Chapter 9
The Story | The Authors |
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This happened anytime he took more LSD than he should, but what of it? Didn't we all have to die sometime? maybe not. Surely the ground carriers this air. | |
Tiny fairies danced on his lips. Fingers like mush, he couldn't unzip his fly. Wet pants, what a drag. | |
got to find a way to dry. A fairy wing? No, i think they will sting. A rose bush? Me thinks that will hurt the tush. | |
The miniscule light over his head blinked dimly as he searched tediously for a way to dry his now wet trousers. "I know, I know," he hopped around like a rabbit in heat, "I'll get the hair dryer to blow." | |
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you," a throaty feminine voice whispered near his ear. "It's well known that hair dryers are cursed." | |
Corley continued picking the skin off his lips. " Fresh cabbage, anyone?" | |
The wind-up teeth chattered in the affirmative, clackety-clack-clacking across the buckled, glass-strewn pavement and grredily gobbling up the translucent flecks of skin from Lardass Corley's disintegrating lips. | |
flortle short on oranges' heart chart | |
But then he saw the spoon. It had been under the chair the whole time! Oh did he feel like a fool. He picked up the spoon, and shook his head smiling. Now he could finally go home. | |
Home. But, where was home? No. Home would never do. Not any more. | |
"Ah, but home has a funny way of waiting for you, Sir," chattered the plastic Teeth. "And by the time you finally come around to it again, everything's changed. Even the rules have turned against you. Toast burns, windows slam on your fingers, toilets overflow, the kids and their low-class friends ransack the liquour cabinet (mixing single malt Scotch with 7UP! Too horrible to imagine any further) and your wife sleeps with the goat-nosed Dykemanistani telephone repairman. On more than one occasion." | |
"But I don't understand!" I cried. "How can this be? The world does not change
so quickly these days."
"Ah, but it does, it does!" cried the plastic teeth gleefully. "And...and my wife! How could she?! THe Dykemanistani telephone repairman is hideous!" I moaned in anguish. The plastic teeth leered cruelly, "And what's more, she's going to have a BABY with him..." | |
"Gaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" his eyes bulged out of their sockets. "A baby? My wife? A baby of — of — of mixed ethnic origins?!?!?" "I'm afraid so. The luscious hue of cocoa butter. Most likely the Dykemanistani predeliction for unprovoked violence. Tempered perhaps by your wife's, er unusual talents... Who knows? Perhaps you'll all be lucky and it'll be a girl..." The plastic teeth clacked together and chattered tat-tat-tat along the ground. | |
He couldn't take this in. How could such a thing have happened? He'd done all the right things, arranged all the objects, just so, performed all the right rituals. Maybe it was the doctor now standing here beside him who had caused his wife to have, not the goat he had been hoping for, but a normal child of mottled tone. | |
"That's what you get-et-et-etta-tat-tack-clack," chattered the teeth still foraging along the ground for whatever scraps and crumbs the local pigeons might have missed. It ceased its clacking for long enough to wrest a lengthy earthworm from its hole, and gob-gob-gobbled it down with a gusto which Lardass found both embarrassing and repellent. | |
Why does the mind of the Universe always seem to take on such ungainly, ridiculous forms? mused Lardass Corley philosophically as he watched the wind-up teeth resume their scavenging of food. In his mind, he affected the voice of a clever, koan-posing Zen master. Why must the Buddha dress in ug-ree crothing? Ah-so, grasshopper -- because he rishing to be reft arone! Zen-cog-nee-to." | |
I disagree. There must be a better way. | |
But "better" is a value judgment residing in the consciousness of the
individual. Can you judge my better or any other's?
| |
Indeed, can one arsehole flying off a cliff make any difference to the rest of
the world?
Doess |
5