Greegs & Ladders

by Mitchell Mendlow

  “Ahem… hello?” he said as he parted the tent flaps. A rank stench emerged from within. Evidently Greeg-keepers don’t live much better than Greegs.

  “What do you want?” snarled Reg.

  “Haven't you been watching any of the events going on outside?”

  “No… I’ve been in here watching my show.”

  Rip looked around the tent and saw nothing on which a show could be watched. Not even an imaginary show like schmold TV. All that lay inside the tent were a few tables with dead things placed on top of them. Reg did very little in his spare time aside from eating the nearby population of Crabbits into extinction. Of their skulls he made tables on which to place dead Crabbits.

  “You didn’t see the chaotic mob right outside your tent? I think we even shattered the planetary record for most teleportations in a nanosecond. You must have felt some of the land-quakes?”

  “No, I’ve been in here watching my show, like I said.”

  “I’ll fill you in,” said Rip.

  He went on to tell a long rendition of everything that just happened. Being that it just happened, I’ll skip ahead. But know that Rip told the story with his usual eloquence and exciting flair for showmanship.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” laughed Reg. He banged his hands against the table. Bone fragments were scattered across the mud floor. “You can’t teach a Greeg anything! You can’t get them to be clean! You’ve surely lost your fleet of ships to this Elizabeth guy.”

  “I disagree,” said Rip. “It can be done. I will transform a Greeg within two years!”

  “What’s all this got to do with me anyway?” asked Reg.

  “I need one of your Greegs. How else am I going to win the bet?”

  “One of my Greegs?” asked Reg. His red eyes glowed darker crimson, as they were prone to do when he grew upset. “Not a chance can you have one of my Greegs! I’m barely getting by with the low number I have right now. I don’t even have enough for a double-digit orgy, and the tourists are only paying lots for the big group scenes. There’s no way you can have one of my Greegs.”

  “Think of it like an investment. I’ll give you the Greeg back after two years, regardless of whether I win the bet or not,” lied Rip. “But imagine I do win the bet… you’ll suddenly find yourself in the ownership of an intelligent, clean and presentable Greeg. Never in their history have Greegs garnered those adjectives. Think of the rare attraction you’d have on your hands if you owned such a specimen. Tourists would flock from the farthest dimensions, even the invisible one, just to have a look at this Greeg. You could charge whatever you wanted for admission.”

  Reg grew interested. “And if you don’t win the bet?”

  “You’ll still have your Greeg back, after only a short two year rental period. And even if I don’t entirely transform the Greeg, I’m sure that in a couple years I can at least teach it enough tricks to greatly enhance your outdated show.”

  “Hmm… I suppose the show is a bit outdated.”

  “A bit? Are you kidding me?” said Rip, reaching the climax of his suave hustle. “The Greeg show is done. It needs something new. Everyone’s seen Greegs having sex, it’s just not that crazy any longer.” He couldn’t have been lying any more. Greeg carnivals were more popular than ever throughout the universe. Just not on the rundown, out-of-the-way planet Reg had chosen to live on.

  The painfully slow cogs of Reg’s rotted brain began to turn. You could almost hear his thoughts creaking, like the sound of a thousand fingernails scratching The Floating Chalkboard of Elbereth (something that has actually been done, much to the chagrin of those now-deaf folk who forgot to wear earplugs while doing it).

  “If I introduced something new to the Greeg show... I could get rich?” he asked.

  “That’s right!”

  Reg lingered over this incredulous thought. “I’ll do it!” he finally shouted. “You can have one of my Greegs!”

  “You won’t regret it,” said Rip. “When can I take the beast?”

  “Right away!”

  “Good. There is only two years after all. But that’s still enough time.”

  “I suddenly believe in you,” said Reg, feeling the stoned-like effects of Rip’s powerful methods of deception. “You seem like a creature of great intellect.”

  Dr. Rip T. Brash the Third was indeed a creature of great intellect, however this assumption would not have been made if Reg were a creature capable of the sense of smell, as ordinarily no creature of great intellect would have on their breath the scent of 12 Crammington Krish Fortinis.

  Reg led Dr. Brash to the Greeg cage.

  “You can have that one,” he said, pointing at Zook. “I have suspected he is slightly more intelligent then the other Greegs.”

  “Why do you suspect that?”

  “He bangs his face against the bars slightly less often than the others.”

  CHAPTER 15

  a Pair of Old Friends Take in a Show

  The crowd laughed and howled and rolled around on the ground. This would never get old. Nothing made them feel better about themselves than seeing a Greeg be a Greeg, and knowing for certain that they were not a Greeg.

  Naddy had, in no particular order, and in the last hour:

  Attempted to eat his left arm

  Realized it was futile considering his lack of teeth

  Strained his neck muscles trying to look at his own asshole

  Tried to pop his neck back into place

  Considering his neck hadn’t been popped out of place, suffered severe damage to his spine.

  For a brief moment of self-awareness, Naddy actually realized that he was a source of mockery. He felt the disdain and condescension from the carnival goers. He paused for a second and looked out pathetically. His eyes asked the carnival goers if this was really the way things should be. He questioned why they were so much better than him, and if so, why did they simply point and laugh instead of helping him be like them? He hadn’t chosen to be a Greeg, he was simply born one. The carnivalites hadn’t actually accomplished anything more than him, other than not being born a Greeg. For a nanosecond, he was acutely aware of all of this and he begged with his eyes to be taken out of the cage and to be one of them. His plea faintly registered with no one and was instantly forgotten when he shook off the silly thought at the sight of the female waking from a nap. With no competition from Zook, Naddy had her all to himself. He barely even tried any more. He bumbled over to her side and farted directly in her face. Then he punched himself a few times in the mouth and kneed an inanimate object. Lacking any semblance of self-esteem, the female shrugged and pulled out the procreational paraphernalia.

  As the act of sex began it should be noted that I lied a little bit in the previous paragraph. The plea did not entirely fail to register with all of the carnival gawkers. There was one creature who felt a connection and shared a moment of understanding with Naddy. This same creature was now feeling very strong emotions stirring up inside him as the first attempt went down. While it is true that he was hooting and hollering with the rest of the crowd, he couldn’t help but feel a gut wrenching volcano of bubbling anger, longing, jealousy and resentment churning around in his stomach. He tried to dismiss it at first, but he could not deny the fierce reality of the feelings. He surely, undeniably wished more than anything that he could tear off his clothing, go into the cage and challenge the lowly Greeg. He found the disgusting female inexplicably attractive beyond his wildest fantasies. All he wished to do was to rub feces and dirt and bodily fluids all over himself and engage in acts of psychotic and nonsensical physical violence towards the other male. Somehow he knew this would ensure he would get to be the one making the first attempt right now. He didn’t know why or how he knew this was important, but he did.

  “Savages, hey?” A familiar voice came from beside him, more prodding him than genuinely asking the question.

  “Yes, yes, savages.”

  “Everything about them is savage
, primitive and borderline retarded… except when they do this. Look at that, look at how they do it. More elegant and caring than a barrel full of Vibrulant Oolorians.”

  “Still doesn’t make them any less savage or dumb though.”

  “Not at all. Just a bizarre and random fluke. No real logical explanation for it.”

  A brief pause, and then the familiar voice continued.

  “You’re right though, every Greeg is an idiot, a moron, a complete and total twit.”

  “You can say that again… every, single, one. Good for a laugh, and nothing more. Crammington Krish?”

  “You bet,” said Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third.

  “My treat,” said the former Greeg formerly known as Zook.

  CHAPTER 16

  Planetary Relativity, Astrospeciology and Fleeing in Haste

  It was now 1.7 years after Rip had made his outlandish bet that he was about to win. It should be noted that Rip, being the clever bloke he was, had actually duped the audience considerably. As any seasoned traveller of time and space can tell you, a year is a very relative term. On the planet Schmick for example, a year is about the time it takes you to read:

  This.

  There you go, another Schmickian year gone by. By the time you next see a period a whole decade will have gone by. The planet Schmick is about four inches away from the sun it revolves around. Well, it doesn’t actually revolve around it so much. Not all planets revolve around their suns. Not all go in circles, or ellipses, or ovals. Some make boxes, zig-zags, figure 8’s, loop-dee-loops, jittery slaloms, loping spirals, corkscrews and spastic shuffles. Some planets interact with one another as they go about their sun; performing doe-see-does or bumping and jostling as they go. Others go directly at their sun, these are called “suicidal planets.” Some don’t move at all. They are referred to as “Lazy Planets.” Some super intelligent, lazy planets have risen up against their sun, banded together and made the sun revolve around them. These are called “Union Planets.” Others, like Schmick, disappear and reappear in multiple places around their sun at a dizzying speed. This makes it appear as if they are actually occupying every single space around the sun at all times. They are doing exactly this. Schmick is not really a planet and its sun isn’t technically a sun. But there’s no point in trying to explain that to you.

  Other planets crawl at a pace that would make Grovulant Sloggerz look like Riptulating Froppers. These planets never use the year as a standard of time. Instead they prefer to time things out in general, ball-park phrases like “When that thing happens later on.” These planets are absolutely useless to anyone looking to fuel up their space ship, as clearly no investment banker could ever thrive in such a lackadaisical environment.

  So, being that the only sort of creatures who would travel to a remote planet to watch Carnival Greegs with a notorious, gambling drunkard are not the sort of creatures who know an awful lot about the relativity of time and space, and being that Dr. Rip T. Brash was acutely aware of this fact, and that 2 years on this particular planet was longer than the lifespan of most of the witnesses at the Carnival… he was right on schedule to keep his priceless fleet of Obotron 7 Space Ships. That is, had he not already lost them in a much wilder and exotic bet to an Astrospeciologist ‘friend’ of his the next night… which he most certainly had.

  It was all in good fun for Rip. He obtained and lost priceless items at such a staggering pace it barely even registered. What did register was that he was now sitting at the bar with his Astrospeciologist ‘friend’ and a former Greeg. The Greeg had no memory or recollection that he was once a lowly, degenerate Greeg. The Astrospeciologist was a specialist in Greegs. He was fascinated by them. As was Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third. The Astrospeciologist was telling Rip his latest theory on The Greegs. Through his constant reading and research of seemingly infinite sources of information, he had come to the conclusion that there was a planet buried deep in the 59 sunned district of Herb where Greegs were the dominant species. Through absolutely no knowledge whatsoever, and a desire to contradict anything for the sake of a good drunken wager, Rip proclaimed this was both ridiculous and impossible. Rip immediately and loudly bet all of the possessions of a fellow named Jim he was about to own that such a place did not exist. The Astrospeciologist, whose life’s work and lavish lifestyle had been entirely funded by being a ‘friend’ of Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third, agreed wholeheartedly to the wager. They would leave in the morning in a shiny fleet of Obotron 7 space ships in search of the mystical All Greeg Planet. Or as Rip put it “To search for yet more proof that you're an idiot, and I am right.”

  The planet they were currently drinking on being the planet that it was, the morning was quite a bloody long time away. The former Greeg formerly known as Zook being the former Greeg formerly known as Zook that he was, reacted strangely to the news of possibly going to a possibly existing All Greeg Planet. He picked up the bar tender with one hand and hurled his body across the bar into a group of very surprised Meditating Mockriffs. This unprovoked outburst of violence was unheard of outside of a Greeg cage, and so the reaction from the other creatures in the bar was a combination of shock and anger.

  “Hey, how about we leave right now instead?” said the Astrospeciologist.

  “Damned fine idea,” said Rip, stealing several bottles of Crammington Krish Fortinis from behind the bar for the trip. As they ran away from the angry and hotly pursuant mob, Rip turned to the former Greeg formerly known as Zook and asked, “Why’d you do that back there old friend?”

  “Must be that last CKF,” said the former Greeg formerly known as Zook.

  Nowadays he was known as Krimshaw, the only real, actual friend of Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third. As the priceless fleet of Obotron 7 Space Ships took off in haste, Krimshaw took a peek out of the window and saw Naddy making his eighth attempt with the female Greeg. For reasons unbeknownst to him, this inspired him to inflict serious and irreparable damage to the ship’s guidance system, sending it rocketing through space and time blindly. Generally, this is not a good idea.

  This time was no exception.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Finding of a Very Rare Book Propels our Adventure

  Blindly hurtling a fleet of Obotron ships through space is a very expensive thing to do. Each of the 19 ships required to make a proper fleet is a gas-guzzling, top-luxury cruiser with room for hundreds of rich aliens. Why, then, do three measly people require an entire fleet for their mission? They don’t. It is an insanely wasteful thing to do.

  Investment Banker Preservationists (or IBP, the radicals who perpetually picket outside the homes of people who own very expensive space ships) would be horrified to learn that an entire fleet of Obotrons was being used for the transport of three people. Anyone who cared about following the charts for Investment Banker populations would notice a major dive in the local supply every time the fleet made a pit stop. When Krimshaw mentioned the idea of just bringing along one of the ships, to help out with preservation and all, Dr. Rip and the Astrospeciologist laughed and agreed it wouldn’t be right to break up the set. Legions of staff were put aboard each ship, and were happy to learn there was nobody to serve. They were especially pleased to realize the towels would never get used, and could thus remain in their original factory sealed state.

  The Astrospeciologist (who shall henceforth be known as Wilx, because that is his name) was busy searching through the ship archives, which included catalogued maps of generally most all of time and space. He attempted to set the ship on some sort of coherent path. It was not an easy thing to do.

  Krimshaw continued to gaze out of the epic space-viewing window, wondering about this mysterious planet of Greegs and how he would feel if it really existed, and if they actually found it.

  Rip was sitting down, befuddled. He gently cradled the last stolen bottle of Crammington Krish Fortinis. The other two had been smashed in the madness of the getaway. Some might say it is an impressive feat to retain even one unbroken bottle in the process
of running from an angry and hotly pursuant mob, but Rip saw the uncharacteristic loss of the other two bottles as a veritable sign that he might be losing his masterful touch in life.

  “Can we stop for more?”

  “We’ve just left,” replied Wilx.

  “You could turn around.”

  “To the planet with the angry and hotly pursuant mob? We’re lucky enough they’re not following us. Most of them are too poor to own spaceships.”

  “I thought Obotron ships were meant to be first class,” said Rip. “How can they not have any Crammington Krish Fortinis?”

  “There are countless crates of CKF stored in the cargo ship following the rear of the fleet. But it takes a few days for them to catch up to us when we want something.”

  “What sort of civilized planet do you think we’ll land on before then?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Wilx. “Right now the ship is on a distressing course, thanks to Krimshaw’s seemingly random destructive behaviour. If I don’t correct the trajectories, we might find ourselves drifting into the invisible dimension.”

  “I hear that place is like an affirmation of life.”

  “No, it’s one of the worst places of all time.”

  As Wilx pored over the infinite catalogues of star charts and dimensional gateways, Rip leaned over his shoulder and pitifully tried to make sense of the whole thing. Wilx was so adept at flipping rapidly through the charts that all Rip could see was a dizzying array of kaleidoscopic imagery. Rip sneezed violently.

  “Hey!” said Wilx. “Cover your mouth! You’re getting me drunk.”

  “Sorry,” said Rip, as he took a few steps backwards.

  Wilx was well aware the sneeze of someone drunk on Crammington Krish Fortinis is extremely contagious, causing brutal intoxication in otherwise sober people who happen to be standing close enough to inhale said sneeze. Wilx felt his mind go woozy and his eyes go hazy, and he was only slightly aware of his stomach having a near fatal organ-quake.