why anything even exists at all
* He's fundamentally afraid that his joy of flying and everything to do with flight, which he believes comprises the sole reason for his existence, might be as meaningless as a dung beetle pushing a ball of shit
* He wants to be comforted with the knowledge of something larger than himself
HOW HE'S GETTING IT
* He steals the Flying Turtle mid-mission and sets course to Mars, to follow his dream.
This is the essence of his character, or the nucleus.
* He's a socially high-functioning autistic
* He's a genius with an IQ of 200
* His focus, his passion, his obsession, is everything to do with air and space flight
* He's had no formal schooling beyond the 5th grade
* He's a self-taught aerospace engineer
* He's a self-taught freelance test pilot
* He's the commander of the Flying Turtle
* He began to have recurring dreams about Mars in 1996 when Pathfinder landed on Mars and, he believed, immediately began beaming signals directly into his brain
* He has since suffered with frequent cycles of cluster headaches
* He has a recurring dream of Olympus Mons, a volcano on Mars, erupting and blowing gentle smoke signals of peace into space from its dormant caldera
* He's certain that his dreams of Mars are somehow related to what he believes to be the signal from Pathfinder but he doesn't know why or how
* When he dreams of Olympus Mons it triggers a new cycle of cluster headaches
* After each cluster cycle his dream of Olympus Mons becomes more frequent and vivid
* Each time he dreams, he is on the cusp of discovering the meaning of his dream, and a new and even more intense cluster cycle is triggered, which shatters his burgeoning understanding
* The repeating cycles of almost comprehension followed by agonized confusion is surely driving him insane
* During his brief periods of lucidity between dream/cluster cycles he feels a growing certainty that his dream is telling him that he has to travel to Mars to find an answer for... something, and that his headaches are inflicted upon him by... something, in order to prevent him from taking action against... something
* He understands and takes seriously the possibility that his entire life is merely an insane hallucination resulting from the mental breakdown of a self-stranger with whom he feels no connection or identity whatsoever
* He is capable of displaying absolutely no outward signs of pain when experiencing the Mortal Agony of a cluster headache, which effectively hides his condition from everyone
WHAT HE WANTS
* Dickjackson Jones wants relief from his cluster headaches, so that...
* He can be rid of the pain, so that...
* He'll be able to think clearly, so that...
* He can finally understand what his recurring dream of Olympus Mons is trying to tell him, so that...
* He can FLY.
WHY HE WANTS IT
* He's terrified of an infinite universe that exists without a meaning or purpose
* He's desperate to discover a meaning, a purpose, or simply a reason for why anything even exists at all
* He's fundamentally afraid that his joy of flying and everything to do with flight, which he believes comprises the sole reason for his existence, might be as meaningless as a dung beetle pushing a ball of shit
* He wants to be comforted with the knowledge of something larger than himself
HOW HE'S GETTING IT
* He steals the Flying Turtle mid-mission and sets course to Mars, to follow his dream.
The threshold
The events of The Nonplussed occur as the human race approaches a critical threshold of social and technological development and population density as a civilization. Upon crossing this threshold, Mankind collectively goes insane as a species, and will either survive the inevitable trauma of the ensuing chaos or destroy itself; if not as a species, then as a civilization. This is a natural occurrence in the development of all intelligent races throughout the universe which achieve a technological civilization - some survive; most do not. North Korea is the first example of the collective insanity taking hold as Mankind crosses over the threshold. By the time Trump is elected president of the United States in 2016, the entire world is joining in, and by 2041, Humanity as a surviving species is well on its way to hell, in a hand basket.
CANNIBALUS THE STARVELING
Then the truly unexpected occurs. An American particle physicist and drunken alcoholic,without any shits left to give proves the pseudoscientific theory which ruined her career by opening a gateway to a parallel universe, purely by accident and at billions to one odds, by slamming the hair of the dog into itself at light speed using the Largest Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator which spans the globe at the equator. An entity known to itself as Cannibalus the Starveling emerges through the gateway from its realm, which it calls The Far Flung Hunger, and into our universe. It takes the form of a petulant child, about eight years of age, and declares to all information processing systems, machine and organic - from a virus to a thermostat to a termite to an 8 bit game console to a supercomputer to a dog to the advanced AI imbedded in the global internet, and finally to humanity - in an all reaching, all demanding, all encompassing, supremely puerile, infinitely self absorbed, ear splitting, mind shattering declaration - that it is STARVELING, and that it expects LUNCHEON, and it's looking to US. To provide it.
THE METHOD
My brain hasn't invented this part yet.
Bio for Cannibalus
Cannibalus the Starvling
Antagonist
Self-appointed Emperor of the Realm of the Far Flung Hunger
An incredibly ancient transcendent consciousness that ages backwards according to the laws of its universe relative to ours. According to our perception of time, it used to be extremely wise but it has unlearned its wisdom over the eons as it shrank younger. It has undone evil through incalculable good throughout its indeterminable existence, and has unplodded around incalculable periods of apathy, and is now ending the beginning of the ending of its purpose by serving incalculable evil as an infantile Thing, and naturally unplodding footlong torward it's own unbirth. However, exposed to our timelike universe through the accidental opening of the rift by Bobby Kay Rudolph, its natural purpose is twisted. It becomes a Starvling for the stolen ownership of its reducted existence, which it suddenly perceives as given from it in reverse across the eons, as if it were stolen to it. As a result of this unlogic captured perversely from our universe, its natural unconscious yearning for the moment at which it will be finally be perfectly unborn from hell and resurrected to heaven is perverted into a hunger for birth which can never be satiated, and according to our perception, it becomes a perfectly insane creature and therefore perfectly evil, relative to us.
Antagonist
Self-appointed Emperor of the Realm of the Far Flung Hunger
An incredibly ancient transcendent consciousness that ages backwards according to the laws of its universe relative to ours. According to our perception of time, it used to be extremely wise but it has unlearned its wisdom over the eons as it shrank younger. It has undone evil through incalculable good throughout its indeterminable existence, and has unplodded around incalculable periods of apathy, and is now ending the beginning of the ending of its purpose by serving incalculable evil as an infantile Thing, and naturally unplodding footlong torward it's own unbirth. However, exposed to our timelike universe through the accidental opening of the rift by Bobby Kay Rudolph, its natural purpose is twisted. It becomes a Starvling for the stolen ownership of its reducted existence, which it suddenly perceives as given from it in reverse across the eons, as if it were stolen to it. As a result of this unlogic captured perversely from our universe, its natural unconscious yearning for the moment at which it will be finally be perfectly unborn from hell and resurrected to heaven is perverted into a hunger for birth which can never be satiated, and according to our perception, it becomes a perfectly insane creature and therefore perfectly evil, relative to us.
Thursday, July 27, 2017
Thaddeus
First subplot for The Nonplussed, concerning the American civil war before the arrival of Cannibalus the Starvling.
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Thaddeus Thomas is an Amish (maybe not Amish) inventor and the designer of an absolutely gargantuous piece of agricultural machinery - an all in one combine harvester, sprayer, baler, disc harrow, thresher, subsoiler, cultivator, swather, tedder, and cultipacker - proposed as 'the ultimate farming implement' and dubbed the Agriculturizerator. Thaddeus submits his blueprints to the US patent office.
The Agriculturizerator measures roughly 300 meters across the business end, 450 meters in length, and rises to a height of 150 meters - about 30 square acres of machinery, or the approximate equivalent to 16 square city blocks. Its function is to scour the Earth, processing raw material at the front end, and excreting harvested crops out the back, with everything happening inside of it as it lumbers slowly across the landscape. It takes one 'growing season' to traverse its own length of 450 meters, resulting in about 30 square acres of crops each 'season'.
Thaddeus constructs a 1/100th scale working prototype, approximately 10 ft wide, 15 ft long and 5 ft high as a proof of concept for demonstration purposes to help secure funding for the full size Agriculturizerator. Although the mini-agrizator performs beautifully, investors balk at the 600 billion dollar development costs. As a last ditch effort, Thaddeus attempts to secure government funding and is laughed off of Capitol Hill.
Sabathius Malachi -
(back story of Sabathius and his motivations as they relate to Thaddeus not quite figured out yet, but I do know one thing, Sabathius is an evil bastard)
- urges Thaddeus to pitch his machine as a Weapon of Mass Creation, reasoning that since war is always going to be inevitable, adding a capability for warfare on a massive scale to the front end of the Agriculturizerator would revolutionize warfare in a positive manner by generating an entirely new system of justification - both politically and morally - for the unavoidable and naturally occurring state of violence which defines our condition as a species, and with a built in bonus of getting to turn your enemy into millions of tons of groceries at the end of it.
Of course, Thaddeus doesn't buy into this line of bullshit, and -
(plot device, yet to be congealed in my brain as an idea)
- happens.
Eventually, pretty quickly actually, president Goolsby is convinced by Sabathius that the Agriculturizerator could be used to completely pulverize Atlanta, kinda like how they did in the original civil war 200 years ago. So he gets his greasy hands on it, renames it the Pulverizerator, puts it into full production with emergency war powers, and then proceeds to raze Atlanta to the ground...
...which totally pisses off Dempsey Witt by the way. Pres. Goolsby will find out later the hard way that he never should have pissed off a suicidal 70 year old war hero without a single shit left to give. It's gonna be pretty cool, that reckoning.
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Thaddeus Thomas is an Amish (maybe not Amish) inventor and the designer of an absolutely gargantuous piece of agricultural machinery - an all in one combine harvester, sprayer, baler, disc harrow, thresher, subsoiler, cultivator, swather, tedder, and cultipacker - proposed as 'the ultimate farming implement' and dubbed the Agriculturizerator. Thaddeus submits his blueprints to the US patent office.
The Agriculturizerator measures roughly 300 meters across the business end, 450 meters in length, and rises to a height of 150 meters - about 30 square acres of machinery, or the approximate equivalent to 16 square city blocks. Its function is to scour the Earth, processing raw material at the front end, and excreting harvested crops out the back, with everything happening inside of it as it lumbers slowly across the landscape. It takes one 'growing season' to traverse its own length of 450 meters, resulting in about 30 square acres of crops each 'season'.
Thaddeus constructs a 1/100th scale working prototype, approximately 10 ft wide, 15 ft long and 5 ft high as a proof of concept for demonstration purposes to help secure funding for the full size Agriculturizerator. Although the mini-agrizator performs beautifully, investors balk at the 600 billion dollar development costs. As a last ditch effort, Thaddeus attempts to secure government funding and is laughed off of Capitol Hill.
Sabathius Malachi -
(back story of Sabathius and his motivations as they relate to Thaddeus not quite figured out yet, but I do know one thing, Sabathius is an evil bastard)
- urges Thaddeus to pitch his machine as a Weapon of Mass Creation, reasoning that since war is always going to be inevitable, adding a capability for warfare on a massive scale to the front end of the Agriculturizerator would revolutionize warfare in a positive manner by generating an entirely new system of justification - both politically and morally - for the unavoidable and naturally occurring state of violence which defines our condition as a species, and with a built in bonus of getting to turn your enemy into millions of tons of groceries at the end of it.
Of course, Thaddeus doesn't buy into this line of bullshit, and -
(plot device, yet to be congealed in my brain as an idea)
- happens.
Eventually, pretty quickly actually, president Goolsby is convinced by Sabathius that the Agriculturizerator could be used to completely pulverize Atlanta, kinda like how they did in the original civil war 200 years ago. So he gets his greasy hands on it, renames it the Pulverizerator, puts it into full production with emergency war powers, and then proceeds to raze Atlanta to the ground...
...which totally pisses off Dempsey Witt by the way. Pres. Goolsby will find out later the hard way that he never should have pissed off a suicidal 70 year old war hero without a single shit left to give. It's gonna be pretty cool, that reckoning.
Simple outline
Here it is, the complete simple outline of The Nonplussed, in its entirety.
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I. In the year 2041, human civilization is going to hell in a handbasket.
II. Cannibalus the Starveling invades the solar system from the 11teenth dimension.
III. As a byproduct of the ensuing conflict, the true nature and purpose of the universe is accidentally discovered and disseminated.
IV. Cosmic forehead slap right before the universe reboots.
V. Ok, let's try this again... LET THERE BE A LUKEWARM SLIMY TEXTURE COATED WITH AN ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLE LAYER OF DRY FUZZINESS! ... Yeah. It's gonna work this time.
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I. In the year 2041, human civilization is going to hell in a handbasket.
II. Cannibalus the Starveling invades the solar system from the 11teenth dimension.
III. As a byproduct of the ensuing conflict, the true nature and purpose of the universe is accidentally discovered and disseminated.
IV. Cosmic forehead slap right before the universe reboots.
V. Ok, let's try this again... LET THERE BE A LUKEWARM SLIMY TEXTURE COATED WITH AN ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLE LAYER OF DRY FUZZINESS! ... Yeah. It's gonna work this time.
Who what when how why
The Nonplussed - what, when, how, why, who, and so on
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1. The What - a noun
Firstly, we have the universe. Our universe. Like countless other universes which help to comprise the unending foreverness of the multiverse, our universe was observed into being from an infinite sea of wildly fluctuating quantum wave functions by ubiquitous consciousness, the living substrate which underlies, supports, defines, and purposes all phenomena comprising the entirety of existence.
Conditions can vary widely from universe to universe - some, like ours, have physical laws and dimensions of space-time which are conducive to the natural development of life, and many others don't. Our universe is the only universe out of the multiverse which is fundamentally flawed, however. Dark matter, dark energy, black holes and singularities, particle-wave duality, the uncertainty principle, superposition, the light speed barrier, quantum gravity, the accelerating expansion of space-time, the precariously balanced more natural universe-erasing state of false vacuum upon which our universe constantly teeters yet never collapses... all of these are the real, observable defects of an inherently flawed continuum... our continuum, where the story takes place. The red headed step child of the multiverse.
All universes - an infinity of them - exist inside a state of perfection except ours, because the idea of perfection can't exist without contrast to give it meaning. That's us... we're the contrast. An entire sacrificial universe. It's just the way it has to be, always has been, and always will be. It's necessary. Do you understand? Our universe is the ultimate epitome of the concept of 'accidentally on purpose. Necessary chaos... blameless, yet offensive.
This is existence, the way it's always been, without beginning or end. Waveforms collapsing, universes emerging, evolving, thriving, decaying, dying, reborn, infinitely and almost perfectly. The observer seeing it all into existence, always and constantly, forever, yet making the necessary mistake every few thousand eons that gives rise to our universe - over and over - an infinite number of times, a mistake which propagates eternally through the multiverse like a mutation, bestowing the necessary gift of variation upon an Existence ideally based upon perfection.
Do you get it? It has to be this way, or else a perfection of existence would instantly cease to exist and there would never be anything at all, ever... nothing at all. Pure infinite chaos of nonexistence would occur, and that would equal total perfection. There has to be two sides, with an eternally shifting and precarious balance, in order for existence to exist.
OK! That's the what. The basic nature of reality in this story, The Nonplussed. Next comes...
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2. The What - a verb
Experiencing existence inside the flawed universe. This is the story. What does it look like inside The What? Gimme a sec or some other undetermined amount of time, and I'll figure out how to describe it. Here's a hint. It will be extremely absurd. You'll be able to relate to it, although the rest of the multiverse will be hopelessly Nonplussed.
Stay tuned. Or don't. Whatev.
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1. The What - a noun
Firstly, we have the universe. Our universe. Like countless other universes which help to comprise the unending foreverness of the multiverse, our universe was observed into being from an infinite sea of wildly fluctuating quantum wave functions by ubiquitous consciousness, the living substrate which underlies, supports, defines, and purposes all phenomena comprising the entirety of existence.
Conditions can vary widely from universe to universe - some, like ours, have physical laws and dimensions of space-time which are conducive to the natural development of life, and many others don't. Our universe is the only universe out of the multiverse which is fundamentally flawed, however. Dark matter, dark energy, black holes and singularities, particle-wave duality, the uncertainty principle, superposition, the light speed barrier, quantum gravity, the accelerating expansion of space-time, the precariously balanced more natural universe-erasing state of false vacuum upon which our universe constantly teeters yet never collapses... all of these are the real, observable defects of an inherently flawed continuum... our continuum, where the story takes place. The red headed step child of the multiverse.
All universes - an infinity of them - exist inside a state of perfection except ours, because the idea of perfection can't exist without contrast to give it meaning. That's us... we're the contrast. An entire sacrificial universe. It's just the way it has to be, always has been, and always will be. It's necessary. Do you understand? Our universe is the ultimate epitome of the concept of 'accidentally on purpose. Necessary chaos... blameless, yet offensive.
This is existence, the way it's always been, without beginning or end. Waveforms collapsing, universes emerging, evolving, thriving, decaying, dying, reborn, infinitely and almost perfectly. The observer seeing it all into existence, always and constantly, forever, yet making the necessary mistake every few thousand eons that gives rise to our universe - over and over - an infinite number of times, a mistake which propagates eternally through the multiverse like a mutation, bestowing the necessary gift of variation upon an Existence ideally based upon perfection.
Do you get it? It has to be this way, or else a perfection of existence would instantly cease to exist and there would never be anything at all, ever... nothing at all. Pure infinite chaos of nonexistence would occur, and that would equal total perfection. There has to be two sides, with an eternally shifting and precarious balance, in order for existence to exist.
OK! That's the what. The basic nature of reality in this story, The Nonplussed. Next comes...
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2. The What - a verb
Experiencing existence inside the flawed universe. This is the story. What does it look like inside The What? Gimme a sec or some other undetermined amount of time, and I'll figure out how to describe it. Here's a hint. It will be extremely absurd. You'll be able to relate to it, although the rest of the multiverse will be hopelessly Nonplussed.
Stay tuned. Or don't. Whatev.
A skeleton of a story
I'm still thinking about this story that keeps evolving in my noggin, which I've named 'The Nonplussed'.
A skeleton of a story is emerging slowly, from which I'll hopefully be able to hang all the fleshy bits that will give it a grotesque yet functional semblance of a thing which I'm hoping will possess the minimal amount of feeling required to support at least a vaguely accurate description of a narrative fired by the pulse of life absurd.
Here's the basic, bare bones skeleton.
Part 1 - The Nonplussed
This first part details the burgeoning insanity of mankind, beginning in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump as the leader of the free world, and culminating in 2021 when North Korea initiates a limited nuclear conflagration, resulting in the complete annihilation of the Middle East, plus the South Pole, causing the Western Antarctic Ice Shelf to fall into the worlds' oceans, and detailing the madness of mankind's collective reaction to the resulting worldwide devastation as sea levels rise by five meters.
Part 2 - Insanity Interrupted
This next part picks up twenty years after the nuclear skirmish of 2021. Earth is devastated by environmental collapse, the state of Georgia has seceded from the Union, Civil war erupts in America, Russia wants to get in on the action, and it looks like a full scale nuclear world war is imminent... until a drunken particle physicist opens a trans-dimensional doorway to another universe by smashing anti-martini molecules together at relativistic speeds with the Larger Hadron Collider - a particle accelerator which encircles the Earth at the equator. Cannibalus the Starvling of The Far Flung Hunger emerges from the resulting stable wormhole connecting our two universes, demanding LUNCHEON. After being subjected to several of its devastating tantrums, a totally pissed off and not entirely mentally stable Humanity goes to war with an extra-universal alien that manifests itself as a petulant 8 year old boy with god-like powers and an insatiable need to devour EVERYTHING.
Part 3 - This will all end in tears...
This final part describes how mankind - gripped in the throes of collective madness - utterly, and without mercy destroys the childlike alien demigod, Emperor Cannibalus the Starvling of The Far Flung Hunger, thereby saving the Infinite Multiverse from being consumed once and for all. And how it all ends in tears anyway, for everybody and everything, everywhere.
That's the skeleton of it. You know, it was way way WAY more of a pain in the ass than I ever thought it would be, just to come up with that vague outline. I think it could be a really kick-ass book though, if I actually wind up knowing how to do it.
A skeleton of a story is emerging slowly, from which I'll hopefully be able to hang all the fleshy bits that will give it a grotesque yet functional semblance of a thing which I'm hoping will possess the minimal amount of feeling required to support at least a vaguely accurate description of a narrative fired by the pulse of life absurd.
Here's the basic, bare bones skeleton.
Part 1 - The Nonplussed
This first part details the burgeoning insanity of mankind, beginning in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump as the leader of the free world, and culminating in 2021 when North Korea initiates a limited nuclear conflagration, resulting in the complete annihilation of the Middle East, plus the South Pole, causing the Western Antarctic Ice Shelf to fall into the worlds' oceans, and detailing the madness of mankind's collective reaction to the resulting worldwide devastation as sea levels rise by five meters.
Part 2 - Insanity Interrupted
This next part picks up twenty years after the nuclear skirmish of 2021. Earth is devastated by environmental collapse, the state of Georgia has seceded from the Union, Civil war erupts in America, Russia wants to get in on the action, and it looks like a full scale nuclear world war is imminent... until a drunken particle physicist opens a trans-dimensional doorway to another universe by smashing anti-martini molecules together at relativistic speeds with the Larger Hadron Collider - a particle accelerator which encircles the Earth at the equator. Cannibalus the Starvling of The Far Flung Hunger emerges from the resulting stable wormhole connecting our two universes, demanding LUNCHEON. After being subjected to several of its devastating tantrums, a totally pissed off and not entirely mentally stable Humanity goes to war with an extra-universal alien that manifests itself as a petulant 8 year old boy with god-like powers and an insatiable need to devour EVERYTHING.
Part 3 - This will all end in tears...
This final part describes how mankind - gripped in the throes of collective madness - utterly, and without mercy destroys the childlike alien demigod, Emperor Cannibalus the Starvling of The Far Flung Hunger, thereby saving the Infinite Multiverse from being consumed once and for all. And how it all ends in tears anyway, for everybody and everything, everywhere.
That's the skeleton of it. You know, it was way way WAY more of a pain in the ass than I ever thought it would be, just to come up with that vague outline. I think it could be a really kick-ass book though, if I actually wind up knowing how to do it.
Jim and Ferlin pt.2
Dempsey Witt and Ferlin Goolsby are the same age and grew up together as best friends in Fireworks, Georgia. Both possessed genius levels of intelligence, but were otherwise polar opposites. Ferlin was sensible, calm, slow to anger and quick to forgive, while Dempsey was self centered, impulsive, and always on the defense.
Dempsey, inspired by the awesomeness of his stepfather's 1987 drunken grenade juggling mishap, joined the army right out of high school in 1989 against the better judgement of his best friend Ferlin. It wasn't until 1991, when Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade's autobiography, 'Stench of a Wombat', was made into the academy award winning movie, 'Scent of a Woman', that after watching it Ferlin was sufficiently inspired to join up, too.
So it was that Dempsey and Ferlin were both motivated to become soldiers by the same source, but according to different ideologies... Dempsey thought grenade juggling was badass and wanted to imitate his drunken, badass stepfather, while Ferlin thought grenade juggling was criminally reckless, and was determined to set a better example against Dempsey's drunken, badass stepfather.
Dempsey and Ferlin both entered officer training school at the same time and they both equally excelled, due to their competitive natures and the effectiveness of their uniquely contrasting methods. They were both set to graduate with honors, but due to a drunken grenade juggling mishap the night before graduation, Ferlin was expelled, and would have been dishonorably discharged if not for the precedent set by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, which was the main defense during his court martial. Dempsey went on to graduate with honors, Ferlin was demoted to regular grunt, Dempsey became his commanding officer, and that was the beginning of the end to their friendship. That was 1995. By 2018 they are bitter enemies.
Now... starting with the North Korean War of 2018 and ending with the complete nuclear annihilation of the Middle East within a few days, what is it that causes Dempsey - by that time a Lieutenant Colonel - to be dishonorably discharged, and how is it that Staff Sargent Goolsby was responsible? This is the Crux of what sets Ferlin on his path of slowly increasing insanity to the presidency, and Dempsey on his path of suicidal drunkenness to redemption. Or revenge... whichever he decides when the heat of the moment finally demands it.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
A summary for realsies kinda.
Read on, adventurer, your quest congeals. What? You don't have to read it.
This is what happens, roughly. Many details haven't been figured out, and some have. This will try to be an average of the story, with a few craters. I'm numbering events in order of happening, but they could be arbitrary, since it's all still elastic. I'm not gonna use dates because that makes things more complicated and throws me into the witch hunt, like last time.
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.
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1. Donald Trump elected president.
2. There's a war between North Korea and Donald Trump.
3. During the war, North Korea nukes the South Pole because they think that's where Santa Claus lives.
4. Nuclear war escalates in the Middle East and kills 90% of all Muslims.
5. A coup to take out Donald Trump fails and Georgia is found guilty.
6. Exponential military buildup according to Trump's War on War.
7. West Antarctic Ice Shelf collapses due to North Korea's nuclear attack.
8. Sea levels rise worldwide by six meters (almost 40 feet).
9. Trump declares War on Global Warming.
10. Planetbuster bombs.
11. Aircraft carrier carriers.
12. Freeze ray, for freezing the moon.
13. The military spending bill is dumped on Georgia's doorstep.
14. Georgia secedes from the union. WAR.
.
.
.
...here's where things start to get fuzzier.
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.
.
15. Dimensional rift opened to the Far Flung Hunger at Waxahachie, Texas.
16. Cannibalus the Starvling appears.
17. Big Junior advises President Ferlin Goolsby to order Atlanta razed to the ground with the Pulverizorator. MORE WAR.
18. Two genetically engineered parrots warn a heroin junkie in Austin, Texas of the coming apocalypse, because he's the only one - I mean, the closest one, and they're both really tired from flying across the Atlantic Ocean - who can summon Purl Ashblaque, the grunge wizard.
19. Dickjackson Jones installs the freeze ray on the moon.
20. Susannah Hicks secretly appointed as handler for Cannibalus the Starvling by Dempsey Witt, head of the Coordinated Information Apparatchik of Soviet Georgia.
21. Dreyfuss Marlowe encounters Ignatius, the demon drug dealer slaved to the will of Cannibalus, and Dreyfuss summons Purl Ashblaque for help.
22. Because of his cluster headaches, Dickjackson Jones steals the Flying Turtle and heads for Mars to investigate what his dreams of an erupting Olympus Mons could mean.
.
.
.
...now it gets even more fuzzier.
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.
.
23. Dreyfuss has daddy issues with Purl. And drug issues with drugs.
24. Susannah Hicks has innocence issues with Cannibalus.
25. Dempsey Witt has guilt issues with the entire world situation, and frenemy issues with Ferlin.
26. Ignatius has control issues with Dreyfuss.
27. Big Junior has racial issues with Dickjackson Jones.
28. The narrator has insanity issues with the story.
29. Cannibalus has Starvling issues with our universe.
30. Humanity has self preservation issues with Cannibalus.
31. Purl has getting killed issues with Cannibalus.
.
.
.
...and... now it's murk.
.
.
.
32. Dickjackson Jones makes a discovery of vast import on Mars.
33. Susannah Hicks loses her innocence by trying to cure Cannibalus of his evil.
34. Dempsey Witt exacts revenge for Atlanta on Ferlin Goolsby, then commits suicide.
.
.
.
...impossible to foresee details beyond this moment.
.
.
.
Basically, what Dickjackson discovered was that Olympus Mons and her three sister volcanoes, Ascraeus, Arsia and Protonilus Mons, are all just God Buttons, to put it in human terms, of a controller which resets the universe back to the big bang. This is information gleaned from clues left in ancient Martian strata, billions of years ago by something that wanted somebody to figure it all out one day. It's also discovered that by inputting a 'cheat code', to put it into terms understandable by a human, that the universal reset can be reprogrammed so that it affects any arbitrary dimensional coordinates in space-time, as opposed to an entire universal reset.
What happens is, humanity shows no mercy to Cannibalus the Starvling, recently weakened by its battle with Purl, and programs the universal reset coordinates to the caldera of Olympus Mons and throws Cannibalus into the seething caldera, killing and deleting him forever from future history.
...the end.
Of course, this is very rough and subject to change. Plus, I've left out all of the intricate character relationships and subplots, which will all naturally congeal as this thing grows up into a real book, and not just a wooden book.
Oh yeah. Somewhere in there they gotta use that freeze ray for something. Probably on that little bastard Cannibalus to keep him still before they chuck him into the volcano.
And of course there's gotta be a love story or else it won't sell. Deep down in the nooks and crannies of all this bullshit, Susannah 'SuperSuze' Hicks falls in love with Dreyfuss Marlowe, who of course dies. I already wrote about that. So, it all ends in tears for everybody, and especially for poor Susannah. I swear there's no hidden meaning here. Seriously, I mean it. Susannah is a southern name, it was pure coincidence. Dead serious, here.
This is what happens, roughly. Many details haven't been figured out, and some have. This will try to be an average of the story, with a few craters. I'm numbering events in order of happening, but they could be arbitrary, since it's all still elastic. I'm not gonna use dates because that makes things more complicated and throws me into the witch hunt, like last time.
.
.
.
1. Donald Trump elected president.
2. There's a war between North Korea and Donald Trump.
3. During the war, North Korea nukes the South Pole because they think that's where Santa Claus lives.
4. Nuclear war escalates in the Middle East and kills 90% of all Muslims.
5. A coup to take out Donald Trump fails and Georgia is found guilty.
6. Exponential military buildup according to Trump's War on War.
7. West Antarctic Ice Shelf collapses due to North Korea's nuclear attack.
8. Sea levels rise worldwide by six meters (almost 40 feet).
9. Trump declares War on Global Warming.
10. Planetbuster bombs.
11. Aircraft carrier carriers.
12. Freeze ray, for freezing the moon.
13. The military spending bill is dumped on Georgia's doorstep.
14. Georgia secedes from the union. WAR.
.
.
.
...here's where things start to get fuzzier.
.
.
.
15. Dimensional rift opened to the Far Flung Hunger at Waxahachie, Texas.
16. Cannibalus the Starvling appears.
17. Big Junior advises President Ferlin Goolsby to order Atlanta razed to the ground with the Pulverizorator. MORE WAR.
18. Two genetically engineered parrots warn a heroin junkie in Austin, Texas of the coming apocalypse, because he's the only one - I mean, the closest one, and they're both really tired from flying across the Atlantic Ocean - who can summon Purl Ashblaque, the grunge wizard.
19. Dickjackson Jones installs the freeze ray on the moon.
20. Susannah Hicks secretly appointed as handler for Cannibalus the Starvling by Dempsey Witt, head of the Coordinated Information Apparatchik of Soviet Georgia.
21. Dreyfuss Marlowe encounters Ignatius, the demon drug dealer slaved to the will of Cannibalus, and Dreyfuss summons Purl Ashblaque for help.
22. Because of his cluster headaches, Dickjackson Jones steals the Flying Turtle and heads for Mars to investigate what his dreams of an erupting Olympus Mons could mean.
.
.
.
...now it gets even more fuzzier.
.
.
.
23. Dreyfuss has daddy issues with Purl. And drug issues with drugs.
24. Susannah Hicks has innocence issues with Cannibalus.
25. Dempsey Witt has guilt issues with the entire world situation, and frenemy issues with Ferlin.
26. Ignatius has control issues with Dreyfuss.
27. Big Junior has racial issues with Dickjackson Jones.
28. The narrator has insanity issues with the story.
29. Cannibalus has Starvling issues with our universe.
30. Humanity has self preservation issues with Cannibalus.
31. Purl has getting killed issues with Cannibalus.
.
.
.
...and... now it's murk.
.
.
.
32. Dickjackson Jones makes a discovery of vast import on Mars.
33. Susannah Hicks loses her innocence by trying to cure Cannibalus of his evil.
34. Dempsey Witt exacts revenge for Atlanta on Ferlin Goolsby, then commits suicide.
.
.
.
...impossible to foresee details beyond this moment.
.
.
.
Basically, what Dickjackson discovered was that Olympus Mons and her three sister volcanoes, Ascraeus, Arsia and Protonilus Mons, are all just God Buttons, to put it in human terms, of a controller which resets the universe back to the big bang. This is information gleaned from clues left in ancient Martian strata, billions of years ago by something that wanted somebody to figure it all out one day. It's also discovered that by inputting a 'cheat code', to put it into terms understandable by a human, that the universal reset can be reprogrammed so that it affects any arbitrary dimensional coordinates in space-time, as opposed to an entire universal reset.
What happens is, humanity shows no mercy to Cannibalus the Starvling, recently weakened by its battle with Purl, and programs the universal reset coordinates to the caldera of Olympus Mons and throws Cannibalus into the seething caldera, killing and deleting him forever from future history.
...the end.
Of course, this is very rough and subject to change. Plus, I've left out all of the intricate character relationships and subplots, which will all naturally congeal as this thing grows up into a real book, and not just a wooden book.
Oh yeah. Somewhere in there they gotta use that freeze ray for something. Probably on that little bastard Cannibalus to keep him still before they chuck him into the volcano.
And of course there's gotta be a love story or else it won't sell. Deep down in the nooks and crannies of all this bullshit, Susannah 'SuperSuze' Hicks falls in love with Dreyfuss Marlowe, who of course dies. I already wrote about that. So, it all ends in tears for everybody, and especially for poor Susannah. I swear there's no hidden meaning here. Seriously, I mean it. Susannah is a southern name, it was pure coincidence. Dead serious, here.
Summary?
Hold onto my butt, folks, because this is the beginning of what will eventually become a basic summary of the entire story, as each weirdliness congeals in my head and then seeps into and connects with another weirdliness in my head, like blood mixing with with syrup.
.
.
.
The Nonplussed
This story is about humanity going insane. It begins when Donald Trump is elected president of the United States in 2016, and it escalates from there into unspeakable realms of absurdity.
To be sure, the process of an entire sentient species losing its collective mind probably began with a pre-homo-species, like homo erectus or homo habilus, but the manifestation of true insanity - by human standards, anyway - began when a cartoon was actually elected president of the world's foremost superpower by an obviously insane populous, oblivious to, and of, its own crazy.
The cartoon president of Donald Trump is actually quite close in character to the true antagonist of this story, an extradimensional alien entity that manifests in our universe as a willful, bratty 8 year old boy in possession of enormous power, which it wields with impunity and according to its own pleasure, justification, anger and amusement. It calls itself Cannibalus the Starvling. The parallel here between Trump and Cannibalus is intentional, in case that wasn't already completely obvious.
Anyway. Things really get rolling in late 2018 when North Korea successfully detonates a one megaton thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, followed by a press release by Kim Jong Un directed toward the United States:
'We, the free citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as of this precise instant demand the immediate removal of all United States assets, wartime and otherwise, especially wartime, from DPRK soil, airspace and waters, or to expect a hellstorm of nuclear destruction the likes of which no man has ever perceived or will ever be necessary to be perceived again upon the final realization of total destruction promised to rain down upon the United States, including all of her military forces bases and citizenry, domestic and international and/or otherwise, including all non-terrestrial space platforms, stations, moon bases, extra-planetary outposts and solar colonies, notwithstanding any and all interstellar civilizations already in progress, and furthermore, if these righteous demands are not accepted in an authentic spirit of total subservience to the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Un, and the Eternal Presidents of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong Il and Grandfather Kim within one hour of the time-stamped delivery of this righteous declaration, so it shall be that every citizen and legal inhabitant of the United States, including all colonies and territories of the United States, will face with absolute certainty the promise of instant nuclear annihilation as hundreds of millions of exquisitely targeted hydrogen bombs, one for every American man, woman and child, is gifted upon each American person personally, after which the single and only merciful demonstration of our ability to burn an entire interstellar civilization completely and irrevocably from the face of the planet from which it was spawned, including the accursed and diseased presence of that civilization from the surface of the sun, shall endure forevermore in our minds as a symbol of peace'.
President Trump refuses to respond to or even acknowledge North Korea's press release until Kim Jong Un registers a Twitter account, so that the two of them can discuss things one on one and like real live grownups. Thus begins the infamous Twitter Battle between Trump and Kim, which precipitates Trump's War.
.
.
.
Dammit. See what I did here? All I wanted to do was plop down the main events that rotate the story here and there and into itself, like so...
North Korea nukes Santa Claus
South Pole falls into the ocean
Dennis Rodman assassinated
Nuclear war completely destroys the Middle East and 90% of Muslims
Cannibalus the Starvling invades the solar system
Two parrots warn a heroin junkie of the impending apocalypse
Dreyfuss summons the Grunge Wizard with DMT
Georgia secedes from the US
Civil War Part 2!
Dickjackson Jones steals the Flying Turtle and high tails it to Mars
Secret agent SuperSuze Hicks assigned as handler for Cannibalus
Confidence and Betrayal
Absurdity
Death
Lots of open mouth smacking chew noises
A godawful hangover
Tears
Eyelid wrassling
An ancient civilization on Mars!
A singularity!
Olympus Mons Erupts!
No mercy!
Cannibalus gets thrown into the caldera!
Victory!
It all ends in tears!
Everybody dies!
That damn dawg again!
And another hangover!
.
.
.
Kinda like that. Oh well, that's the gist, I guess.
.
.
.
The Nonplussed
This story is about humanity going insane. It begins when Donald Trump is elected president of the United States in 2016, and it escalates from there into unspeakable realms of absurdity.
To be sure, the process of an entire sentient species losing its collective mind probably began with a pre-homo-species, like homo erectus or homo habilus, but the manifestation of true insanity - by human standards, anyway - began when a cartoon was actually elected president of the world's foremost superpower by an obviously insane populous, oblivious to, and of, its own crazy.
The cartoon president of Donald Trump is actually quite close in character to the true antagonist of this story, an extradimensional alien entity that manifests in our universe as a willful, bratty 8 year old boy in possession of enormous power, which it wields with impunity and according to its own pleasure, justification, anger and amusement. It calls itself Cannibalus the Starvling. The parallel here between Trump and Cannibalus is intentional, in case that wasn't already completely obvious.
Anyway. Things really get rolling in late 2018 when North Korea successfully detonates a one megaton thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, followed by a press release by Kim Jong Un directed toward the United States:
'We, the free citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as of this precise instant demand the immediate removal of all United States assets, wartime and otherwise, especially wartime, from DPRK soil, airspace and waters, or to expect a hellstorm of nuclear destruction the likes of which no man has ever perceived or will ever be necessary to be perceived again upon the final realization of total destruction promised to rain down upon the United States, including all of her military forces bases and citizenry, domestic and international and/or otherwise, including all non-terrestrial space platforms, stations, moon bases, extra-planetary outposts and solar colonies, notwithstanding any and all interstellar civilizations already in progress, and furthermore, if these righteous demands are not accepted in an authentic spirit of total subservience to the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Un, and the Eternal Presidents of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong Il and Grandfather Kim within one hour of the time-stamped delivery of this righteous declaration, so it shall be that every citizen and legal inhabitant of the United States, including all colonies and territories of the United States, will face with absolute certainty the promise of instant nuclear annihilation as hundreds of millions of exquisitely targeted hydrogen bombs, one for every American man, woman and child, is gifted upon each American person personally, after which the single and only merciful demonstration of our ability to burn an entire interstellar civilization completely and irrevocably from the face of the planet from which it was spawned, including the accursed and diseased presence of that civilization from the surface of the sun, shall endure forevermore in our minds as a symbol of peace'.
President Trump refuses to respond to or even acknowledge North Korea's press release until Kim Jong Un registers a Twitter account, so that the two of them can discuss things one on one and like real live grownups. Thus begins the infamous Twitter Battle between Trump and Kim, which precipitates Trump's War.
.
.
.
Dammit. See what I did here? All I wanted to do was plop down the main events that rotate the story here and there and into itself, like so...
North Korea nukes Santa Claus
South Pole falls into the ocean
Dennis Rodman assassinated
Nuclear war completely destroys the Middle East and 90% of Muslims
Cannibalus the Starvling invades the solar system
Two parrots warn a heroin junkie of the impending apocalypse
Dreyfuss summons the Grunge Wizard with DMT
Georgia secedes from the US
Civil War Part 2!
Dickjackson Jones steals the Flying Turtle and high tails it to Mars
Secret agent SuperSuze Hicks assigned as handler for Cannibalus
Confidence and Betrayal
Absurdity
Death
Lots of open mouth smacking chew noises
A godawful hangover
Tears
Eyelid wrassling
An ancient civilization on Mars!
A singularity!
Olympus Mons Erupts!
No mercy!
Cannibalus gets thrown into the caldera!
Victory!
It all ends in tears!
Everybody dies!
That damn dawg again!
And another hangover!
.
.
.
Kinda like that. Oh well, that's the gist, I guess.
Timeline of Tweets
Timeline of tweets leading to World War Two and a Half
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.
Donald Trump is elected President.
Tensions escalate between North Korea and the US.
North Korea successfully detonates a hydrogen bomb.
Trump tweets: 'What was that noise? Oh. Just boys playing with toys. Be careful Kim, you could put an eye out with that thing!'
Kim Jong Un promises swift retribution upon the United States.
Trump tweets: '@ Kim - You say swift, but could you please hurry it up a little? Our aircraft carriers and nuclear attack subs and AEGIS equiped destroyers and dozens of nuclear armed Predator drones are getting tired of lollygagging right off of your coastline with impunity, month after month.'
Kim Jong Un threatens the United States with total annihilation.
Trump tweets: 'lol Good luck with that, Kimberly.'
Kim Jong Un promises to visit a nuclear hellfire upon the United States.
Trump tweets: '@ Kim - Go ahead, gourd head.'
Kim Jong Un promises to unleash such devastation upon the United States as to wipe it utterly from the surface of the Earth.
Trump tweets: '@ Kim - Uh, were you homeschooled or something?'
Kim Jong Un's cyber warfare department hacks President Trump's Twitter account and deletes it.
President Trump retaliates by stealing the USS Pueblo while North Korea is asleep, leaving a fully loaded, 50 foot cabin cruiser in its place.
North Korea declares war on the US.
.
.
.
Donald Trump is elected President.
Tensions escalate between North Korea and the US.
North Korea successfully detonates a hydrogen bomb.
Trump tweets: 'What was that noise? Oh. Just boys playing with toys. Be careful Kim, you could put an eye out with that thing!'
Kim Jong Un promises swift retribution upon the United States.
Trump tweets: '@ Kim - You say swift, but could you please hurry it up a little? Our aircraft carriers and nuclear attack subs and AEGIS equiped destroyers and dozens of nuclear armed Predator drones are getting tired of lollygagging right off of your coastline with impunity, month after month.'
Kim Jong Un threatens the United States with total annihilation.
Trump tweets: 'lol Good luck with that, Kimberly.'
Kim Jong Un promises to visit a nuclear hellfire upon the United States.
Trump tweets: '@ Kim - Go ahead, gourd head.'
Kim Jong Un promises to unleash such devastation upon the United States as to wipe it utterly from the surface of the Earth.
Trump tweets: '@ Kim - Uh, were you homeschooled or something?'
Kim Jong Un's cyber warfare department hacks President Trump's Twitter account and deletes it.
President Trump retaliates by stealing the USS Pueblo while North Korea is asleep, leaving a fully loaded, 50 foot cabin cruiser in its place.
North Korea declares war on the US.
Marion gets frustrated
An excerpt!
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Sometimes after coming down from Ignatius's golden powder, Dreyfus would fall into a really deep funk, a terrorizing funk which trapped him inside of a meaningless infinity. There was no escape from this funk, for the knowledge of an infinity of awareness was unendurable, and the unknowledge of an infinity of oblivion was unthinkable, and those were the only two choices. It was as if hell were hidden inside of every moment, waiting to be discovered.
Dreyfuss knew all about this fear of forever, or so he'd thought. He had experienced it many times, when he'd allowed himself to dwell on his own despair. Comfort was the only cure, but comfort came only from surrendering to the idea of a benevolent omnipotence which carried you through times of trouble while shouldering the burden of the knowledge of infinity. Dreyfuss used to be able to find that comfort when he needed it, but the demon's needle had completely erased it.
That was it. The next time Ignatius showed up with his golden powder, Dreyfuss was going to kick him in the balls. Screw the threats, screw the promises, screw the hell of withdrawals! He was done. If kicking a demon in the balls was was a comfortable thing to do, then by God, he was gonna do it. Screw that guy.
Then Dreyfuss had a worldview shattering epiphany... "Comfort is just another kind of knowledge," he said out loud to himself.
"Oh man, F that guy!"
.
.
.
Sometimes after coming down from Ignatius's golden powder, Dreyfus would fall into a really deep funk, a terrorizing funk which trapped him inside of a meaningless infinity. There was no escape from this funk, for the knowledge of an infinity of awareness was unendurable, and the unknowledge of an infinity of oblivion was unthinkable, and those were the only two choices. It was as if hell were hidden inside of every moment, waiting to be discovered.
Dreyfuss knew all about this fear of forever, or so he'd thought. He had experienced it many times, when he'd allowed himself to dwell on his own despair. Comfort was the only cure, but comfort came only from surrendering to the idea of a benevolent omnipotence which carried you through times of trouble while shouldering the burden of the knowledge of infinity. Dreyfuss used to be able to find that comfort when he needed it, but the demon's needle had completely erased it.
That was it. The next time Ignatius showed up with his golden powder, Dreyfuss was going to kick him in the balls. Screw the threats, screw the promises, screw the hell of withdrawals! He was done. If kicking a demon in the balls was was a comfortable thing to do, then by God, he was gonna do it. Screw that guy.
Then Dreyfuss had a worldview shattering epiphany... "Comfort is just another kind of knowledge," he said out loud to himself.
"Oh man, F that guy!"
QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS
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1. Why does Dickjackson Jones get headaches, and why are they associated with dreams of Mars? Why does dreaming of the eruption of Olympus Mons elicit feelings of peace and relief from his headaches? Why is he compelled to get to Mars by stealing the Flying Turtle, and why are those things important as a major plot fulcrum? How does Dickjackson Jones's situation relate to the appearance of Cannibalus the Starvling? And what the heck is up with Olympus Mons? Why is it erupting smoke rings into space that are visible from Earth?
2. What's the relationship dynamic between Susannah Hicks and Cannibalus the Starvling? Why are they important to each other? What effect does Susannah's purity and innocence have on Cannibalus, and what effect does Cannibalus's completely self centered and ego-driven alien psychosis have on Susannah? How and why is Susannah integral to, and the main force, responsible for both the ultimate defeat of Cannibalus, and also the resulting human tragedy?
3. What the heck is the human tragedy, and why is it not only unavoidable, but inevitable? Necessary, even?
4. What was the nature of the falling out between Ferlin Goolsby and Dempsey Witt when they were serving together in the army during the war of 2018? Why is Dempsey plagued with guilt, and suicidal? Why did Ferlin become a psychotic power monger?
5. What's the story with Bobby Kay Rudolph? Why is she using the Larger Hadron Collider to smash martini molecules together at light speed? It's she trying to open a dimensional doorway, or is she just drunk?
6. Why does the demon Ignatius choose Dreyfuss to torment? What's special about Dreyfuss?
7. Where the heck do those two African gray parrots, Twhit and Twhat, come from and why are they so intelligent? What role do they play in the scheme of things? Why do they seek out Dreyfuss and become his roommates?
8. The big question.
Why are Dickjackson Jones, Susannah Hicks, Dempsey Witt, Bobby Kay Rudolph, Dreyfuss Marlowe, and Twhit and Twhat tied together by fate, and how do they come together to defeat Cannibalus the Starvling?
.
.
.
1. Why does Dickjackson Jones get headaches, and why are they associated with dreams of Mars? Why does dreaming of the eruption of Olympus Mons elicit feelings of peace and relief from his headaches? Why is he compelled to get to Mars by stealing the Flying Turtle, and why are those things important as a major plot fulcrum? How does Dickjackson Jones's situation relate to the appearance of Cannibalus the Starvling? And what the heck is up with Olympus Mons? Why is it erupting smoke rings into space that are visible from Earth?
2. What's the relationship dynamic between Susannah Hicks and Cannibalus the Starvling? Why are they important to each other? What effect does Susannah's purity and innocence have on Cannibalus, and what effect does Cannibalus's completely self centered and ego-driven alien psychosis have on Susannah? How and why is Susannah integral to, and the main force, responsible for both the ultimate defeat of Cannibalus, and also the resulting human tragedy?
3. What the heck is the human tragedy, and why is it not only unavoidable, but inevitable? Necessary, even?
4. What was the nature of the falling out between Ferlin Goolsby and Dempsey Witt when they were serving together in the army during the war of 2018? Why is Dempsey plagued with guilt, and suicidal? Why did Ferlin become a psychotic power monger?
5. What's the story with Bobby Kay Rudolph? Why is she using the Larger Hadron Collider to smash martini molecules together at light speed? It's she trying to open a dimensional doorway, or is she just drunk?
6. Why does the demon Ignatius choose Dreyfuss to torment? What's special about Dreyfuss?
7. Where the heck do those two African gray parrots, Twhit and Twhat, come from and why are they so intelligent? What role do they play in the scheme of things? Why do they seek out Dreyfuss and become his roommates?
8. The big question.
Why are Dickjackson Jones, Susannah Hicks, Dempsey Witt, Bobby Kay Rudolph, Dreyfuss Marlowe, and Twhit and Twhat tied together by fate, and how do they come together to defeat Cannibalus the Starvling?
Jim and Ferlin pt.3
YAWN! I'm tired.
.
.
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Dempsey Witt and Ferlin Goolsby are the same age and grew up together as best friends in Fireworks, Georgia. Both possessed genius levels of intelligence, but were otherwise polar opposites. Ferlin was sensible, calm, slow to anger and quick to forgive, while Dempsey was self centered, impulsive, and always on the defense.
Dempsey, inspired by the awesomeness of his stepfather's 1987 drunken grenade juggling mishap, joined the army right out of high school in 1989 against the better judgement of his best friend Ferlin. It wasn't until 1991, when Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade's autobiography, 'Stench of a Wombat', was made into the academy award winning movie, 'Scent of a Woman', that after watching it Ferlin was sufficiently inspired to join up, too.
So it was that Dempsey and Ferlin were both motivated to become soldiers by the same source, but according to different ideologies... Dempsey thought grenade juggling was badass and wanted to imitate his drunken, badass stepfather, while Ferlin thought grenade juggling was criminally reckless, and was determined to set a better example against Dempsey's drunken, badass stepfather.
Dempsey and Ferlin both entered officer training school at the same time and they both equally excelled, due to their competitive natures and the effectiveness of their uniquely contrasting methods. They were both set to graduate with honors, but due to a drunken grenade juggling mishap the night before graduation, Ferlin was expelled, and would have been dishonorably discharged if not for the precedent set by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, which was the main defense during his court martial. Dempsey went on to graduate with honors, Ferlin was demoted to regular grunt, Dempsey became his commanding officer, and that was the beginning of the end to their friendship. That was 1995. By 2018 they are bitter enemies.
Now... starting with the North Korean War of 2018 and ending with the complete nuclear annihilation of the Middle East within a few days, what is it that causes Dempsey - by that time a Lieutenant Colonel - to be dishonorably discharged, and how is it that Staff Sargent Goolsby was responsible? This is the Crux of what sets Ferlin on his path of slowly increasing insanity to the presidency, and Dempsey on his path of suicidal drunkenness to redemption. Or revenge... whichever he decides when the heat of the moment finally demands it.
.
.
.
Dempsey Witt and Ferlin Goolsby are the same age and grew up together as best friends in Fireworks, Georgia. Both possessed genius levels of intelligence, but were otherwise polar opposites. Ferlin was sensible, calm, slow to anger and quick to forgive, while Dempsey was self centered, impulsive, and always on the defense.
Dempsey, inspired by the awesomeness of his stepfather's 1987 drunken grenade juggling mishap, joined the army right out of high school in 1989 against the better judgement of his best friend Ferlin. It wasn't until 1991, when Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade's autobiography, 'Stench of a Wombat', was made into the academy award winning movie, 'Scent of a Woman', that after watching it Ferlin was sufficiently inspired to join up, too.
So it was that Dempsey and Ferlin were both motivated to become soldiers by the same source, but according to different ideologies... Dempsey thought grenade juggling was badass and wanted to imitate his drunken, badass stepfather, while Ferlin thought grenade juggling was criminally reckless, and was determined to set a better example against Dempsey's drunken, badass stepfather.
Dempsey and Ferlin both entered officer training school at the same time and they both equally excelled, due to their competitive natures and the effectiveness of their uniquely contrasting methods. They were both set to graduate with honors, but due to a drunken grenade juggling mishap the night before graduation, Ferlin was expelled, and would have been dishonorably discharged if not for the precedent set by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, which was the main defense during his court martial. Dempsey went on to graduate with honors, Ferlin was demoted to regular grunt, Dempsey became his commanding officer, and that was the beginning of the end to their friendship. That was 1995. By 2018 they are bitter enemies.
Now... starting with the North Korean War of 2018 and ending with the complete nuclear annihilation of the Middle East within a few days, what is it that causes Dempsey - by that time a Lieutenant Colonel - to be dishonorably discharged, and how is it that Staff Sargent Goolsby was responsible? This is the Crux of what sets Ferlin on his path of slowly increasing insanity to the presidency, and Dempsey on his path of suicidal drunkenness to redemption. Or revenge... whichever he decides when the heat of the moment finally demands it.
Early CIA vs FBI
Another rough excerpt - political intrigue!
.
.
.
What do you mean, we're under investigation?
I mean just that, sir.
We? You mean, we, as in our operation?
No, sir. I mean the CIA.
The CIA? The entire CIA?
Yes, sir.
Wait, just wait. Back up! Who is investigating the CIA?
The FBI, sir.
The FBI is investigating the CIA?
Yes, sir.
What's being investigated? Which operatives? What branch? What division? Which operation?
All of it, sir.
All of it?
Yes, sir.
What the hell is that supposed to mean, all of it?
All of the CIA, sir.
The entire CIA is under investigation by the entire FBI? Is that what I'm hearing?
No sir, just a part of it.
But you just said all of it!
Sir, I meant only a part of the FBI, not the CIA.
This is ridiculous! It's ludicrous! It's ridonkulous! It's... phantasmagorical!
Yes, sir.
How can the entire CIA be under investigation? Huh? Riddle me that!
I'm not familiar with the logistics of the investigation sir, but that's how we're understanding it.
Oh boy...
Sir?
Nevermind. So. How exactly have we come to understand what we understand?
Our intelligence, sir.
Really?
Yes, sir.
That's a surprise.
Excuse me, sir?
Nevermind. Ok, let's recap. The entire CIA, all of it, is under investigation by the FBI. Right?
Uh... yes, sir. Essentially. Not the entire FBI...
Shut up. I get it. The entire FBI isn't devoting the entirety of their resources to investigate the entirety of the CIA. That would be even stupider than whatever the heck it is they're actually doing.
Yes, sir.
So what are they doing?
Sir?
You know, I've just about had it...
The exterior division, sir. The FBI has tasked the exterior division with their investigation of the CIA.
But the exterior division deals exclusively with outside agencies...
Yes sir. The exterior division of the FBI has hired the CIA to investigate the CIA.
WHAT???
Excuse me, sir. What I meant to say is, the exterior division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has employed the Coordinated Information Apparatchik to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Coordinated Information Apparatchik.
Yes, sir.
The one from Soviet Confederate Georgia.
That is correct, sir.
That's treason!
Apparently it's a black book operation, sir. Completely unofficial. No one knows about it, so it doesn't exist, so no one is culpable.
Well, our intelligence by God, and for damn sure knows about it!
Our intelligence is also a black book operation, sir. Officially, it doesn't exist, either.
YOU'VE GOTTA BE SHITTING ME!
No, sir.
HAS MANKIND GONE COLLECTIVELY INSANE?
That's the general consensus, sir.
Really? Since when?
Since 2018, sir. Since the war with North Korea. That's when it all started, they say.
Who exactly are they?
The general consensus, sir.
What? You know... never mind. Do we have any, uh... intelligence? I mean... good grief.
Sir? I don't follow.
What does our intelligence know about whatever the heck they're doing with their intelligence? Specifically, if that's possible.
Well sir, we know that the exterior division of the FBI has hired, directly, an elite, all female covert battalion of super spies, known as the Apparatchik Chicks, sir, and that it's this covert battalion which is doing the actual investigating.
Really. An all female battalion of super spies?
Yes, sir.
Called the Apparatchik Chicks?
That is correct, sir.
That's awesome...
Yes sir, it's pretty awesome.
All right, let's stop for a second and catch our breath. Now that we've finally gotten this far, do we know WHY the FBI is committing black book treason to investigate us? I mean, they're assholes, yeah, but dammit, we're supposed to be on the same side!
Crimes against humanity, sir. Specifically the American people.
The FBI is accusing the CIA of crimes against humanity, specifically Americans?
Yes, sir. It's been all over the news, sir.
I don't watch the news.
Sir, according to our intelligence, the SCSG has officially allied itself with the alien. We also know that the alien has been deliberately, no... strategically provocative, and that it's behavior cannot just be written off as the tantrums of a petulant eight year old. We believe that the alien - Emperor Cannibalus the Starvling of The Far Flung Hunger, as it calls itself - is trying to play us against ourselves. Not just our own political factions, but all of the major world powers, for its own malign purpose.
The hell you say...
No, sir. I mean, yes, sir.
Ok. Ok... first things first. Tell me that we've got our own covert battalion of sexy super spies. We've got one of those, right? Tell me we've got one of those.
.
.
.
What do you mean, we're under investigation?
I mean just that, sir.
We? You mean, we, as in our operation?
No, sir. I mean the CIA.
The CIA? The entire CIA?
Yes, sir.
Wait, just wait. Back up! Who is investigating the CIA?
The FBI, sir.
The FBI is investigating the CIA?
Yes, sir.
What's being investigated? Which operatives? What branch? What division? Which operation?
All of it, sir.
All of it?
Yes, sir.
What the hell is that supposed to mean, all of it?
All of the CIA, sir.
The entire CIA is under investigation by the entire FBI? Is that what I'm hearing?
No sir, just a part of it.
But you just said all of it!
Sir, I meant only a part of the FBI, not the CIA.
This is ridiculous! It's ludicrous! It's ridonkulous! It's... phantasmagorical!
Yes, sir.
How can the entire CIA be under investigation? Huh? Riddle me that!
I'm not familiar with the logistics of the investigation sir, but that's how we're understanding it.
Oh boy...
Sir?
Nevermind. So. How exactly have we come to understand what we understand?
Our intelligence, sir.
Really?
Yes, sir.
That's a surprise.
Excuse me, sir?
Nevermind. Ok, let's recap. The entire CIA, all of it, is under investigation by the FBI. Right?
Uh... yes, sir. Essentially. Not the entire FBI...
Shut up. I get it. The entire FBI isn't devoting the entirety of their resources to investigate the entirety of the CIA. That would be even stupider than whatever the heck it is they're actually doing.
Yes, sir.
So what are they doing?
Sir?
You know, I've just about had it...
The exterior division, sir. The FBI has tasked the exterior division with their investigation of the CIA.
But the exterior division deals exclusively with outside agencies...
Yes sir. The exterior division of the FBI has hired the CIA to investigate the CIA.
WHAT???
Excuse me, sir. What I meant to say is, the exterior division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has employed the Coordinated Information Apparatchik to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Coordinated Information Apparatchik.
Yes, sir.
The one from Soviet Confederate Georgia.
That is correct, sir.
That's treason!
Apparently it's a black book operation, sir. Completely unofficial. No one knows about it, so it doesn't exist, so no one is culpable.
Well, our intelligence by God, and for damn sure knows about it!
Our intelligence is also a black book operation, sir. Officially, it doesn't exist, either.
YOU'VE GOTTA BE SHITTING ME!
No, sir.
HAS MANKIND GONE COLLECTIVELY INSANE?
That's the general consensus, sir.
Really? Since when?
Since 2018, sir. Since the war with North Korea. That's when it all started, they say.
Who exactly are they?
The general consensus, sir.
What? You know... never mind. Do we have any, uh... intelligence? I mean... good grief.
Sir? I don't follow.
What does our intelligence know about whatever the heck they're doing with their intelligence? Specifically, if that's possible.
Well sir, we know that the exterior division of the FBI has hired, directly, an elite, all female covert battalion of super spies, known as the Apparatchik Chicks, sir, and that it's this covert battalion which is doing the actual investigating.
Really. An all female battalion of super spies?
Yes, sir.
Called the Apparatchik Chicks?
That is correct, sir.
That's awesome...
Yes sir, it's pretty awesome.
All right, let's stop for a second and catch our breath. Now that we've finally gotten this far, do we know WHY the FBI is committing black book treason to investigate us? I mean, they're assholes, yeah, but dammit, we're supposed to be on the same side!
Crimes against humanity, sir. Specifically the American people.
The FBI is accusing the CIA of crimes against humanity, specifically Americans?
Yes, sir. It's been all over the news, sir.
I don't watch the news.
Sir, according to our intelligence, the SCSG has officially allied itself with the alien. We also know that the alien has been deliberately, no... strategically provocative, and that it's behavior cannot just be written off as the tantrums of a petulant eight year old. We believe that the alien - Emperor Cannibalus the Starvling of The Far Flung Hunger, as it calls itself - is trying to play us against ourselves. Not just our own political factions, but all of the major world powers, for its own malign purpose.
The hell you say...
No, sir. I mean, yes, sir.
Ok. Ok... first things first. Tell me that we've got our own covert battalion of sexy super spies. We've got one of those, right? Tell me we've got one of those.
Early Marion Withdrawals
Dreyfuss struggled to stay upright despite the agonizing withdrawals wracking his body. It had been ten days since his last shot of the demon's special brand of heroin, and the withdrawals weren't letting up... if anything they were getting worse. He hadn't believed it when Ignatius told him that withdrawals from demon dust were permanent and only got worse until you died from the pain, but now he was beginning to wonder.
Pain had long since become the status quo, and it was a simple thing for Dreyfuss to imagine the restructuring of his own perceptions of joy and misery by simply bumping his current level of misery up to baseline. Not great, not bad... just ok. He would be ok if he just believed hard enough that he was. He chanted it like a prayer as he walked... I'm ok (step), I'm ok (step), I'm ok (step)... over and over, until the hours and the miles and the steps all blurred together into a long, gray smear.
It was inside that interminable gray mantra that Dreyfuss became aware of a kind of slowing down of his misery. It wasn't decreasing; it was just slowing down, way down, like it was winding down until it finally just stopped. It hadn't disappeared; it was still there, but it wasn't coursing through him anymore. It had become a thing of apathy as well as misery, and Dreyfuss was able to be still inside of it and almost... comfortable.
Dreyfuss experienced a dim kind of surprise to understand that he really had redefined the status quo, as pain had apparently been promoted from a hated enemy to a merely unpleasant roommate. He stumbled mentally at the sudden realization and then fell across a brand new epiphany... everything grew out of the good. The good was the foundation which supported the universe, and nothing could survive without the good, and nothing could exist without the good. Everything relied upon the good - even the bad. No matter how hidden or obscured or seemingly nonexistent, the good was still there. The simple fact of even a miniscule presence of the good, if looked at and concentrated on hard enough, made for such a laughingly, obviously unfair game for the bad, that Dreyfuss almost felt sorry for Ignatius.
The sudden realization of such a simple truth was so funny that Dreyfuss laughed out loud... and then immediately dropped to his knees, felled by the worst pain of his life, right at the bottom of his guts. It was far worse than a mortal agony - it was an immortal agony, a never ending agony meant to inspire infinite despair, but he couldn't stop laughing,.. and with each involuntary guffaw the incredible, indescribably mind blowing torment increased by an order of magnitude, over and over... and over, again. And again. And again...
In the throes of such torment, everything outside of it had become meaningless. There was no awareness, not of himself or of the passage of time. The all encompassing agony had reduced him to something less than human; less even than an animal. A totality of pain had thoroughly sequestered his awareness and cast him, trussed and tied with heavy, white hot iron chains, into an ocean of suffering. Dreyfuss had one last cogent thought, followed by a swell of empathy, before the ocean swallowed him... Ignatius. Why does it always piss him off when I can't stop laughing at something? Poor Ignatius, poor Ignatius, poor Ignatius...
The ocean vomited him back up like a bad oyster. For an instant, Dreyfuss could feel it with all of his senses, the jerking away of it from him in all directions leaving a smoking, carbonized Dreyfuss-shaped husk that shattered into dust and then blew away. For an instant he was pain free, long enough to feel a brief moment of simple joy, before the pain came rushing back in to fill the vacuum. The return of pain was nothing compared to that brief joyful feeling, and with it came another epiphany. Dreyfuss suddenly understood that the purpose of his existence was to witness the universe, and the the universe existed to be witnessed. Nothing more. His suffering was a part of that circle of acknowledgement, merely necessary as a thing to be witnessed. It was his part. It was that simple. He thought:
'I'm just a sensory apparatus, evolved inside of a universe that wanted to get a look at itself... and in my case, a feel for itself. My opposite is out there somewhere too, my other experience... my joy is out there.'
With a new understanding came a brief lucidity, and Dreyfuss was able to isolate a small portion of his limited awareness and separate it from the agony, which had returned with a vengeance. With a tremendous effort, Dreyfuss PULLED his attention away from the pain, and toward the source of it... and what he discovered was such a shocking surprise that he almost lost the tenuous grip he'd gotten on himself, which very nearly sent him spinning back into the totality.
The shock was... the endless agony he was experiencing... it wasn't in his gut at all. It was in his balls! And it didn't even belong to him, it wasn't his pain, it belonged to that... demonic drug dealer, that... that motherfucker! Ignatius!
Suddenly Dreyfuss felt no more pain. Only pure relief. On his knees, he wept tears of joy and understood, with a clarity of understanding that only comes from viewing the structure of the universe through the eyes of the universe, that even if that little shit Cannibalus the Starvling pulled off his magick trick and crammed the Earth into a gaping, transdimensional maw of ever unsatisfied hunger, that it wouldn't matter because the opposite of an eternal starvation had been and always would be an eternal contentment! Dreyfuss knew that to be a truth, more than he'd ever known anything, ever. He knew it... he knew it!
Then Dreyfuss felt the pathetic remains of his physical withdrawals begin to finally break apart, like a thin coating of congealed bacon grease after a couple of seconds in the microwave. Underneath it he could see in his minds eye a vast ocean of clear, transparent water... clear, but somehow still a vibrant blue, and a glimpse of the eternity underneath. He was confused for a bare naked second until he realized that he wasn't looking down into the water. He was looking up through it, and into a pristine blue sky.
Beautiful.
Joy suffused his being, and Dreyfuss felt the essence of his self rising like an express elevator, up and up and up, impossibly fast... and on the way up, he caught a glimpse of Ignatius, as quick as a still-frame but as clear as a photograph. Ignatius was clutching his crotch, his face contorted in agony. Dreyfuss could even hear a faint, diminutive scream that dopplered away into quick oblivion as the demon fell, way way down and into hell, which sounded exactly like...
"OW, MY BAAAAAAALLS....... . . . . ."
As he rose, faster and faster, Dreyfuss felt his awareness begin to shatter quietly as it fell upward and into a vast, gray bliss. He was surprised to experience no fear at all, only peace... and as he was finally near the end of his coming apart, the last thing Dreyfuss perceived was the voice of Purl Ashblaque, the gun-slinging grunge wizard, whispering an old Pearl Jam tune that used to be, way back when from before, and maybe after, too...
"I... Ooooh, I'm still ALIVE."
Then Dreyfuss felt the soft volumes of infinity enclose him, and a final memory of the pain that killed his body was what finally returned him to his his spirit, like an old friend coming home from the war.
Trump's War Timeline
A timeline of Trump's War
The Long Madness gestates.
.
.
.
2016 November - Donald Trump is elected President.
2017 October - Tensions escalate between North Korea and the US as North Korea successfully detonates a hydrogen bomb.
2018 March - Trump uses Twitter to provoke Kim Jong Un (see attachment).
2018 March - Kim Jong Un promises to 'utterly destroy' the United States (see attachment).
2018 April Fool's Day - Trump orders the Navy to steal back the USS Pueblo and leaves one of his personal yachts in its place (see attachment).
2018 April - North Korea declares war on the United States and threatens to 'utterly destroy the heart and soul of America' if the United States doesn't surrender immediately.
2018 4th of July - Trump orders a surgical strike on the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, destroying it.
2018 Christmas Day - Kim Jong Un launches a nuclear strike on the South Pole and threatens to destroy Easter Island next unless the United States surrenders immediately.
2019 New Year's Day - Trump informs Kim Jong Un via Twitter that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, not the South Pole, and that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are children's myths that never existed to begin with.
2019 January - Dennis Rodman is assassinated by North Korean agents for providing faulty intelligence.
2019 February - Trump fires Kim Jong Un, declares North Korea null and void, and replaces the entire nation with Virtual North Korea, on online reality show with the winner at the end of the season becoming the new Dear Leader of North Korea. Trump urges all nations to participate under pain of nuclear annihilation.
2019 February - The United Nations Security Council declares President Trump insane and urges worldwide sanctions against the United States until somebody does something about Donald Trump.
2020 March - Donald Trump declares himself King of the World.
2020 August - Lieutenant Colonel Dempsey Witt and Staff Sargent Ferlin Goolsby, United States Army, orchestrate a coup to oust President Trump. Ferlin betrays Dempsey. Dempsey chooses to abandon an almost certainly successful coup, at the cost of his own life, to save his skin. He regrets it... oh how he regrets it.
2020 September - The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, weakened by the thermonuclear attack by North Korea in 2018, falls into the ocean, causing worldwide sea levels to rise by five meters. All coastal cities are destroyed and hundreds of millions of people die.
2020 September - The Mediterranean Sea floods several Middle East Nations. Nuclear war inevitably breaks out due to widespread confusion, panic, and lack of communication. The entire Middle East, including 90% of the world Muslim population, is destroyed. The entire world now officially hates North Korea more than Donald Trump.
2020 9 Eleven - President Trump declares and end to the War on Terror, due to the practical death of Islam via nuclear annihilation, and immediately declares a new War on Nuclear War and orders the production of 50,000 brand new 500 megaton thermoquantum planetbuster bombs, and then presents Georgia with the 6 trillion dollar bill as forced restitution for hosting the attempted coup. He then orders the immediate dismantling of 49,000 of the new 500 megaton thermoquantum planetbusters, in accordance with the War on Nuclear War disarmament treaty, in accordance with the entire world.
2021 New Year's Day - King Donald Trump abdicates the throne to himself as President Trump and declares Kim Jong Un as the winner of the reality show thing, and the brand new Dear Leader of North Korea. North Korea digs underground.
2022 June - The rise in sea levels, the destruction of all coastal cities worldwide, and the loss of hundreds of millions of lives demonstrate the realization of the worst effects of global warming, had global warming been responsible. In an attempt to cheer up the world, Al Franken reveals global warming to have been a hoax all along, saying that the whole thing began with a Saturday Night Live skit back in the 90's that 'kinda got out of hand', as he put it, so he'd just ran with it.
2023 November - Al Gore commits suicide.
.
.
.
The Long Madness begins.
.
.
.
2041 - This is where the book starts, officially. Everything before this is just introductory exposition.
The Long Madness gestates.
.
.
.
2016 November - Donald Trump is elected President.
2017 October - Tensions escalate between North Korea and the US as North Korea successfully detonates a hydrogen bomb.
2018 March - Trump uses Twitter to provoke Kim Jong Un (see attachment).
2018 March - Kim Jong Un promises to 'utterly destroy' the United States (see attachment).
2018 April Fool's Day - Trump orders the Navy to steal back the USS Pueblo and leaves one of his personal yachts in its place (see attachment).
2018 April - North Korea declares war on the United States and threatens to 'utterly destroy the heart and soul of America' if the United States doesn't surrender immediately.
2018 4th of July - Trump orders a surgical strike on the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, destroying it.
2018 Christmas Day - Kim Jong Un launches a nuclear strike on the South Pole and threatens to destroy Easter Island next unless the United States surrenders immediately.
2019 New Year's Day - Trump informs Kim Jong Un via Twitter that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, not the South Pole, and that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are children's myths that never existed to begin with.
2019 January - Dennis Rodman is assassinated by North Korean agents for providing faulty intelligence.
2019 February - Trump fires Kim Jong Un, declares North Korea null and void, and replaces the entire nation with Virtual North Korea, on online reality show with the winner at the end of the season becoming the new Dear Leader of North Korea. Trump urges all nations to participate under pain of nuclear annihilation.
2019 February - The United Nations Security Council declares President Trump insane and urges worldwide sanctions against the United States until somebody does something about Donald Trump.
2020 March - Donald Trump declares himself King of the World.
2020 August - Lieutenant Colonel Dempsey Witt and Staff Sargent Ferlin Goolsby, United States Army, orchestrate a coup to oust President Trump. Ferlin betrays Dempsey. Dempsey chooses to abandon an almost certainly successful coup, at the cost of his own life, to save his skin. He regrets it... oh how he regrets it.
2020 September - The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, weakened by the thermonuclear attack by North Korea in 2018, falls into the ocean, causing worldwide sea levels to rise by five meters. All coastal cities are destroyed and hundreds of millions of people die.
2020 September - The Mediterranean Sea floods several Middle East Nations. Nuclear war inevitably breaks out due to widespread confusion, panic, and lack of communication. The entire Middle East, including 90% of the world Muslim population, is destroyed. The entire world now officially hates North Korea more than Donald Trump.
2020 9 Eleven - President Trump declares and end to the War on Terror, due to the practical death of Islam via nuclear annihilation, and immediately declares a new War on Nuclear War and orders the production of 50,000 brand new 500 megaton thermoquantum planetbuster bombs, and then presents Georgia with the 6 trillion dollar bill as forced restitution for hosting the attempted coup. He then orders the immediate dismantling of 49,000 of the new 500 megaton thermoquantum planetbusters, in accordance with the War on Nuclear War disarmament treaty, in accordance with the entire world.
2021 New Year's Day - King Donald Trump abdicates the throne to himself as President Trump and declares Kim Jong Un as the winner of the reality show thing, and the brand new Dear Leader of North Korea. North Korea digs underground.
2022 June - The rise in sea levels, the destruction of all coastal cities worldwide, and the loss of hundreds of millions of lives demonstrate the realization of the worst effects of global warming, had global warming been responsible. In an attempt to cheer up the world, Al Franken reveals global warming to have been a hoax all along, saying that the whole thing began with a Saturday Night Live skit back in the 90's that 'kinda got out of hand', as he put it, so he'd just ran with it.
2023 November - Al Gore commits suicide.
.
.
.
The Long Madness begins.
.
.
.
2041 - This is where the book starts, officially. Everything before this is just introductory exposition.
Two Parrots pt.2
Twhit and Twhat are two African grey parrots. Twins, for all practical purposes, as they are both clones of the same genetic source material engineered for enhanced intelligence. In addition to possessing genetically engineered intelligence far beyond that of natural African grey parrots, Twhit and Twhat both have a complex system of electrodes implanted in the avian equivalent of the neo-cortex, which is the seat of intelligence and self awareness in humans and highly evolved animals. These electrodes, controlled by a central processing chip, predict and anticipate neural firing patterns indicative of intelligence based on a parrot's natural intelligence, combined with models of the synaptic firing of simian and human neurons which describe a basic foundation for intelligent thought. The central processing chip is designed to reinforce patterns of intelligent activity in the neural pathways of the avian neocortex, based on specific patterns of external stimuli. The result is a parrot with a level of intelligence and self awareness equal to that of a human. However, if the intelligence augmenting implant of electrodes is damaged, destroyed or otherwise removed from the avian neocortex, the result can be extremely unpredictable, and is almost always undesirable.
DEATH OF PURL
The death of Purl Ashblaque, the gun-slinging grunge wizard.
Very rough draft!
.
.
.
Cannibalus taunted.
"Come on, dad. Weren't you summoned to punish me? That's why you're here, huh? Well, come on then, dad! I'm just a little kid, administer my punishment!"
(not written yet)
Dreyfuss struggled, spitting sand from his mouth. "Why do you keep calling him dad, you little shit, what does that make you, then..." Ignatius forced Dreyfuss's face into the sand, muffling him. Cannibalus frowned, then turned his attention back to where Purl lay in a blackened, smoldering heap.
"What the heck are you supposed to be, anyway?" He whined. "You're not real. You're just a wash-up's hero, conjured from the drug addled brain of a heroin junkie!"
Purl lay in his crater and murmured, "I'm the last gunslinging..."
Cannibalus threw his little eight year old noggin back and laughed.
"You're fiction, dad, and really crappy fiction... heck, you're worse than that, you're fictional fiction! It's Gunslinger. The last gunslinger!" Cannibalus strode forward to where Purl Ashblaque lay in the pit. He knelt down and leaned over, cupping his tiny mouth with his tiny hands, and boomed...
"YOU. ARE. JUST. PATHETIC. DO YOU HEAR ME DAD? DO YOU? YOU CAN'T PUNISH ME! YOU'RE NOT EVEN REAL!"
The landscape shook and shriveled as the Starvlings voice echoed for minutes, sucking the dry and unnurturing sustenance from it.
Silence across the dead lands. Then...
(not written yet)
Purl gripped his clef with both hands and leveraged himself to his feet.
"I'm Purl Ashblaque. I'm a... the last grungeslinging..."
Dreyfuss struggled and spat a furrow of sand away from his face, just enough to catch a quick gasp of breath. Ignatius pressed down harder with his forearm onto the back of Dreyfuss's neck, closing his windpipe even more. Dreyfuss could hear Cannibalus, muffled through the sand that pressed into his ears and mouth and nose and eyes, taunting Purl as he lay there, defeated and dying. With the last of his breath and with stars closing in around the borders of his vision, Dreyfuss bucked and spat... "I'm not going to take this, and I won't have it..."
Ignatius laughed, and with the inheaving of one of his laughing breaths, the pressure of his forearm against Dreyfuss's neck relaxed by a fraction, and Dreyfuss bucked mightily, throwing Ignatius off and away. He was free! Dreyfuss inhaled a rough, injured breath, then forced a shout, equal to his heart, out and through his ravaged lungs...
"Purl! Don't die, I'm sorry, I love you!"
Ignatius roared with fury and fell back down with all of his anger, but before Dreyfuss was slammed back into the sand, he caught a glimpse of Purl's charred and tattered form, clutching his blackened cleft, and standing.
"I'm the Grungeslinging Gunwizard."
Cannibalus laughed.
"The first and the last."
Cannibalus coughed.
"I was made for this moment..."
Cannibalus sputtered and gripped his throat.
"For I have dealt with many fools, and I suffer your kind lightly."
Cannibalus gagged, his tongue protruding.
"You adorable little bastard."
Purl drew his broken gun and fired. The explosion sent shrapnel...
(not written yet)
Cannibalus wheezed and gagged as his throat swelled grotesquely. As his neck bloated and grew, he clutched at the base of his larynx more and more frantically, until finally a fountain of black blood hemorrhaged forth from the gaping wound, and kept hemorrhaging... onto Purl, onto Ignatius, and onto Dreyfuss... slippery black blood.
Dreyfuss wrenched himself out of Ignatius's grasp, and saw...
(not written yet)
Purl lay on the pristine sand, far away from the charred crater where he'd fallen originally. Dreyfuss scrambled over the blood drenched sand to him. He gathered his broken and bloodied body into his arms and tried to hold him up so that he could breathe. He didn't say anything as he held him. They stayed that way for a long time. Finally Purl opened his eyes.
"Is this all?" Purl whispered. "I was so afraid. I'd always pictured it as being so much worse, and with so much more suffering. Death, you know." He closed his eyes and smiled. "This is more like something from a book.... I can do this. I mean, I can die like this. What a relief.... Thank you."
Dreyfuss had half expected Purl to disappear like Obi Wan Kenobi, but Purl didn't disappear... he just died, like everyone else. A frozen moment passed and then Dreyfuss realized that he was, once again, on his knees and at the end of himself. He found the idea profoundly absurd, especially when he began to weep, once again.
Very rough draft!
.
.
.
Cannibalus taunted.
"Come on, dad. Weren't you summoned to punish me? That's why you're here, huh? Well, come on then, dad! I'm just a little kid, administer my punishment!"
(not written yet)
Dreyfuss struggled, spitting sand from his mouth. "Why do you keep calling him dad, you little shit, what does that make you, then..." Ignatius forced Dreyfuss's face into the sand, muffling him. Cannibalus frowned, then turned his attention back to where Purl lay in a blackened, smoldering heap.
"What the heck are you supposed to be, anyway?" He whined. "You're not real. You're just a wash-up's hero, conjured from the drug addled brain of a heroin junkie!"
Purl lay in his crater and murmured, "I'm the last gunslinging..."
Cannibalus threw his little eight year old noggin back and laughed.
"You're fiction, dad, and really crappy fiction... heck, you're worse than that, you're fictional fiction! It's Gunslinger. The last gunslinger!" Cannibalus strode forward to where Purl Ashblaque lay in the pit. He knelt down and leaned over, cupping his tiny mouth with his tiny hands, and boomed...
"YOU. ARE. JUST. PATHETIC. DO YOU HEAR ME DAD? DO YOU? YOU CAN'T PUNISH ME! YOU'RE NOT EVEN REAL!"
The landscape shook and shriveled as the Starvlings voice echoed for minutes, sucking the dry and unnurturing sustenance from it.
Silence across the dead lands. Then...
(not written yet)
Purl gripped his clef with both hands and leveraged himself to his feet.
"I'm Purl Ashblaque. I'm a... the last grungeslinging..."
Dreyfuss struggled and spat a furrow of sand away from his face, just enough to catch a quick gasp of breath. Ignatius pressed down harder with his forearm onto the back of Dreyfuss's neck, closing his windpipe even more. Dreyfuss could hear Cannibalus, muffled through the sand that pressed into his ears and mouth and nose and eyes, taunting Purl as he lay there, defeated and dying. With the last of his breath and with stars closing in around the borders of his vision, Dreyfuss bucked and spat... "I'm not going to take this, and I won't have it..."
Ignatius laughed, and with the inheaving of one of his laughing breaths, the pressure of his forearm against Dreyfuss's neck relaxed by a fraction, and Dreyfuss bucked mightily, throwing Ignatius off and away. He was free! Dreyfuss inhaled a rough, injured breath, then forced a shout, equal to his heart, out and through his ravaged lungs...
"Purl! Don't die, I'm sorry, I love you!"
Ignatius roared with fury and fell back down with all of his anger, but before Dreyfuss was slammed back into the sand, he caught a glimpse of Purl's charred and tattered form, clutching his blackened cleft, and standing.
"I'm the Grungeslinging Gunwizard."
Cannibalus laughed.
"The first and the last."
Cannibalus coughed.
"I was made for this moment..."
Cannibalus sputtered and gripped his throat.
"For I have dealt with many fools, and I suffer your kind lightly."
Cannibalus gagged, his tongue protruding.
"You adorable little bastard."
Purl drew his broken gun and fired. The explosion sent shrapnel...
(not written yet)
Cannibalus wheezed and gagged as his throat swelled grotesquely. As his neck bloated and grew, he clutched at the base of his larynx more and more frantically, until finally a fountain of black blood hemorrhaged forth from the gaping wound, and kept hemorrhaging... onto Purl, onto Ignatius, and onto Dreyfuss... slippery black blood.
Dreyfuss wrenched himself out of Ignatius's grasp, and saw...
(not written yet)
Purl lay on the pristine sand, far away from the charred crater where he'd fallen originally. Dreyfuss scrambled over the blood drenched sand to him. He gathered his broken and bloodied body into his arms and tried to hold him up so that he could breathe. He didn't say anything as he held him. They stayed that way for a long time. Finally Purl opened his eyes.
"Is this all?" Purl whispered. "I was so afraid. I'd always pictured it as being so much worse, and with so much more suffering. Death, you know." He closed his eyes and smiled. "This is more like something from a book.... I can do this. I mean, I can die like this. What a relief.... Thank you."
Dreyfuss had half expected Purl to disappear like Obi Wan Kenobi, but Purl didn't disappear... he just died, like everyone else. A frozen moment passed and then Dreyfuss realized that he was, once again, on his knees and at the end of himself. He found the idea profoundly absurd, especially when he began to weep, once again.
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