by Peter Marks
Pathetic.
And no fun at all. Such an easy victory was boring so the invaders so they set about plundering the planet. That done they ate some villagers and cooked a cat. That digested, they grew bored so raped each other. That overdone, they rested. Then grew restless. Then reacted.
These Improbable Legions, soldiers not renown for compassion or patience (or intelligence or singing in tune at Batta Legion Pillage Parties) decided on an old Genghis Khan ploy to entertain themselves.
They decided to torture the populace.
Meeting in a Verbossian Rilltent pitched by the Fycassian River, a gaggle of Gasp Masters met. To check the Painputer. Finally reached agreement (after hours of argument and debate and generally unruly behaviour) on the cruelest fate for these subjugated masses.
Now Gasp Masters, the leaders of this lot, were utterly ruthless. They were no shell turtles, twin antennae Duocroms, four flippered career thugs who could only graduate on mastering the Third Degree.
They were the most feared of all the Emperor’s subdrugal force commanders. Hammer headed brutes who were schooled at The Dale Carnivore School Of Etiquette And Extermination and a strange and select band who began each morning with a ritual prayer.
Each day at dawn, precisely at the rise of the distant cosmic sun over the shrouded horizon, these leather skinned sadists knelt on small rugs to face west and weave like wheat in a wind swept field, wailing loudly, warbling harsh cries and guttural quotations from an ancient text which had become the Gasp battle bible - Baden Powell’s ‘Scouting for Boys’.
Drama Legions (when led by Gasp Masters) were the most ruthless, monstrously vicious fighters for five galaxies. (Drama Legions, when led by a naked Emperor Nark, were the most embarrassed, least feared fighters in the entire universe).
Stepping from the Rilltent, the planet’s fate decided, the Masters’ gathered their forces about them.
Reading from a Fomm tablet, they ordered their Legions to herd the entire population of this recently defeated planet into dark subterranean movie theatres where, after locking all exits, they forced the Hearsians to view for many days, no intervals, all nights, ancient videotapes of program after program of ‘Young Talent Time’, a quaint series of documentaries on paedophilia saved from the cremated Earth Prime (a manic depressive ex-planet which had suicided megafracts ago). Programs which, according to the Cryon Painputer, were number one on the ‘get ‘em, torture ‘em, hit ‘em Parade’ and the most diabolical torture known to man.
Or turtle.
So inside, in the gloomy darkness of a thousand theatres, captive audiences wailed and begged for mercy while outside, enjoying the agony, Drama Legions laughed and danced and built castles in the Hearsian sand.
Such unbounded hilarity went on for secamins but as said, this lot had the attention span of a Gideon Purla so they soon got bored. So demolished the sandcastles. Then the towns. Then the cities before starting on the temples of Sect Vitae (temple demolishing being a favourite with invaders since time immemorial) then bored again, gave up demolishing and took up leaving.
Finally bored craplatae, they loaded the Thring Space Cruisers (capable of speeding to Parlight in three qwerbs and the leaping of tall buildings in a single bound) and pissed off pleased to leave such a dull place.
(And not wanting to compromise their fierce reputation for cruelty they left Hearse happy - and the Hearsians locked in). Left, somewhere out there, out in the void darkness beyond Benzaldrine and the Dog Stars, an entire planet incarcerated in black cinemas watching re-runs of Young Talent Time.
Hell was heaven in comparison.
So the oot loot, ex foundations of the Acropolis Of Dion, alpha temple of the Sect Vitae, was duly space freighted here to the planet Circa Major where the ex-Palace of Dios, a gleaming birthday cake of a building, was resurrected brick by amputated brick and became what it was today: a luxurious and expensive resort and the most popular sex bazaar east of Earth Refuge (and the only source of intergalactic revenue for Circa Major, the third moon of Skram and an otherwise insignificant dot at the outer edge of hyperspace).
Officially known as The House Regal Of Beelzebub (..unofficially as Throb) it was set amongst ginger palms and dew pure lakes. At night, cooling breezes from the Sea of E swept through its thousand rooms.
Beyond the Vibro walls that separated desire from desert, the earth was purple and barren and nocturnal Grindles, sinomice the size of a Mammoplat, glowed fusion orange as they scooted across the warm soil in search of home in a burrow as the setting sun settled beyond the Hemot horizon.
In the palace, in a large room of the Sodom Wing, which was classier the Gomorrah but not as hot as the Nero, exotic women in dresses of sheerest silk walked softly upon the marble floors. Reaching a candlelight corner, they gathered about a large man supine on a Verba Couch that was set high on twin bibatusks that rocked gently in the evening breeze.
Metageneral Wright, Galactic Hero and Honorary Grand Gasp Master, was casually smoking from a Prakesh hooker blowing vapor rings at the vertebrae chandelier dangling lamely from the vaulted ceiling.
Humming quietly to himself, zeeplas glasses over closed eyes doing the drawback and patting the Imperial Medals tattooed to his chest, he nonchalantly awaited the flesh pleasures of this Galactic whore house.
Gathered about him were the loveliest women currently manufactured; sensuous sirens who were busy drawing lots to fuck him (most had two heads but three breasts and dual vaginas so he didn’t mind the mutation).
After much haggling the honour of bedding the Metageneral was won by a young revirgin from the planet Hymen. A product of invitro frustration, she was lovely creature with breasts and orifices and spiders for hair and worms for eyelids but before Wright could do anything, before he could have his evil way, before he could add insult to invitro injury by adding his genetics to her and so produce something truly appalling, God intervened.
________________
The phone rang. Wright woke up. Still dreamy, he heard the phone ringing downstairs but he didn’t answer it. Glancing at the clock by the bed, he decided this world could do without him for another few hours and went back to sleep. No luck. Next dream saw him wandering down the main street of Melbourne. Naked.
A dreaming later, Wright won the lottery but was arrested for indecent exposure by policemen with long truncheons and no clothes and paranoia seemed to pervade his sleep so he was pleased when his dreams reverted to normality and he dreamt what he normally dreamt about.
Wright dreamt that women were drawing lots to fuck him.
Then the dreams departed and reality revisited. This time it was a loud knocking that woke him. Presumably someone at the front door. It wasn’t. It was his head, or more accurately the brain which began thumping on a drum forehead demanding to be let out of this pickle jar skull.
One eye opened. Slowly. He yawned then stretched, sending a tongue around a bird cage mouth that tasted as if he’d eaten a mattress in his sleep while his head, equally fuzzy, felt as if had been beaten with one. Repeatedly.
Wright rolled over and turned on the radio to begin the sorry process of becoming human. Not zombie. He sat upright, then smartly downright as his head spun and told him to lie still thinking between rotations that what he liked about dreams was that nothing was logical, or conclusive, or created the same response to situations or circumstance they would if awake.
During dreams, post REM, even the strangest experiences made a relaxed sort of sense. And besides one was too busy dreaming to debate the discrepancies.
He closed his eyes. Momentarily. Floating noisily upon the airwaves, drifting in cartoon captions about the room, a disembodied voice spoke to him. Tried to tell Wright something. Said it was late, told him what time it was so Wright claimed time out being flat out.
He was totally unmoved by the news, quite content to stay put sniffling and snoozing and caretaking a head that hurt and a stomach that churned as fragile as cry
stal. He cursed an invading sun as it streamed through the grimy pains of the luminous windows and retreated from the daylight by sticking a pillow over his head.
Wright had no desire to face the music. Or listen to it.
Monotonously, in the background, the radio droned on. He was too ill to move, too lazy to silence it. He should have though as the fact that it was 10.45 fled the airwaves and crept into desensitised senses.
Wright, claiming it was far too early for such bad news, simply yawned then rolled over now tugging the sheets over his head and spent the next few minutes dreaming that Big Ben had been installed in the lounge downstairs.
When, at 11.05 Big Ben chimed, he made a concerted effort to get out of bed. At 11.45 he fell on the floor so for the second time that day he was up and awake. Almost.
He stumbled out. Then about. Was a pallid nightmare stuck in a semi coma searching for clues as to his whereabouts. Or identity. Or day, time, week or season.
He hadn’t a clue.
Lurching to the window he searched the yard for an answer. Saw that beyond his headache, gathered there in vibrant decay on the sodden turf of the front lawn, orphan leaves had collected ankle deep in an ocean of orange and rust having been dumped there by the last few weeks of cargo winds during another airfreight Autumn.
Wright suddenly thought that they, like he, had also plummeted from once lofty positions. Had also fallen from grace.
The thought cheered him. They swam below discarded in a sea of the season soggy and unwanted while the next generation grew as buds on the trees, huddling there incubating. There they waited in silent families on stout limbs preparing themselves for Nature’s Cycle - for Winter, then Spring, then Summer. Then death.
For Autumn and a repeat performance. Four play. Nature was a grim whore.
Wright gazed from the curtainless window over the relentless rooftops which, clustered in frightened enclaves, crowded the house ridden hills below a suburban sky.
Bloody Melbourne. Bloody waste of space he sighed, dropping a concerned eyebrow to a anvil eyelid wishing this was London. Or New York. Or simply a bad dream.
Out there, where the weather was, the air hung chill in the soft morning haze.
________________
Then the air hung wet in the stunned grey glaze. It was early afternoon. And raining. The day had passed while Wright had passed out. He’d only awoken (for the fifth time that day) when a car backfired loudly enough to wake the dead. The dead Wright who, looking like a vision from a ouija board, scrambled out of bed sneezing and coughing to shuffle to the window wondering who’d been shot. There was no body, no blood. And no sign of the morning. The dearly departed morning.
Time flies he whispered, watching a seagull glide lazily above the trees which dripped water onto the bucket lawn. A shrouded sun played hide and seek with some large black clouds in the dim day light. Wright nodded, thought this was an excellent idea and decided he’d hide and let others seek.
________________
‘What day is it?’ he asked, finally dressed and downstairs to the cat who was sitting on top of the television. The cat shrugged its shoulders. Didn’t know. Or wouldn’t say anyway.
Speech as cliche as his life, Wright enquired this of the frowning feline: ‘Cat got your tongue?’ he asked giggling, the smile of a cremated clown plastered across his face. (Wright had a speech impediment. His humour).
He sat on the tatty couch which cowered in the corner of the lounge. Displeased with the lack of cooperation, he threw a plump cushion at the mute cat who swayed deftly out of the way before sauntering off into the opposite corner wondering who wrote Wright’s dialogue. It sourly suggested Wright hire Woody Allen immediately but saw from the wide grin across an unshaven face that this idiot was a lost cause.
Wright, unlike every-one around him, seemed happy enough with his humour. Wright harboured delusions of adequacy.
On discovering some food behind the large velvet curtains that could serve as the perfect black-out material were the enemy ever to invade, Wright decided discretion was the better part of botulism and resisted the urge to toss whatever it was down a still dry throat.
Instead, he dragged himself into the kitchen to make some lunch and a cup of coffee. A good, strong, caffeine rich cup with five sugars, no milk and very black.
________________
‘Move thug,’ he commanded, speaking to a slow moving, dim whitted cat who, unlike the one he’d asked earlier, knew what day it was but would probably have refused to share the information with a slow moving, dim whitted Wright had he bothered to ask anyway. Which Wright didn’t.
Unperturbed, Serepax sauntered on, waddling ponderously over the blue carpet that cloaked the floorboards of the wood panelled hall.
Head in hands, Wright followed the steroid sized feline into the lounge room which was dark so he groped for the light switch. Couldn’t find it so played find the wall. Which he did. With his head. Bouncing off the wall, he discovered nose bleed rather than electricity. Or the light switch.
But his humiliation was still not complete as the velocity of the bounce sent him backward and Wright screamed in pain when his butt married the floor.
Head hurt, hung-over and horizontal again, he wondered why even the inanimate attacked him these days. Why even the wallpaper clubbed him.
Picking himself off the floor, he retaliated to such an unprovoked attack by pounding the wall with his boot and only desisted when his size nine had been caressed to a size three. Basically, when he’d done more damage to himself than the wall and his toes warned him to give up.
Foot damaged, head hurt, hung -over but not horizontal, he gave up kicking and took up hobbling, going outside to see what day it was propped atop one good leg and limping like Long John Silver. And gibbering like his parrot.
Wright limped from the porch, limped up the drive, limped toward the back door then limped back indoors none the wiser as to what day it was.
Slamming the fly-wire door vehemently behind him, he dragged the mangled foot along a tiled floor muttering something about life being a danger to health creeping crippled into the dull light of the kitchen. Then into the full weight of the cat and was freed from his feet and granted the floor.
The cat howled, Wright screamed. He hissed, she hissed, he sat, she shat then shoot across the kitchen making for the door before suddenly stopping and instead, headed for cover.
The cat crouched snarling under the kitchen table, her tail curling, tongue lashing, a wave of white whiskers twitching obviously displeased with the unsolicited implantation of Wright in its ribs. It hunched there spitting fluid disapproval at the fallen body then, bored with proceedings, got to her paws and strolled into the hallway, leaving her temper ‘til tomorrow and Wright to the laminex.
________________
From Wright’s perspective (somewhere below table level) the animal kingdom was becoming a bloody nuisance - a constantly down Wrighting danger to life and limb and he wondered if the inmates would notice if he disposed of them.
Thought that maybe if they did notice the disappearance, he could explain that some predatory Pied Piper had lured them away (Wright always lied when the truth would invariably get him into trouble). But he decided not to bother.
Grudgingly, he acknowledged that life wouldn’t be as tolerable without the animal kingdom (without dogs and cats and women) so he got up, slipped on the floor this time and was down again (booze tended to do this to him, made him incredibly clumsy. Gave him a bad dose of gratuitous gravity but at least being perpetually horizontal gave his life some sense of continuity).
Wright, rubbing a very sore posterior, watched suspiciously as the cat stuck its small rug head back through the door.
He told it to buggar off convinced the cat was laughing at him (paranoia was one of Wright’s favourite pastimes). Bloody cat he thought, then thought about skinning it, considering making a hat of the cat but decided against it, deciding it
would give him hayfever and the cat a cold.
________________
Actually Wright liked cats. Knew about cats. Knew they were less trouble than girlfriends and easier to house train than relatives and eminently superior company to most humans (and easier to drown if they weren’t).
There were three of them in Wright’s house: Cocaine, Serepax and Lassie.
Two were named in honour of his favourite pharmaceutical’s and the third cat after a dog and he genuinely liked them even though they attracted his allergy’s and got up his nose.
________________
Even now, sitting on his rump on the chill floor in the gloomy kitchen, Wright was amazed at just how prophetic his naming of the two younger ones had proven. It really did seem that the innate chemical properties of either pharmaceutical had insinuated, then consolidated its effect upon each cat.
It was quite weird for it was as if by some strange quirk of fate an invisible intravenous drip had regularly dispensed a twenty mgm. dose into once frail bodies ever since Nostradamus Wright had preordained their metabolic destiny.
In the case of Cocaine, his chemical predestine was to move at a frightening pace - to chase and hunt and exhaust all who watched her while Serepax, in catatonic contrast, was about as exhilarating as watching a rock reproduce for this slob wouldn’t move at any pace (and exhausted no-one aside from itself. Serepax was more Wright like....)
Nathan had first met the two of them one cold February morning a couple of years ago when, disguised as kittens, they’d arrived huddled together at the bottom of a flimsy box labelled “PAL DOG FOOD”. (Something in that Wright had thought at the time and was probably right for it was likely they would have become dog chow had not he and the family rescued these two tiny balls of soft snoring fluff).
So Wright became an instant father.
He thought that anyway, if they didn’t work out as pets he could always have them stuffed and give them away as Christmas presents (matching bookends) so, subsequent to their unannounced arrival, he named both of them in honour of a couple of addictive compounds. (There was no logic to this, it was just Wright’s idea of humour....and about as funny as a pair of kitten bookends would be).
