MAinComputer
December 18th, 2005, 10:34 AM
Hi
This is a ridiculosly huge post for a new arrival, but if you can be bothered reading it, I'd love your opinion, comments, critique or feedback!
The First of War
It must’ve been one street-shaker of a party because Dot-dot-dot had fazed-out big-style, and she’d only just got a grip on reality again.
While recovering only moments ago her whole vision had gone fuzzy, like the white noise on a holo projector, and everything around her had melted and morphed like some crappy SoCA graduates attempt at drug-influenced art. This kind of thing didn’t usually worry her - it being a regular part of post-party recovery – but, just before the warped visuals and the white noise, she’d been having some kind of weird, lucid trip that had tugged on the edges of her memory as a flashback normally might. Flashbacks are a whole lot rarer than plain old spin-outs, and the whole experience had felt incredibly real, to the point of being just a little bit scary.
She’d been a Sky Viking in the trip-cum-flashback, sitting around talking bullshit with a bunch of no-hopers. It made no sense, had no connections to her real life or her nightmares or dreams. These moments of instability usually tend to play with your mind and your emotions, but for there to be no obvious links back to your real life was just plain odd. And wrong. But it was all fading away now, as quickly as a nightmare in the morning usually does.
All that was unimportant, however, compared to the fact that she couldn’t even remember where she’d been all evening.
Looking down at what she was wearing Dot-dot-dot thought that, yes - that must’ve been one kicker of a party; if not just for her, then for a good portion of the men there too. She was wearing all of her best clobber: her prised ChunkyBoots, knee-high stripy socks, her scarlet bio-plastic microskirt that revealed a tormenting glimpse of her thong when she walked, and to top it all off with panache, a boob tube. She was also carrying what appeared to be a cat-‘o’-nine-tails in her right hand. Wow, she thought, she was lucky to have made it safely to anywhere wearing that get-up on the streets, let alone to here, to the Podlands.
To try and make everything go just a little more smoothly than it was at present, Dot-dot-dot decided to class all this worrying information as: Currently Unimportant. What was of immediate importance was the fact that she was nearly home, and she was as tired as, well, as a very tired and gorgeous thing that had partied very hard indeed.
Casting her eyes around briefly to check everything was still safe, she saw nothing, or to be more precise, nobody, which was extremely disturbing in itself. She was standing near the centre of the Podland Plaza. Ahead of her was the looming stacked mass of the Pods themselves, behind her was the polished MCTV building, and over her left shoulder she could see the horror of the Orphanfridge. What she could not see, however, were people, and the Podlands were always busy with hordes of scum coming and going or just idly hanging around picking their arses. Something big must be happening somewhere for everyone to have gone there in such a rush, wherever “there” was. Either that or something very nasty must have happened here for everyone to leave so quickly.
A cold wind blew across Dot-dot-dot and made her shiver, and that was even odder than the lack of people. She was sure that today was Feliday, and on Feliday it was always sunny and calm. Considering the state she seemed to be in however, she thought it more than possible that she’d skipped a day or two.
Without warning the wind around her built up in strength to an almost ridiculous degree, and Dot-dot-dot’s ponytail was lifted from her back and lashed across her face. She didn’t like this one bit, not one bit at all, and she began to jog and then sprint towards the safety of her pod.
From inside her pod it was clear the weather outside was rapidly becoming wilder, and she figured that if this had been the pattern of things during the night that was exactly where the other residents had to be - safely locked inside their pods. Her micro-home began to rattle and shake as the conditions outside worsened, and as everything started falling onto her from the shelves and the drawers around she began to feel like just another ice cube in a cocktail shaker.
A sudden jolt and she was being thrashed around the insides of her pod, which now, against all odds of wind versus steel bolts, seemed to be travelling at a very high speed. Just before her head was thrown against the side of the pod knocking her unconscious, she thought to herself – hang on, I don’t own a boob tube, do I?
* * *
Dot-dot-dot checked herself for damage. She couldn’t be sure without a mirror but she thought she’d probably have a decent black eye in a matter of hours, and the taste of blood in her mouth confirmed a busted lip. Apart from that, and the splitting headache, and the pain in her right-shoulder, and the bruise on her upper left thigh already turning an attractive shade of purple, she seemed fine.
She tried to rationalise what had just happened: possibly, the weather system had f****d-up badly. Presumably, some sort of freak wind had built up from somewhere, which toppled the stacked pods and sent them crashing, but Dot-dot-dot had never felt more than a breeze before, and this thing had been whirling the Podland’s trash around like turds in a flushed toilet bowl. She was hoping that the fall it caused hadn’t jammed the pod’s door closed when a whimpering from its rear end reminded her of what an incredibly irresponsible pet owner she was. ****, she thought, The Dog.
The pod was now at an inconvenient angle, entrance side down, and she had to push herself up to the back of the container to flip the release switch on the rear cupboard’s door. The Dog bounded out and into her arms, or at least it would have done if her arms were twice their size. As it was, its bulk crashed into her and the two of them were sent sliding down, crashing into the pod’s front door.
Dot-dot-dot, crumpled, twisted and half-suffocated, couldn’t help but giggle as The Dog furiously tried to find her face with its tongue. Fighting off its badly timed affection and trying not to swallow fur, she reached out an arm between The Dog’s rear legs and fumbled for the button to open the door. Just as The Dog managed to turn itself around and its warm wet tongue made contact with its target, she made contact with hers, and the two of them rolled through the door to the outside.
After Dot-dot-dot had calmed The Dog and found herself a nice hard rock to perch on, she tried to assess the situation she was in. She couldn’t. One thought alone occupied her mind – where the frick are we?
Dot saw that The Dog, once its excitement at being rescued had faded, hadn’t fared well with the ferocity of their journey. It sat whimpering, eyes cast down, in an appealing mix of its own vomit, urine, and ****. What normally looked like a vicious beast of an animal, a behemoth of teeth and muscle, now looked like a whining newborn puppy sitting in the spillage of its dirtied birth fluids, trying to make sense of this new and scary place it found itself cruelly ejected into.
Surrounding the two of them, bar one battered pod, was nothing, and the nothing seemed to stretch off into infinity in every direction. The nothing was dry and hard and punctuated with an occasional rock or boulder, or, interestingly enough, groups of rocks and boulders. The nothing was also an unpleasing shade of orange, and covered with an irritatingly bright blue sky.
Once again, Dot-dot-dot tried to pull herself together. Once again, she failed. Lucidity would not come – questions floated through her mind but were cast aside one by one. The entire ridiculousness of what had just happened, or indeed, what had not happened to her and The Dog prevented her from considering any aspect of the reality (or unreality) of their situation. As she inched her way towards some form of acceptance she heard the faintest of noises from behind her. It sounded like the intake of a thousand tiny breaths.
“Boo!”
Dot-dot-dot flinched, screamed, and fell off her rock.
The Dog immediately shot into action and pounded past Dot-dot-dot to attack. It didn’t look like a ****-plastered puppy anymore: it looked like a ****-plastered pre-historic killing machine.
The crowd of tiny orange people exploded in panic as The Dog charged into them. They sprinted in every direction (which was mostly into each other) screaming as they ran. The Dog trampled the first few tiny folk it reached and then snatched one from the midst of the crowd, shaking it in its muzzle like a rag-doll. Its tiny head departed its traumatized body and flew over the crowd increasing the other tiny folks’ panic.
“Dog, stop!” screamed Dot-dot-dot, pulling herself up from the ground.
The Dog, if nothing else other than adoring, was extremely obedient, and froze the instant it heard its mistress’s command. Unexpectedly the whole pack of little people also stilled; their panic abated so suddenly it was as if they had never been afraid.
"You bitch! What's the matter with you? Old Bob was just messin' around!"
The voice had come from somewhere in the pond of foot-high people that were spread before the dazed Dot-dot-dot and around the hairy island of The Dog. Dot-dot-dot looked down to The Dog, who dropped the beheaded torso from his mouth and looked up at her wide-eyed, waiting for its accepted admonishment, but still searching for that tiny chance of praise.
A smattering of the little people groaned and some covered their eyes as ‘Bob’s body flopped to the ground.
Dot-dot-dot’s head span as she tried to cope with this new addition to the insanity that her life was becoming that morning. She considered that she might have actually passed away from an overdose during last night’s party and that these tiny orange freaks were here to guide her to everlasting paradise, or to the other place. Or more believably; the party must still be going on, and she’s slumped in a quiet corner somewhere dribbling and groaning and these little weirdoes are the best her mind can make of the revellers surrounding her. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths before peeking out. Nope, the freaks were still there. Trying harder she squeezed her eyes closed, searching for something to hold onto, something plausible, something that would give her the bite of reality she needed.
One more peek: bugger - still there.
Deciding that she was going to have to face up to this and at least pretend that everything was real for the time being, she took a few more deep breaths, opened her eyes wide, and then spoke.
“I’m… sorry?”
* * *
Scarface couldn’t really be described as ‘different’, because that just wouldn’t do justice to the truth - only ‘repulsive’ would do, or possibly ‘revolting’ or ‘repellent’ or, ‘really, really, really ugly’. Scarface was dressed in tattered, soiled rags, and his weathered, grimy skin fell saggy and folded from his emaciated frame, like a Stagram with all the fat sucked from him. The face Scarface bore held no features of note, but the cranium atop it was a different story, it being swollen and stretched and slightly translucent, like a red and purple balloon inflated to the point of bursting.
Scarface was, he claimed, a Jupiter-Brain. Dot-dot-dot had no idea what that meant, but for now she was supposing it meant he was some kind of freak-genius, and hopefully of some help to her on this most nightmarish of days.
Dot-dot-dot and The Dog had encountered Scarface shortly after leaving the company of the little orange people, who in time they had discovered to be named ‘The Numpkins’. Dot-dot-dot’s time in their company had been thankfully short, and almost completely unproductive. The Numpkins were quite probably the most foul-mouthed, insulting, and perverted little creatures she’d ever met – and considering some of Dot-dot-dot’s ex-lovers that was really saying something. After vague attempts at friendliness - then pleading, then begging – she’d eventually threatened them with the repeated wrath of The Dog, and under this duress they’d coughed up what she could only presume to be helpful information. Without doubt they’d known more than they were willing to tell, but they had confirmed that Dot-dot-dot and The Dog really shouldn’t be here (wherever “here” was), and they’d also admitted that they had no clue as to how Dot-dot-dot and The Dog had managed to travel to here. The last morsel they offered seemed to be squeezed from the group by two of their members who appeared to be more imposing than the rest; slightly larger and somehow squarer. These two were possibly the leaders of these Numpkins, but Dot-dot-dot couldn’t really tell, as they seemed to dart around within the pack every time she tried to focus on them. Under their leadership however, the Numpkins as a whole had suggested the name of someone who might be able to help her and The Dog find their way home.
“Zoo. Nephrite City’s the place you want,” they’d offered in unison, “You need to find the Warlock there, he’s called ‘Zoo’. Just follow that sallow slabbed path over there, it leads the way. Now f**k off home, bitch.”
Nice. Nice, and helpful.
As Dot-dot-dot turned to look in the direction the Numpkins had been pointing she was only the slightest bit surprised to see a forest of trees where just a few moments before there had been a big fat nothing. She did become worried however: not worried about how unnecessarily ominous and downright evil-looking the thick gnarled forest appeared, and not worried that the bricks in the path she was meant to follow had an odd liquid-like quality, a certain sinkability in the way they seemed to be flowing between each other – no, she was worried that she was beginning to take all this madness in her stride.
With a sigh that said ‘I give up’, Dot-dot-dot had turned from the precious little Numpkin darlings and headed off. Glancing back one last time at several hundred pairs of beady little eyes she swore (not for the first time during their encounter), that their several hundred sets of little orange mouths were quivering, trying their best to hold something back. For some reason, she’d had the distinct impression that they were trying their best not to burst out into a song and dance routine.
When Dot-dot-dot encountered Scarface, her fellow traveller on this voyage through insanity she’d somehow unknowingly signed-up to, she thought the answer to her prayers might have arrived. Scarface, Dot-dot-dot eventually discovered, was as about as much use to her as a brick on a string in a kite-flying competition, and she was beginning to regret letting him join her and The Dog on their little adventure.
“Man, I’m depressed” he muttered, for the umpteenth time.
He was (as she’d suspected from the ridiculous proportions of his head) some kind of ultra-genius. Or at least that’s what he claimed he was - either that or he was about to burst open from the nastiest case of brain cancer existence had ever seen. He’d also said that after years of staring at a field of poppies from atop the fence he lived on, he’d finally calculated the equations of existence - he had worked out the x, y, and z, of life, death, and sex; he had realised the size of a life, and the dimensions of the big picture it floated around in. Obviously, Dot-dot-dot was intrigued. She’d coaxed him down from the fence she’d found him sitting on and encouraged him to spill the proverbial beans. Scarface was having none of it though. He said he was “like… utterly depressed” by his findings, and he “like… really couldn’t be bothered thinking about it all again.”
Uninvited, Scarface joined the two of them along the path, and after only ten minutes in his company Dot-dot-dot was close to the end of her tether, ruminating on the possibilities of suicide, or possibly murder. The Dog – ten steps behind, head hung low – seemed equally pleased and lifted with their new-found company. Dot-dot-dot had tried to charm any helpful information from Scarface that she could, asking questions like: where were they, really; where were they really going; who was this Warlock bloke; and, what the frick was up with this stupid place anyway? But Scarface’s responses varied little from the depressed mumblings regarding the meaning of life that he offered regularly, and without request. He even shied away from simple demonstrations of his boasted genius. She was beginning to think he was no more than a miserable moron, and was about to explain her thoughts to him in quite clear terms when a rustling from the trees to their left stopped all three of them in their tracks.
The Dog span round into a crouch; hackles tensed and readied to attack. It cocked its head towards its mistress slightly, waiting for the command to attack. Dot-dot-dot however, wasn’t about to let the same mess that evolved earlier happen this time. A pregnant moments silence was followed by the rustling sound again, this time accompanied by an almost inaudible metallic scratching noise.
“Hello” Dot-dot-dot ventured towards the forest. “Hello, is somebody there?”
Rustle, rustle, rustle. Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
“It’s probably just a Soarascal, looking for food,” offered Scarface.
“What’s a ‘Sore-arse-kill’ when it’s at home? Is it dangerous?”
“You know, I’m really not sure that I can be, like, bothered to explain”. With controlled fluidity, Scarface collapsed to a cross-legged sitting position, and began scratching the fluxing path below him with a dirty nail, obviously happy to wait while events saw themselves out.
“Erm… hello?” Dot-dot-dot tried again, “Hello, is there anybody there? If there is then… well… look, I’m in a bit of a pickle out here, and if there’s anything you could do to help, I’d be eternally grateful.”
Rustle, rustle, rustle. Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
Scarface was probably right, of course. It was most likely just some kind of animal out there, but Dot-dot-dot still had a feeling that there was a person out there – why else the scratching sound? Although, going by the events and discoveries so far today, a rat with a metal arse taking lead-pellet shits in the forest wouldn’t even make her flinch. She attempted to hold back the desperation and need in her voice and tried once more.
“Me and my dog, and this, this person we ran into, we’re lost…”
“…I’m not lost, man. Like, speak for yourself, yeah?”
“Shut up, Scarface!” Dot-dot-dot screamed in frustration. She took a deep breath and appealed back to the forest, “We’re lost you see, lost and trying to find our way home, and perhaps if you could help, or if you could just point us in the right direction? We ran into these little people back along the path, and they sent us this way, looking for some Warlock or other, but they were a bit nasty and I’m really not sure if… Anyway, if you could help us, perhaps we, I, could help you?”
Dot-dot-dot immediately regretted that last sentence as a clearly erect p***s appeared from behind the nearest set of bushes, closely followed by a pair of trousers.
The Dog barked. It never barked.
...
...continued...
This is a ridiculosly huge post for a new arrival, but if you can be bothered reading it, I'd love your opinion, comments, critique or feedback!
The First of War
It must’ve been one street-shaker of a party because Dot-dot-dot had fazed-out big-style, and she’d only just got a grip on reality again.
While recovering only moments ago her whole vision had gone fuzzy, like the white noise on a holo projector, and everything around her had melted and morphed like some crappy SoCA graduates attempt at drug-influenced art. This kind of thing didn’t usually worry her - it being a regular part of post-party recovery – but, just before the warped visuals and the white noise, she’d been having some kind of weird, lucid trip that had tugged on the edges of her memory as a flashback normally might. Flashbacks are a whole lot rarer than plain old spin-outs, and the whole experience had felt incredibly real, to the point of being just a little bit scary.
She’d been a Sky Viking in the trip-cum-flashback, sitting around talking bullshit with a bunch of no-hopers. It made no sense, had no connections to her real life or her nightmares or dreams. These moments of instability usually tend to play with your mind and your emotions, but for there to be no obvious links back to your real life was just plain odd. And wrong. But it was all fading away now, as quickly as a nightmare in the morning usually does.
All that was unimportant, however, compared to the fact that she couldn’t even remember where she’d been all evening.
Looking down at what she was wearing Dot-dot-dot thought that, yes - that must’ve been one kicker of a party; if not just for her, then for a good portion of the men there too. She was wearing all of her best clobber: her prised ChunkyBoots, knee-high stripy socks, her scarlet bio-plastic microskirt that revealed a tormenting glimpse of her thong when she walked, and to top it all off with panache, a boob tube. She was also carrying what appeared to be a cat-‘o’-nine-tails in her right hand. Wow, she thought, she was lucky to have made it safely to anywhere wearing that get-up on the streets, let alone to here, to the Podlands.
To try and make everything go just a little more smoothly than it was at present, Dot-dot-dot decided to class all this worrying information as: Currently Unimportant. What was of immediate importance was the fact that she was nearly home, and she was as tired as, well, as a very tired and gorgeous thing that had partied very hard indeed.
Casting her eyes around briefly to check everything was still safe, she saw nothing, or to be more precise, nobody, which was extremely disturbing in itself. She was standing near the centre of the Podland Plaza. Ahead of her was the looming stacked mass of the Pods themselves, behind her was the polished MCTV building, and over her left shoulder she could see the horror of the Orphanfridge. What she could not see, however, were people, and the Podlands were always busy with hordes of scum coming and going or just idly hanging around picking their arses. Something big must be happening somewhere for everyone to have gone there in such a rush, wherever “there” was. Either that or something very nasty must have happened here for everyone to leave so quickly.
A cold wind blew across Dot-dot-dot and made her shiver, and that was even odder than the lack of people. She was sure that today was Feliday, and on Feliday it was always sunny and calm. Considering the state she seemed to be in however, she thought it more than possible that she’d skipped a day or two.
Without warning the wind around her built up in strength to an almost ridiculous degree, and Dot-dot-dot’s ponytail was lifted from her back and lashed across her face. She didn’t like this one bit, not one bit at all, and she began to jog and then sprint towards the safety of her pod.
From inside her pod it was clear the weather outside was rapidly becoming wilder, and she figured that if this had been the pattern of things during the night that was exactly where the other residents had to be - safely locked inside their pods. Her micro-home began to rattle and shake as the conditions outside worsened, and as everything started falling onto her from the shelves and the drawers around she began to feel like just another ice cube in a cocktail shaker.
A sudden jolt and she was being thrashed around the insides of her pod, which now, against all odds of wind versus steel bolts, seemed to be travelling at a very high speed. Just before her head was thrown against the side of the pod knocking her unconscious, she thought to herself – hang on, I don’t own a boob tube, do I?
* * *
Dot-dot-dot checked herself for damage. She couldn’t be sure without a mirror but she thought she’d probably have a decent black eye in a matter of hours, and the taste of blood in her mouth confirmed a busted lip. Apart from that, and the splitting headache, and the pain in her right-shoulder, and the bruise on her upper left thigh already turning an attractive shade of purple, she seemed fine.
She tried to rationalise what had just happened: possibly, the weather system had f****d-up badly. Presumably, some sort of freak wind had built up from somewhere, which toppled the stacked pods and sent them crashing, but Dot-dot-dot had never felt more than a breeze before, and this thing had been whirling the Podland’s trash around like turds in a flushed toilet bowl. She was hoping that the fall it caused hadn’t jammed the pod’s door closed when a whimpering from its rear end reminded her of what an incredibly irresponsible pet owner she was. ****, she thought, The Dog.
The pod was now at an inconvenient angle, entrance side down, and she had to push herself up to the back of the container to flip the release switch on the rear cupboard’s door. The Dog bounded out and into her arms, or at least it would have done if her arms were twice their size. As it was, its bulk crashed into her and the two of them were sent sliding down, crashing into the pod’s front door.
Dot-dot-dot, crumpled, twisted and half-suffocated, couldn’t help but giggle as The Dog furiously tried to find her face with its tongue. Fighting off its badly timed affection and trying not to swallow fur, she reached out an arm between The Dog’s rear legs and fumbled for the button to open the door. Just as The Dog managed to turn itself around and its warm wet tongue made contact with its target, she made contact with hers, and the two of them rolled through the door to the outside.
After Dot-dot-dot had calmed The Dog and found herself a nice hard rock to perch on, she tried to assess the situation she was in. She couldn’t. One thought alone occupied her mind – where the frick are we?
Dot saw that The Dog, once its excitement at being rescued had faded, hadn’t fared well with the ferocity of their journey. It sat whimpering, eyes cast down, in an appealing mix of its own vomit, urine, and ****. What normally looked like a vicious beast of an animal, a behemoth of teeth and muscle, now looked like a whining newborn puppy sitting in the spillage of its dirtied birth fluids, trying to make sense of this new and scary place it found itself cruelly ejected into.
Surrounding the two of them, bar one battered pod, was nothing, and the nothing seemed to stretch off into infinity in every direction. The nothing was dry and hard and punctuated with an occasional rock or boulder, or, interestingly enough, groups of rocks and boulders. The nothing was also an unpleasing shade of orange, and covered with an irritatingly bright blue sky.
Once again, Dot-dot-dot tried to pull herself together. Once again, she failed. Lucidity would not come – questions floated through her mind but were cast aside one by one. The entire ridiculousness of what had just happened, or indeed, what had not happened to her and The Dog prevented her from considering any aspect of the reality (or unreality) of their situation. As she inched her way towards some form of acceptance she heard the faintest of noises from behind her. It sounded like the intake of a thousand tiny breaths.
“Boo!”
Dot-dot-dot flinched, screamed, and fell off her rock.
The Dog immediately shot into action and pounded past Dot-dot-dot to attack. It didn’t look like a ****-plastered puppy anymore: it looked like a ****-plastered pre-historic killing machine.
The crowd of tiny orange people exploded in panic as The Dog charged into them. They sprinted in every direction (which was mostly into each other) screaming as they ran. The Dog trampled the first few tiny folk it reached and then snatched one from the midst of the crowd, shaking it in its muzzle like a rag-doll. Its tiny head departed its traumatized body and flew over the crowd increasing the other tiny folks’ panic.
“Dog, stop!” screamed Dot-dot-dot, pulling herself up from the ground.
The Dog, if nothing else other than adoring, was extremely obedient, and froze the instant it heard its mistress’s command. Unexpectedly the whole pack of little people also stilled; their panic abated so suddenly it was as if they had never been afraid.
"You bitch! What's the matter with you? Old Bob was just messin' around!"
The voice had come from somewhere in the pond of foot-high people that were spread before the dazed Dot-dot-dot and around the hairy island of The Dog. Dot-dot-dot looked down to The Dog, who dropped the beheaded torso from his mouth and looked up at her wide-eyed, waiting for its accepted admonishment, but still searching for that tiny chance of praise.
A smattering of the little people groaned and some covered their eyes as ‘Bob’s body flopped to the ground.
Dot-dot-dot’s head span as she tried to cope with this new addition to the insanity that her life was becoming that morning. She considered that she might have actually passed away from an overdose during last night’s party and that these tiny orange freaks were here to guide her to everlasting paradise, or to the other place. Or more believably; the party must still be going on, and she’s slumped in a quiet corner somewhere dribbling and groaning and these little weirdoes are the best her mind can make of the revellers surrounding her. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths before peeking out. Nope, the freaks were still there. Trying harder she squeezed her eyes closed, searching for something to hold onto, something plausible, something that would give her the bite of reality she needed.
One more peek: bugger - still there.
Deciding that she was going to have to face up to this and at least pretend that everything was real for the time being, she took a few more deep breaths, opened her eyes wide, and then spoke.
“I’m… sorry?”
* * *
Scarface couldn’t really be described as ‘different’, because that just wouldn’t do justice to the truth - only ‘repulsive’ would do, or possibly ‘revolting’ or ‘repellent’ or, ‘really, really, really ugly’. Scarface was dressed in tattered, soiled rags, and his weathered, grimy skin fell saggy and folded from his emaciated frame, like a Stagram with all the fat sucked from him. The face Scarface bore held no features of note, but the cranium atop it was a different story, it being swollen and stretched and slightly translucent, like a red and purple balloon inflated to the point of bursting.
Scarface was, he claimed, a Jupiter-Brain. Dot-dot-dot had no idea what that meant, but for now she was supposing it meant he was some kind of freak-genius, and hopefully of some help to her on this most nightmarish of days.
Dot-dot-dot and The Dog had encountered Scarface shortly after leaving the company of the little orange people, who in time they had discovered to be named ‘The Numpkins’. Dot-dot-dot’s time in their company had been thankfully short, and almost completely unproductive. The Numpkins were quite probably the most foul-mouthed, insulting, and perverted little creatures she’d ever met – and considering some of Dot-dot-dot’s ex-lovers that was really saying something. After vague attempts at friendliness - then pleading, then begging – she’d eventually threatened them with the repeated wrath of The Dog, and under this duress they’d coughed up what she could only presume to be helpful information. Without doubt they’d known more than they were willing to tell, but they had confirmed that Dot-dot-dot and The Dog really shouldn’t be here (wherever “here” was), and they’d also admitted that they had no clue as to how Dot-dot-dot and The Dog had managed to travel to here. The last morsel they offered seemed to be squeezed from the group by two of their members who appeared to be more imposing than the rest; slightly larger and somehow squarer. These two were possibly the leaders of these Numpkins, but Dot-dot-dot couldn’t really tell, as they seemed to dart around within the pack every time she tried to focus on them. Under their leadership however, the Numpkins as a whole had suggested the name of someone who might be able to help her and The Dog find their way home.
“Zoo. Nephrite City’s the place you want,” they’d offered in unison, “You need to find the Warlock there, he’s called ‘Zoo’. Just follow that sallow slabbed path over there, it leads the way. Now f**k off home, bitch.”
Nice. Nice, and helpful.
As Dot-dot-dot turned to look in the direction the Numpkins had been pointing she was only the slightest bit surprised to see a forest of trees where just a few moments before there had been a big fat nothing. She did become worried however: not worried about how unnecessarily ominous and downright evil-looking the thick gnarled forest appeared, and not worried that the bricks in the path she was meant to follow had an odd liquid-like quality, a certain sinkability in the way they seemed to be flowing between each other – no, she was worried that she was beginning to take all this madness in her stride.
With a sigh that said ‘I give up’, Dot-dot-dot had turned from the precious little Numpkin darlings and headed off. Glancing back one last time at several hundred pairs of beady little eyes she swore (not for the first time during their encounter), that their several hundred sets of little orange mouths were quivering, trying their best to hold something back. For some reason, she’d had the distinct impression that they were trying their best not to burst out into a song and dance routine.
When Dot-dot-dot encountered Scarface, her fellow traveller on this voyage through insanity she’d somehow unknowingly signed-up to, she thought the answer to her prayers might have arrived. Scarface, Dot-dot-dot eventually discovered, was as about as much use to her as a brick on a string in a kite-flying competition, and she was beginning to regret letting him join her and The Dog on their little adventure.
“Man, I’m depressed” he muttered, for the umpteenth time.
He was (as she’d suspected from the ridiculous proportions of his head) some kind of ultra-genius. Or at least that’s what he claimed he was - either that or he was about to burst open from the nastiest case of brain cancer existence had ever seen. He’d also said that after years of staring at a field of poppies from atop the fence he lived on, he’d finally calculated the equations of existence - he had worked out the x, y, and z, of life, death, and sex; he had realised the size of a life, and the dimensions of the big picture it floated around in. Obviously, Dot-dot-dot was intrigued. She’d coaxed him down from the fence she’d found him sitting on and encouraged him to spill the proverbial beans. Scarface was having none of it though. He said he was “like… utterly depressed” by his findings, and he “like… really couldn’t be bothered thinking about it all again.”
Uninvited, Scarface joined the two of them along the path, and after only ten minutes in his company Dot-dot-dot was close to the end of her tether, ruminating on the possibilities of suicide, or possibly murder. The Dog – ten steps behind, head hung low – seemed equally pleased and lifted with their new-found company. Dot-dot-dot had tried to charm any helpful information from Scarface that she could, asking questions like: where were they, really; where were they really going; who was this Warlock bloke; and, what the frick was up with this stupid place anyway? But Scarface’s responses varied little from the depressed mumblings regarding the meaning of life that he offered regularly, and without request. He even shied away from simple demonstrations of his boasted genius. She was beginning to think he was no more than a miserable moron, and was about to explain her thoughts to him in quite clear terms when a rustling from the trees to their left stopped all three of them in their tracks.
The Dog span round into a crouch; hackles tensed and readied to attack. It cocked its head towards its mistress slightly, waiting for the command to attack. Dot-dot-dot however, wasn’t about to let the same mess that evolved earlier happen this time. A pregnant moments silence was followed by the rustling sound again, this time accompanied by an almost inaudible metallic scratching noise.
“Hello” Dot-dot-dot ventured towards the forest. “Hello, is somebody there?”
Rustle, rustle, rustle. Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
“It’s probably just a Soarascal, looking for food,” offered Scarface.
“What’s a ‘Sore-arse-kill’ when it’s at home? Is it dangerous?”
“You know, I’m really not sure that I can be, like, bothered to explain”. With controlled fluidity, Scarface collapsed to a cross-legged sitting position, and began scratching the fluxing path below him with a dirty nail, obviously happy to wait while events saw themselves out.
“Erm… hello?” Dot-dot-dot tried again, “Hello, is there anybody there? If there is then… well… look, I’m in a bit of a pickle out here, and if there’s anything you could do to help, I’d be eternally grateful.”
Rustle, rustle, rustle. Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
Scarface was probably right, of course. It was most likely just some kind of animal out there, but Dot-dot-dot still had a feeling that there was a person out there – why else the scratching sound? Although, going by the events and discoveries so far today, a rat with a metal arse taking lead-pellet shits in the forest wouldn’t even make her flinch. She attempted to hold back the desperation and need in her voice and tried once more.
“Me and my dog, and this, this person we ran into, we’re lost…”
“…I’m not lost, man. Like, speak for yourself, yeah?”
“Shut up, Scarface!” Dot-dot-dot screamed in frustration. She took a deep breath and appealed back to the forest, “We’re lost you see, lost and trying to find our way home, and perhaps if you could help, or if you could just point us in the right direction? We ran into these little people back along the path, and they sent us this way, looking for some Warlock or other, but they were a bit nasty and I’m really not sure if… Anyway, if you could help us, perhaps we, I, could help you?”
Dot-dot-dot immediately regretted that last sentence as a clearly erect p***s appeared from behind the nearest set of bushes, closely followed by a pair of trousers.
The Dog barked. It never barked.
...
...continued...