Susie and the Snow-it-alls

by Dark, Gregory

  “Oh? And, like, how?” asked Mimimi,

  “You’ve heard of ‘Snakes-and-ladders’?”

  “The board-game?” Mimimi asked.

  “Magnifique,” said Nespa again, again of the view, and shook her head in sadness at the monster’s inability to recognise it.

  “… Sure,” Mimimi continued. “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Well, I’m its cousin: ‘Snakes ‘r’ ladders’.”

  “Ah!”

  “It’s a powerful lot of cousins you have,” laughed O’Nestly.

  The monster ignored him. “You climb onto my head …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Walk along the length of my body …”

  “That’s quite a blueming walk,” said Bluemerang.

  “You get to my tail …”

  “Yes?” Miss Chief asked impatiently.

  “I raise the tail …” The monster paused again.

  “And?” Miss Chief impatiented again.

  “Whamo.”

  “Whamo?”

  “Whamo,” the monster confirmed. “Bob’s your uncle. Well, Bob’s my uncle actually, but who’s counting? Wham-… ” the monster paused between syllables, “ … -o. Excuse me. Feeding time. Monsters have to look too to the inner monster. Nothing goes in, nothing can come out.”

  “You mean,” Susie tenuoused, “all that gunk, it’s all …”

  “Gross!” Mimimi declared. “Gross, gross, gross.”

  “Don’t you go away, you hear?” the monster said.

  “Suddenly, moi, I no longer have hungry,” said Nespa. They watched fascinated as the giant creature started slithering from the loch down the far side of the mountain. Uncoiled, they saw just how long it was. Maybe half-a-mile, the size certainly of several football fields, the thickness of a tyre on a medium-sized van.

  The monster slithered. The gunge there was on the far side of the mountain was … well, mountainous: the waste from the Iffies-Andes-Orbutties. The monster slurped and scooped. Sated, it slithered back again. And immediately set about splatting all the adjoining countryside.

  “Gross,” said Mimimi again, giving a voice to that which all the others were feeling.

  The monster burped, then hiccupped, then sucked its very gummy teeth. And then it belched. The splatting had continued unabated. “Well?” eventually it asked.

  The Sufrogs looked at one another non-plussed. Susie spoke for all of them when, non-plussedly, she asked: “Well?”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “Well …” Susie chuckled, pointing at all the gunk – the unspeakable gunk – which lay between the Sufrogs and the monster’s head.

  “What does that mean?” asked the monster crossly. “That ‘well’?”

  “You can’t seriously expect …” Susie stammered nodding towards the gunk.

  “Gross,” said Mimimi unnecessarily.

  “It’s … well, it’s … you know,” Susie continued to stammer.

  “Gross,” said Mimimi again, unnecessarily again.

  “And you what?” asked the monster. “Expect me to put my head in it? That would be all right, would it?”

  “Well, it is yours,” Susie suggested.

  “It’s the Snow-it-alls’ actually, actually, the whole of the IAO’s. Those condemned to the Ughetto carry it as far as they can. Then muggins here scoops it up. It’s to stop the Snow-it-alls’ precious landscape from being uglied.”

  “But it uglies up your landscape,” said Susie.

  “But this landscape, lassie, is not Snow-it-alls’ landscape!”

  “No,” said Susie, “it’s yours.”

  “You can walk, you ken,” the monster continued ignoring her. “Walk and climb. Beelzebub’s boiler-house? That’ll look like a stroll in the park by comparison with the route you’d then have to take, but … well, it’s your choice. If you’d rather that than getting yourself a tiny bit dirty, then … well, not only will you die, but you deserve to.”

  “How deep is it?” asked Susie, surprising herself by her practicality.

  “Not deep,” said the monster. “Not at all deep. Well, not really deep, at any rate. Not really deep. Just moderately deep. Just a wee bit deep. Ankles plus a mite. That sort of deep.”

  “And the other way?” Susie asked.

  “Hard. Very hard. Hard and treacherous. And blocked by the not-yeti. Very hard, Susie. Very, very … what did I say? Treacherous.”

  “Only ankle deep?” Susie asked the monster.

  “Not deep at all,” replied the monster.

  “Only ankle deep,” Susie said to the others.

  “Your ankles, Susie, our blueming waists,” said Bluemerang.

  “In this context,” said O’Nestly, “waist-deep takes on a seriously different meaning.”

  “We will have to be carried. Do not,” said Miss Chief, “be invain.”

  “Insane,” said O’Nestly.

  “Whatever.”

  “It does, Susie, make sense,” suggested Nespa.

  “Oh? So, it’s only me who gets filthy, then?”

  “Only ankle deep,” suggested O’Nestly.

  “Only,” snootied Miss Chief, “ankle deep.”

  “Are you coming, lassie?” asked the monster.

  Susie pulled a face. “I’ve got to do it, haven’t I?” she asked she wasn’t quite sure whom. “All right, all right, get in,” she told them. They needed no second bidding.

  The monster continued its splatting. Susie gingered a foot towards the gunk. “Oh, to hell with it,” she said and marched straight into it.

  And sank up to her neck.

  Chapter 51

  “Yuck,” said one who spoke for them all.

  “Yuck,” said them all who spoke for one. “YYYYYYYYUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK!” yucked Susie.

  “YYYYYYYYUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK!” yucked Nespa. And O’Nestly, Miss Chief, Bluemerang and Mimimi, as one by one, they crawled up Susie’s chest, onto her shoulders and out of the gunk … the yucky, mucky, schlucky, gunky gunk.

  Marginally the Sufrogs were even worse off than Susie. She was covered in gunk from her neck down, but her neck and face were clear. The Sufrogs, on the other hand, were covered from the crown of their heads to the tip of the tip of their toes. Covered in it and coated in it.

  Despite the yuckiness of her own condition, that of the Sufrogs was funny. They looked ridiculous. Susie started to laugh. She started to laugh, almost uproariously. She roared with laughter, before – splat! – she herself fell head first into it.

  She splattered and she spluttered. Eventually her feet found some kind of purchase. And, Neptune-like, she rose, gasping and rasping, from the muddy mire. She wiped the goo from her eyes, and blinked furiously around her. “Who did that?” she furioused. “Who tripped me? Who did that?”

  It was now the Sufrogs’ turn to laugh.

  As has already been noted, of laughing at herself Susie was not a fan. She was indeed a naf of being laughed at. Her hackles would not rise, would not even mushroom, rather they tended to volcano, spewing waves of hatred, resentment, ire and rage to the four winds – plus any others that could have been chancing by. This time, too, she felt the waves surge – the Hawaii waves beloved by surfers. She felt the cauldron bubbling of hatred and resentment, ire and rage, eye of newt and tail of toad. It was simmering already, on the point of boiling. This time, though, rather than blitz forth, there was a pause. Eventually she managed to breathe out a brief snort, which, when it hoped to be thought of as a laugh, had ideas above its aspiration.

  “What now?” Susie asked of the monster.

  “What I said, lassie: you walk along the body to the tail. Watch out for the na’ar-do-whal.”

  “Na’ar-do-what?” asked Susie.

  “No, no, no, not na’ar-do-what, na’ar-do-whal,” the monster confirmed. “The thing that just pushed you into the mire. Come on, come on.”

  So they came on, came on. They came onto its chin, climbed up through the crags of its c
heeks, over the huge hill of its nose, between its eyebrows, over the crown of its head, slithered down its long neck. The monster straightened itself out, so it became less big-dipper like and so less of its bulk was underwater. Its spine was lapping the top of the tarn, and walking along its length was similar to walking on a beach – albeit one covered with seaweed: wet and very slippery.

  The good humour, however, that had occupied them since Susie’s splat continued to ease at least the Sufrogs’ path, and Susie could not not be infected by that. Within a remarkably short space of time, therefore, they had arrived at the monster’s tail. The monster itself turned its head round to check on their progress. It saw the Sufrogs had arrived. “Right,” it said. “Hang on tight.” And it started to raise its tail like a snake hypnotised by a charmer.

  Up, uP, UP went the tail.

  Up, uP, UP the Sufrogs went.

  They passed crags and cliffs, huge and perilous mountain faces, giant glaciers and monstrous causeways.

  “This is more blueming like it,” said Bluemerang with relish, noting that hundreds of feet were being gained.

  “Finally,” said Miss Chief, “a comforting mole of transport.”

  “That would be ‘mode’, Miss Chief.”

  “Certainly it is,” she said.

  “‘Course,” said Bluemerang, “personally I’d have welcomed the challenge, but … Well, maybe it’s not exactly the time for leisure pur-blueming-sui- ...”

  BAM!

  SPLAT!

  SPLASH!

  Before even Bluemerang had finished, he was bluster-blueming-ing in the water.

  There’d been a thud. Then a judder. Susie and her frogs had been pushed – bam – from their purchase – splat – into the loch’s – brrr – tarny tarnished water. Splash! This did wash some of the mire off them, however. It was an ill wind …, they tried to tell themselves.

  “I told you to watch out,” the monster upbraided them.

  “We did watch out,” Susie indignated back. “There was nothing to watch out for.”

  “Well, now you know there’s nothing to look out for, look out for it. I’m not going to carry on carrying you up, you ken.”

  They again clambered on board. Again the monster raised its tail. It was much more slippery this time. And they were much colder. They had to grip fiercely not simply to slide down the length of the monster’s tail, as if it were some kind of scaly fireman’s pole.

  Up, uP, UP reached the tail, past crags and escarpments.

  Up, uP, UP struggled the Sufrogs, seeking holds in the scales. BAM! SPLAT! SPLASH! Again they found themselves in the grimy brine. There was no laughing now. Not even a murmur of a gurgle. They were cold now, and soaked. Dispirited. The wind knocked out of their sails. Slammed out of their sails.

  “Not again! Why didn’t you look out?” asked the monster, its gruntle even more dissed than on the previous occasion.

  “Why didn’t any one of you look out?” asked Susie, as she spluttered, of all the Sufrogs and none. She again hoisted herself aboard, as bedraggled and ropy as any sea-drenched hawser. Now the monster’s scales seemed coated with grease.

  “I’m telling you, lassie: that is it,” said the monster. “If you get pushed in again, I’m off. It hurts, I tell you. Na’ar-do-whals shoving into you like that. Bam like that.”

  “It hurts us too,” said Susie.

  “We can’t see the blueming thing,” said Bluemerang.

  “That’s why,” laborioused the monster, “you’ve got to keep your eyes open for it.”

  “Let’s g-g-get g-g-going,” shivered Mimimi castanetly.

  “You holding on tight?” asked the monster. “I’m doing this once more. If you slip off, that’s it as well. For the very last time, okay?”

  “O-k-k-kay,” shivered Susie.

  Even as the tail juddered, before it started to rise, the Sufrogs found it hard to hold on. They dug into any blemish in the scale: Icicled fingers scratched in desperation at the sliding surface.

  Up, uP, UP went the tail.

  Up, uP, UP went the Sufrogs, slithering and scrambling around, desperate to keep out of the water, desperate not to have to climb all the crags and escarpments they were passing. So c-c-cold, so slithery, so …

  BAM! SPLAT! SPLASH! “I warned you,” said the monster. “Don’t say I did not warn you.”

  “You can’t leave us like this,” said Susie. “We’re freezing.”

  “You should have thought of that before,” the monster told her. It slithered below the surface, not like a snake but like a submarine.

  Still enloched, Susie and her frogs looked at each other, their found rarely more dumbed. They had no choice: they had to swim for it. Approaching the bank, they had no choice again: They had to cross the gunk in order to get onto dry land.

  Ragged and bedraggled, they dragged themselves frozenly onto a ground that would have been drier had it been snowless. There was a light wind. But, because they were wet, it scimitared through them like a sheaf of envelopes lacerating them with tiny stripes. They turned back to see a black-and-white blob bobbing about on the tarn’s surface. It stayed above the surface just long enough for them to see a laugh wrinkle his whole, smirking face.

  “It’s not funny,” Susie screamed at it.

  “It’s not blueming funny,” Bluemerang screamed.

  “Laughing at others’ mischaps …,” said Miss Chief.

  “-haps,” said O’Nestly.

  “… is never funny.”

  The surprise was so great that these words should have come from the source they did that, for a beat, the paso d-d-doble stopped. Then it resumed.

  “Now we’ve got the same distance to climb,” gloomied Mimimi, “but now we’re also cold and wet.”

  “And filzy,” said Nespa.

  “There are no short-cuts,” O’Nestly philosophised.

  “And tonight’s prize for stating the blueming obvious,” said Bluemerang, “goes to …”

  “We’ve got to keep going,” Susie told them. “Or we’ll simply freeze. And, yes, to death.”

  Chapter 52

  They started to trek. The wind continued to slash into them. Their frozen fingers continued to be rapped by the slightest scratch on knuckles that were magnifying-glasses of pain. Their clothes both froze to their skin and to their own creases. As they trudged they could hear the ice crackle on their wardrobe, as each step seemed to glue it more icily to their skin.

  “Do not be cheerful, O’Nestly,” said Mimimi. “Do not be cheerful.”

  “Things could be so much worse,” said O’Nestly. “And maybe the not-yeti’ll not turn out to be the enemy he’s vaunted to be.”

  “Could we, do you think, save our energy for climbing?” Susie suggested.

  The air was thinner here. Lungs were filling like paper-bags about to be banged. Each footstep was an enormous effort. Trudge became slog and slog became sludge. And progress seemed to become regress, and every step forward not to get them anywhere except not backwards.

  They sludged along the causeway they had passed on the mess-monster’s tail. It had all been so easy then. If only … if only …

  Upwards they sludged, with their paper-bag lungs and their leaden feet. Onwards they sludged, with brains telling them they were going backwards. Onwards. Upwards. They slogged and they slid. They trudged, they sludged, they stomped and straggled. They gasped for air, and cursed the cold and sought vainly to return circulation to frozen fingers.

  That evening the sun did not appear to sink towards the horizon so much as plummet. They had just decided to find their snowtel for the night when it suddenly became gloomy. Gloom immediately – so it seemed – ceded to dusk.

  Nespa now had no energy left to scurry. She exhausted towards a clump of snowwiches which seemed an awfully long way away. Bluemerang and Mimimi together found a shelter yet less robust than that of the night before. The huddle they that night formed was less packed, more limpid and liquid, the mutual comfort considerably
less comforting – or comfortable. They knew they were approaching death, and none of them was too good-tempered about it.

  Susie awoke with the first rays of the pre-dawn’s sun. She was amazed to find herself alive. She was even refreshed. Overnight the wind had dropped. Very soon the rays were thus able to penetrate. She felt the sun on her face, re-energising, re-vital-ising her face. She felt the sun rattling the handle of her body. She felt it banging against its door, felt it leaning against the door.

  And then Susie suddenly felt the sun barge down the door and cover her whole body with glow, paint her whole body with warmth and vibrancy, paint it thickly. Paint it with an impasto of all’s-wellness, a pasta – a lasagne – of get-up-and-go-ness: a healthy get-up-and-go-ness, one that wished on others the joy of living and of life.

  Susie understood at that moment that there were no losers greater in life that those who insisted they had to be winners. Winners – the polo-bears were right – can be created only by creating losers. By creating a loser you diminish yourself. Those who insist on being winners are thus far greater losers than those those winners would consider to be losers.

  There is, Susie understood at that moment, only one way to win – by enabling everyone to win. And everyone wins when everyone is filled with the sun, impasto’d with the life-force, lasagne’d with the glory of life.

  She shook the other Sufrogs awake. “We march forward,” she told them. “Shake a leg. In fact, shake two legs. Shake two legs, two arms, a head and a neck, in fact. Life,” she proclaimed, “is for living.”

  “Oh God,” said Mimimi, “someone else with O’Nestlyitis.”

  “The sun’s warm …,” Susie said.

  “We’ll trudge on a few feet more, break a few more ribs, break a few more nails …” such being far more consequential “… and what for? Just so that the not-yeti can eat us.”

  “What a seriously glorious day,” gloried O’Nestly.

  “Not in stereo,” gloomied Mimimi. “It’s more than flesh and blood can stand.”

  “A hamper of your finest snowwiches, Nespa,” Susie ‘ordered’. “And sharp about it. We’ve a life to live. We’ve all,” she said, “lives to live.”