Werewolves, believed to have originated in Wisconsin, can be heard howling during full moons, and seen as distant shapes terrorizing sheep farms and hippie communes here and in the UK.
Republicans, er… no, that’s another story, Huh? Ha Ha Ha.
But zombies have had their day, and are no more, no matter how many TV shows and movies would like you to believe otherwise. What’s that? You wonder what exactly were the zombies, and how did they originate? Good questions my fine fellows but my throat is a little too dry to continue.
What? Oh yes, a drink would help immensely.
Simply put, generally a zombie is a mindless flesh-eating animal, with no human thoughts or feelings of any kind, reanimated from the dead among us. Zombieism as it is now known, was brought on by a simple cold-like virus transmuted from a certain species of South-American bat, that mutated in humans. It was easily spread by contact with infected saliva. Get bit by a Zombie, die and be a Zombie, very simple, really, huh?
How do I know all this, you ask? I was there. I am Dr. Georgious Pastrolukus, at your service. Most people just call me Dr. George. Why yes, I’d love another drink, thank you.
Now I just happened to be passing through your Pennsylvania on my way to confab with a particularly wise native elder in North Dakota, about the mysterious and sometimes embarrassing profusion of warts on say a, um…particularly embarrassing spot on my anatomy, ahem, when I beheld the most fabulously beautiful young woman I had ever seen.
Her jet-black hair, framing that perfect oval face, with two of the most striking, deep blue eyes…. well, I’d hope there were two, right? Ha Ha Ha. That reminds me of the Cyclops I met on, er…, no never mind about him, he was grumpy most of the time anyway.
Where was I? Oh yes, Elizabeth, with her perfectly round bosoms and her… er, nevermind about that. Poor Elizabeth, what a tragedy.
We gazed at each other, the longing plain in both of our faces, our breath coming in short gasps, like the oxygen had been sucked from the room, her axe striking the porcine carcass just perfectly between the third and fourth… What? Oh, she was the butcher’s daughter, what did you think I was talking about? Stop interrupting, will you? There’s a good group of fellows. What? Yes, I am ready for another drink, if you don’t mind. Thank you.
We were inseparable from that time until Elizabeth’s, er…, misfortunes. As I was a little short on disposable funds right at that time as it so happens, Elizabeth persuaded her father to let me stay in the back, upstairs room of the shop in exchange for a little cleaning up and general organizing. My what a system they had, or should I say lack of a system, huh? Ha Ha Ha. I worked my magic, and it was soon running like clockwork. I suspected Elizabeth’s father thought I was being over-worked, for I heard him ask her one evening if I just couldn’t leave well enough alone, showing how highly he prized my contributions.
It turns out, my sweet, surprising Elizabeth was also an amateur biologist, in her spare time. She had a whole collection of things preserved in jars down in the basement of her Father’s shop. Oh, there were hearts, and skulls and eyeballs, rats, bats and pigs feet, er…, wait, no they were mine to snack on. Ha Ha Ha. Do they have any here by chance? What, No? Well, no mind. Well, Elizabeth had just all kinds of God’s once living creatures in jars down in that old basement.
“Why, Dearheart,” I asked one evening when I happened upon Elizabeth down there tinkering with her collection, “whatever is all this for?”
“I’m studying the biology of living things”, she said to me, “in order to help my parents.”
“But these specimens are all dead,” I intoned, pointing around the room to them.
“They didn’t used to be”, she answered with a shrug.
Made perfect sense, you see, huh?
A thought occurred to me. “Whatever’s the matter with the dear Mr. and Mrs. Borden, if I may be so bold as to inquire?” I asked, tentatively setting my hand gingerly on her shoulder, my heartbeat accelerating.
“See that bat over there in that jar?” she asked, pointing with her perfectly shaped finger, to a rather large and gruesome looking creature floating in some kind of brownish liquid. “That’s a South American Zombie Bat, and it bit both my parents. My parents are Zombies.”
Now as a Doctor, I know a little something about most things, and I know, it is purported, that the South American Zombie Bat’s victims usually die, and reanimate, within hours. However they are extinct. I said all this to my sweet Elizabeth.
“I thought the South American Zombie Bat was extinct?” I questioned.
“They are now”, she answered, again pointing to the same jar.
There was only one question left to ask, only one thing to do. “How can I help, my Dear?”
She sighed as delicate sigh as many a stage actress wished she could, with a delicate hand brushing back a lock of ebony hair from her ivory forehead.
“Alas,” she said, “all hope is lost. There is only one thing left to do.” With a wee tear escaping from under one big beautiful eyelash.
“No!” I gasped.
“Yes, to save all of humanity, they must be put down before it is too late.” She declared with a look of urgency, sending a chill down my spine.
Ahh, thank you for the handkerchief, my good man, I apologize for my unseemly show of emotion. My poor, brave Elizabeth, I’m not sure I can continue. What, yes, I think another drink would help immensely. Thank you, my fine fellow. Better make it a double though, huh?
“How, how will you, er…, I mean, we… how will we, um make it come about? For your parents, I mean.” I asked meekly, not wanting to broach such a delicate subject with my innocent Elizabeth.
With eyes lowered, meekly she said, “What do you think we should do Dr. George?” Her eyelashes batting so prettily, I don’t even think she was aware of the effect she had on me, so innocent she was.
I paused for a moment, wanting to gather her up in my arms to console her, but I knew she thought we should wait a seemlier amount of time. After all, we’d only been courting for three months, as she often told me when my passion got the better of me, and I tried to hold her.
“You’re pretty darn good with that axe,” I said.
“My thoughts exactly,” she said scraping her hair back across the old concrete floor, standing and brushing imaginary wrinkles from her dress. She was such a strong, brave woman. My heart swelled with love and pride. “Come on then”, she continued, “they are at home on the farm. We can take the carriage.”
The carriage ride out to the farm was done in the darkness and silence with Elizabeth leaning up against my arm as I drove, to keep warm in the winter chill. I had many questions about what would happen next. Would we stay in Pennsylvania and marry, or would we go somewhere else to get away from the memories?
Sadly, it wasn’t to be.
As we arrived at her parent’s farm, Elizabeth noticed they had a guest. “Oh drat, that noisy little neighbor Katherine, is here.”
“Will that be a problem,” I asked.
“Not at all, wait here.” She said, as she got her axe, and climbed down.
I don’t like to think about what happened next. My poor Elizabeth having to walk into that farmhouse and save humanity, to save us all from the monsters her parents were sure to become. I longed to go with her, but my sciatica was acting up from the cold, and I didn’t think I could get down from the carriage, just then.
I expected gruesome screams, but there was only silence. Then, as if shot out of a gun, a young girl, who I could only assume was the troublesome neighbor, Katherine, fled out the front door, through the snow and into the woods, with poor Elizabeth in hot pursuit, huh? I could only guess, poor little Katherine was also infected. Elizabeth’s parents must have turned. We had only just gotten there in the nick of time, but not soon enough to save that poor little girl.
What? No, I think I’ve had enough, thank you. Yes, yes, I’m nearing the end.
Just as Elizabeth emerged from the woods dabbing
something from her face, tears no doubt, I chanced to be looking out across the field to see several carriages of men quickly approaching the farm. Now being no stranger to the dislike and unreasonableness of the local constabulary myself on occasion, I quietly urged the horse onto the opposite lane and away from the farm.
I heard they hung my poor Elizabeth even though I wrote a letter in her defense, unsigned of course, explaining the zombie outbreak. Alas, but to no avail, huh?
Well Sir, I don’t exactly know what a ‘load of malarkey’ is, but I don’t think I like your tone.
The End.
Leo
For the artist, the truly creative type who is compelled to follow his or her muse, to these poor souls art becomes like the very air that you or I breath to survive. Without their art, life is nothing, a meaningless, sad and gray world that slowly suffocates the true artist. The creative person, the truly originally creative person is the living, beating heart of the world. Imagine life without Beethoven or Michael Jackson, without Picasso or Sol LeWitt, without Gehry or Frank Lloyd Wright, without Baryshnikov or Martha Graham.
Life would be a series of dull gray days joining end to end.
Yes, we have the Curies and the Hawkins, the Teslas and the Franklins, the Ruths and the Phelps, but these, as great as they are don’t bring joy into our lives or hope or wonder. These mirror the intellect and the physical of life, not the heart.
Which would you rather have, a visit to the Guggenheim or Georgia Tech, the Louvre or Lloyds of London, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or the Hoover Dam?
When it was announced that there would be a field trip in two weeks to the Wadsworth Athaneum for the whole class, Leo was beside himself with excitement. While most the boys in his class took this news with some mild interest at best, Leo was energized. Leo considered himself a great artist. Leo drew, colored and finger-painted with the best of them. When he compared his masterpiece of, say a Thanksgiving turkey, to those of his classmates, Leo felt only sorrow for his friends who were so obviously bereft of any real talent.
After watching years of Bob Ross’ magic oil paintings, Leo couldn’t wait until he was old enough for oils so he too could paint like the masters, maybe even as well as Bob Ross himself. Leo gobbled up every PBS show about art and artists he could find, whether it be painting and drawing (his forte), sculpture or basket weaving.
Leo’s room and the kitchen refrigerator were practically papered with Leo’s drawings and watercolors. Leo was so prolific an artist that he could turn out four or five masterpieces a day, more on the weekends and school breaks. When his father tried to interest him in baseball, Leo used his markers to color that baseball the most interesting psychedelic swirl you’ve ever seen. When his father tried to unsuccessfully interest Leo in other things boys his age were into, his mother would say “leave him be, he is what he is, it’s just a phase.” Finally giving up, his father bought Leo the biggest artist’s set he could find at Target. It was full of markers, colored pencils, brushes and watercolors galore. Leo loved it. “If you’re gonna do it,” his Father said, “you need the right tool for the right job.”
From his TV shows about artists he always watched, Leo knew the life of the artist could be a tough one for the few weeks it would take to get discovered. Look at Picasso, he had to cut off and sell his ears for money to buy paint. Leo liked his ears and decided he needed a shortcut.
What better place to get discovered than at the art museum. Only the greatest were in Hartford’s Athaneum he was sure. That is where his work belonged, he knew without any doubt.
Leo spent the next two weeks feverishly sorting through all of his current work, to select only the best of the best for his upcoming unveiling at the Athaneum. He created new works in a fury of creativity. There was a series of cat watercolors of all sorts because the cat often came into Leo’s room while he was creating, and a series of colored pencil sketches of the view outside his bedroom window. He even did a few of his teacher and classmates, all from memory mind you.
Plus, he created new things, alien planet vistas, and wondrous creatures to stir any imagination. He drew scenes from his favorite books and movies. He painted, he drew, he colored. Leo was an artist extraordinaire, his muse in full swing.
The day before the trip to the Athaneum, Leo was trying to decide the best way to affix his works to the museum walls. Now usually he used scotch tape, sometimes even masking tape to place his bedroom art. Out in the kitchen his mother used magnets on the refrigerator. He wasn’t sure, but he doubted there were any refrigerator doors in the museum to utilize, so magnets probably were out, and he was afraid tape wasn’t permanent enough, glue then he wondered, but he had experience with glue and remembered it could be particularly messy. He didn’t want anything messing up his art.
Wandering around the house, he noticed his parent’s artwork was hung with nails and wire. That would work fine for things in frames he supposed, but none of his works were yet framed. That doesn’t happen until an admirer has purchased them, he was pretty sure. So, nails and wire were out.
He stumbled on his answer more by accident than anything else. That day in class, he noticed on the information board in the classroom, various things were held in place with tacks. Now tacks had many advantages over his other ideas, he thought. They were very permanent things. He knew tacks could be very hard to push in and pull back out, so they probably wouldn’t fall out on their own. They were small so he could easily carry as many as he needed and he knew where his mother kept them in the kitchen.
The next morning (the morning of the trip) Leo was up early and dressed in his best suit, jacket, bowtie (clip-on), Sunday shoes and all. Once in the kitchen he started rifling through the drawers to get to the tacks. He found them in the left-hand drawer next to the Tic-Tacs.
Finally noticed by his Mother, “What do you need dear,” she asked.
“Tacks” he replied, his answer being muffled by the partial pop-tart in his mouth. His mom must have thought he said Tic-Tacs because she told him to bring enough to share with his friends.
At first Leo was perplexed, why would his friends need tacks? Then an uncomfortable thought crossed his mind. What if his friends were also going to use this trip to the museum to display their own works of art? He thought it likely, after all, that’s how an artist started. Though he couldn’t imagine who of his friends had the talent. Becky Johnson did do a passingly fair Thanksgiving turkey, he supposed.
Now Leo was worried. What if they used up all the best spaces hanging their own work? Leo himself had over forty of his best rolled up and ready to go. There was no way he was sharing his tacks. He saw now that he would need to utilize a stealthier procedure to bring in his art and his tacks into the museum. After much folding and rolling and squeezing and hiding his sandwich in the back of the cabinet, (he kept the Oreos, an artist has to eat after all) he managed to get about 25 pieces into his lunchbox and pockets, plus the tacks. This way too, he would avoid having the museum impound his work if they didn’t believe it was his. He didn’t want to be accused of stealing from a museum like the old Nazis. (Leo, just maybe, watched too much PBS).
Finally, he and his class arrived at the Anthaneum.
The art museum was everything Leo imagined it would be and more! Here was room after room of paintings and other kinds of art in styles and colors and techniques he never dreamed were possible. While many of the children were bored or preoccupied with other thoughts, Leo was enraptured with all the docent was saying. So much so, that he almost forgot his own little supply of masterworks in his New England Patriot’s lunchbox (his father had picked it out). Leo pulled on the jacket of his teacher. “I gotta pee,” he said. He didn’t really have to pee, it was a ruse to get away from the group, a clever one, in Leo’s mind.
“Can it wait, Leo?” His teacher asked. I don’t know why adults always ask this question, obviously it can’t. “Alright, take your trip buddy (everyone had a trip buddy) but hurry right back. The restrooms a
re in the hallway two rooms back.”
“Yes sir,” Leo answered. When his teacher turned back to the docent, a particularly attractive and intelligent woman of about the teacher’s own age, Leo slipped away without his trip buddy John, whom he didn’t really like anyway (he had sweaty hands, and sometimes picked his nose).
Leo chose a room where there was no guard watching. None of the other few adults noticed him. He scooted down behind a round couch, in front of one of the largest paintings he had ever seen, and hurriedly opened his lunch box. In fact, he was in such a hurry, as he opened it, the tacks all sprayed out into the room. Guiltily, he scooped up as many as he could, but they had bounced all over the place. He was left with about a handful. Just then, as luck would have it, the guard walked into the room and spying Leo alone, headed over in his direction.
Leo was nearly in full panic mode now. Not only was he carrying a lunchbox full of drawings and paintings he thought they would think he stole, he had just spilled tacks all over the little couch and floor of the room. Desperate to not get into trouble, he placed the lunchbox on the couch and perched on top of it, trying to look innocent and squish it down into the cushions with his little fanny, all at the same time. He had tried to stuff the tacks into his pocket, but they wouldn’t go easily.
26 Absurdities of Tragic Proportions Page 7
