Brutally Haggard, Part 6

Kiplough Sees the Sea

What door led Kiplough to the sea is unknown. He had lost count of how many doors he had opened and shut. For him it was like flipping through channels on a TV in the hotel room of the gods. The riot of strange scenes before him as he moved along was infinitely mesmerizing. The fact that he had to physically move from door to door kept the analogy from exactly conforming to that of the TV-watching experience. The walking also served to keep Kiplough conscious of the time passing and distance between him and his apartment growing. He told me later that it was definitely the last door he planned to try that opened upon the sea.
“The greenish tint to the light in the hallway had slowly changed to a bluish one. I said to myself, ‘This will be the last door I try for now.’ For, of course, I planned on coming back. Just then, however, I had to end my first foray into the machine.”
“Could you still see the open door to your apartment?” I asked Kiplough.
“No. The hallway slowly curved up so that at this point I couldn’t look back and see where I’d started out from.”
“Did that scare you?”
“It might have only a week before, but since my exposure to the Bolsisometric Indoctrinator, I had become very trusting of their technology and its ramifications.”
“So what happened when you opened that door?”
“I realized immediately that I was looking into the sea. I could see fish swimming around. What I didn’t realize, until I put my hand out, was that I wasn’t peering through a glass or a barrier, but was actually looking at a vertical surface of water.”
“Your hand went into the water?”
“Yes. I drew it back immediately, and was shocked to find that it wasn’t wet.”
“Interesting.” I said dramatically, doodling some random face on the notebook I held during out interview.
“Yes. Even more interesting was that when I put my head in I found that I could breathe underwater.”

Kiplough Enjoys A Snack

The snack Kiplough enjoyed was a large slice of pizza and a small glass of grape soda. As he ate he thought about the advance of music recording technology and how, in truth, the only real difference between the music of today; that is, the music he heard when he went out among his fellow citizens, and the music of the past; that is, he actually chose to listen to in the intimacy of his private moments, was that the bass was much louder in the former.
“Millions of dollars spent on research and development and this is the end result.” He said to a stranger sitting beside him at the counter of the snack stand. This stranger smiled indulgently and made motions with his hands, to indicate that he was deaf.
“I’ve not had that combination of food, since I was a child.” Kiplough told me.
“Pizza and grape soda?” I queried. My thoughts were on my own lost food favorites of early days.
“Yes. And I always has that combination while enjoying a new paperback I had purchased.”
“What kind of stuff did you read?”
“I was into series fiction. Men’s adventure series. ‘The Reactor’; “The Stalwart’; ‘The Fate Measure’, that was my favorite.”
“Did you ever read any Westerns?”
“No, couldn’t stand ‘em.”
Kiplough went on to compare his dislike of Westerns with his contempt for country music, and contrast his disdain for the working class vogue for rural stuff and willful ignorance with his enjoyment of the outdoors.
“It’s like my love of exercise, contrasted with my hate of sports.” I commented.
“Exactly.” Kiplough said bending down to take another homemade peanut butter cracker from the pile of them on the platter on the coffee table. I asked him had he had the pizza and grape soda combo since that day. He told me he had not.

Kiplough and Klaster Discuss Matters

“What matters shall we discuss?” Kiplough asked Klaster after they had each made himself comfortable in cushioned wicker chairs.
“Well,” mused Klaster, “What matters?”
“That’s what I’m asking.” Kiplough had selected hot tea as his beverage for the discussion; Klaster had chosen coffee.
“No, I’m making a little joke:’What matters?’ What matters to us right now?”
“Hmm. Are we to discuss what matters to us, or to all of the people of Shedge?’
“Or the peoples of the Bolsis.” Added Klaster thoughtfully.
“Hmm. Yes. I suppose our worldview is now greatly expanded.”
They fell silent for a moment.
“Beef stew smells like old man’s breath.” Klaster finally said.
“What makes you say that?” Kiplough asked.
Klaster considered.
“Just thought of it all of a sudden.”
“Is my… are you calling me an old man?” Kiplough changed what he had been going to ask.
“No!” Klaster insisted. “No, not at all.”
“In a way I guess I think of myself as an old man.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“I’m twenty-six.” Retorted Klaster.
“Ten years.” Kiplough intoned. “What a difference ten years makes. Ten years ago I was a terrible drunk. I lived with my parents in a pretend house made of painted cardboard high inside the city wall. I was working for the municipal water supply, meter reader’s sector. It was not a good time.”
“Let’s see. Ten years ago I was sixteen.” Klaster responded eagerly to the exercise. “I was working as a bagboy at Grocerrefuge.”
“Really? I used to shop there. Do you remember me? I used to buy a lot of cooking wine on Sundays.”*
*Some parts of Shedge do not allow the sale of alcohol on Sundays.

Excerpt #3 From ‘Mealy-Mouthed’

Returning to the well by night, Rectanglo brought with him a briefcase full of items he might need on a journey of indeterminate duration. These were such things as reading material, socks, hats, and cans of beans. Looking about carefully by the dim light of the stars that mysteriously shone through the walls of that metafictional world. Rectanglo put his legs over the side of the well. With a smile at the wild promise of novelty, he dropped down, down, striking the surface of the water with his boots.
He had suspected that he could breathe underwater, given the right conditions, of course, and this he now found to be true. How long he swam down he was not sure. Time passed in a different fashion under the water than above it. He felt within a few minutes, however, the sides of the well expand until he was in a large open chamber lit by a dim greenish light.
Although technically swimming, he found after a while that he was actually walking, much like a cartoon character ambulating across a perspectiveless, monochromatic field.
“This is fun.” Went through his mind.
Eventually he came to a door, large and elaborate, set into what he assumed was the wall of his world. The immense doorknob was not easy to turn. Without his amazing strength there is no way he could have turned it. More strength was required to pull the door open after the knob had been turned. Rectanglo was at the limits of his powers in doing so.
With a rush he was sucked out into the black void, along with all of the water, probably, he suddenly thought in a panic, all the water in the world. Fighting free of the torrent, he found a place high up on the exterior surface of the translucent wall from where he could watch the water spreading out for what seemed half an hour. As the last rivulet dribbled out along with a couple of large fish and a tumble of toy boats, Rectanglo looked around at the object he sat upon. He was shocked to see that it was no bigger than a barn of relatively small size.
“A relatively small sized barn.” He said aloud dubiously.

Darnana Goes to the Store

The store Darnana patronized on the morning of the twelfth day of the month of Wasa, according to the Hurrer calendar, was Mobley’s, a chain owned by the Crabbintree Consortium. Passing by a young female Hurrer (or Hurra) holding her pet sabbij (a miniature one, of course) on a leash, Darnana thought wistfully of her own days of youth and freedom and what they might have led to, had she only been less impatient and more wealthy.
A human male (or trotdat in the nearly defunct Hurrer tongue), a fairly rare sight in this town of Hellowhale, was standing by the free political newsletter dispenser as Darnana, grocery list in hand, approached the door.
“Excuse me, madam.” Said the man.
“Hmm?” Darnana barely vocalized.
“I’m conducting a survey on behalf of the Flapdash Research Institute, an independent think tank based in Comaton. Would you mind answering a few questions?”
Darnana noticed he held a spiral-bound notebook in his hand.
“Do I have to give my name?” She asked.
“Yes, but that’s only for purposes of cross-referencing and protection against falsification.”
“Forget it.” Darnana passed on into the store.
She made her selections rapidly, always choosing the cheapest brands, no matter what her previous experiences had taught her about taste and quality. Better to save pennies now, she thought, and deal with any inconvenience than to wallow in luxuries.
As she exited the store she saw that the young hurra she had passed earlier was now talking to the man, only she wasn’t answering any questions, but asking them.
“So you’ve been to Comaton.” Was the gist of her framing the next question. “Have you actually seen Paraftylloben with your own eyes?”
Darnana imagined a sexual coupling between the young hurra and the man. Although unnatural, such unions were possible, especially to today’s immoral generation.

Grif Oberon Shakes off the Poison

The young woman Grif Oberon had went to bed with the night before did not wake up as Oberon grunted with pain and thrashed about. It took him falling to the floor to rouse her from her pony-and-cotton-candy dreams.
“Where am I?” She asked groggily.
“Help me.” Oberon commanded in a croak that had the woman been awake enough to analyze it, would have revealed the true extent of the powerful manager’s age.
When she finally fumbled to Oberon’s side she found him quivering spasmodically.
“What’s wrong?” She cried.
What was wrong was that Oberon had been poisoned. Someone, apparently at the party he and the woman had been to only hours earlier, to judge by the onset of the symptoms, had slipped sewerfish venom into something Oberon had consumed.
“Most likely a strong-tasted drink.” Explained the doctor to Mikla, the young woman, as the sun came on outside the hospital.
“He had a tequila sunrise at the party.” She said in a low, tired voice.
“That would be ideal.” Said the doctor. “You can go in and see him now. We’re keeping him awake for the time being with stimulants until the bulk of the toxins are dissipated.”
“I guess I’d better.” She resigned herself to a few more minutes of wakefulness.
“Thanks for hanging around.” Oberon dismissed the woman once his personal attorney arrived. Who manages managers? In the case of Grif Oberon it was an attorney named Flint Dogwhip.
“I want whoever did this broken like a saltine.” Oberon was fierce.
“He will be.” Promised Dogwhip. “Do you think the girl had anything to do with it?”
“Her? She’s as stupid as she is willowy. No, it was some jealous prick. I want him found.”
“By the way, Ben’s been calling.” Dogwhip said after a pause. “But he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted.”

Mr. Groaf Searches the House

It wasn’t like Mr. Groaf to panic. If asked, he wouldn’t call what he was doing panicking.
“I am merely responding promptly to external stimuli.” He would say, had he time to consider, which he hadn’t, let’s face it. The more the span of time increased between his discovery that Mavez Abuelia was missing and her recovery, the less of a chance that she actually would be recovered.
“Recovery—discovery; discovery—recovery.” Went absurdly through Groaf’s head over and over as he went through the treetop house.
One of the bodyguards entered the room where he found the Director General on his knees looking behind the sofa.
“Sir.” He announced his presence.
“Well?” Groaf demanded.
“Mrs. Groaf is not in the house, sir. None of the servants nor any of the neighboring residents report seeing her leave.”
“Mrs. Groaf!” Groaf thought contemptuously. Mavez had insisted on keeping her own last name.
“For my career.” She had said.
Groaf condensed all of his extensive mental dissertations on this aspect of their relationship to the single, somewhat irrational thought “What career?” as he got to his feet.
“She expressed a desire to see the forest floor.” He said, leaving the obvious conclusion to be drawn from that to linger in the air like the slow-brewed fart of a beer-drinking fat man.
“She wouldn’t just go out on her own without telling anyone.” Was the bodyguard’s first thought, quickly countered by a second: “Well, she is a journalist.”
“Gather all the guards.” Groaf ordered. “Tell Timothy Grade I want to see him before we leave.” Timothy Grade was the junior staffer at the honeymoon compound that day.
“We’re going to the forest floor?” The guard asked.
“Yes, and I’m going with you.”

Pellis Eaton Kisses a Man

“You’re a candy bar of consolation.” Pellis Eaton declared as he took Ben Stupor Little’s face in his hands and kissed him with a mixture of playfulness, delight, and lust perfected over the course of a rumored sixty years.
“Thanks.” Little said after the kiss, as his face was released. What he had said or done to earn the praise is not known, but what had motivated the kiss was obvious enough: Little’s beauty was a throwback to an earlier era, a time when Eaton himself had been young. Although being paid well for photographing Little, the older man would almost have done it for free.
The camera Eaton was using on this occasion was not one of the expensive new ones with all their complicated gimmickry, but an old box camera with a photographic plate the size of a toilet bowl lid. The photographer claimed that he had only used this camera for three previous subjects, each of them movie stars of the golden age, each now as dead as that by-gone time.
Little protested that he was only a TV celebrity, one with a cult following at best.
Eaton wanted to protest as well, but instead said,
“You must get into films as soon as possible. Have you anything lined up?”
“I’m looking into playing Toadsgoboad in a film Dalton Deet wants to do.”
“Toadsgoboad, eh?” Eaton shook his head and smiled, thinking about who knew what. Ancient history? Classical aesthetics? The collapse of the Ivy League look? The back cover of Revolver?
Little was wearing a red turtleneck sweater made of the finest wool fibers known: those of the chinchilla walrus. Over this he wore a mustard-colored suede sport coat with a pin stuck in the lapel. The pin bore a picture of Captain Beefheart. Little’s slacks were pocketless bellbottom hiphuggers of ice blue. For purposes of photography he was standing barefoot on the rug, his black shoes and socks to one side near various props that would not be utilized.

Ned Feese Feeds His Ego

Sitting in the hidden listening chamber, Ned Feese could hear everything that was said in the room just outside.
“What do you think of his latest production?” Was the question he had instructed one of his flunkies to ask of the persons gathered. The first to answer this was an older woman, a duchess.
“I think it’s marvelous. Every production is better than the one before.” She said with all the dignified assertion her aged voice could summon.
“Really, Mama? I thought you said he sucked.” Said her grown, unmarried, and apparently unmarriable daughter.
“Phillipe Goosen suck? Never! I never made such an allegation!” The duchess’ silver tiara shook atop her pile of gray hair as she made her denial.
“No, no, madam.” Laughed a slick-haired adventurer. “We are speaking of Ned Feese, whose latest shallow piece of inconsequentia we have just seen the first act of.”
“Thank you for clearing that up in your own inimitable way, Claude.” Said another man, slightly stooped and bearing an ancient dueling scar on his ruddy cheek.
“Ned Feese?” The duchess barked. “Why the fellow is a hack! I have again and again given him the benefit of the doubt, only to be disappointed once more at his obviously expressed and dreadfully overcooked populism!”
“Then why did we come tonight?” Asked the daughter.
“Because, Charlotte, I wouldn’t keep you from your simple pleasures for the world.” The duchess puckered her lips as if making kissy faces at a small, pampered dog.
“If you will all excuse me,” Said the flunky unnecessarily, as no one paid him any attention. “I must go and see if the popcorn machine is plugged in.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with a shaking hand and exited quickly.
Inside his chamber Ned Feese giggled painfully, trying no to make a sound.

The Bird Hunts for Work

Using the beak adapter, the Bird laboriously filled out yet another employment application, this one at the Municipal Department of Extramortuary Speculation.
Mr. Galligook took the completed form and face it a cursory perusal.
“No previous work experience?” He asked with a puzzled face.
“That’s right.” Said the Bird nervously.
Mr. Galligook flipped a page.
“No education either?” He snorted.
“Well, as you can see in the box marked ‘Extra Remarks’ I did attend a class at the university.” The Bird gestured with a feather.
Mr. Galligook scanned the short paragraph.
“For one day?” He said.
The Bird said nothing in reply. He had received much the same reaction at the other government agencies and departments at which he had applied. He was beginning to think he would have to lower himself to bagboy, a job Klaster had told him about in some detail.
“Well, Mr. Bird.” Galligook said. “I’ll submit this application to our personnel department and, if it meets with their approval, you should hear something in a couple of days.” He smiled and dropped the form on a pile of papers to his left.
The Bird knew what that meant. He would hear nothing. Out in the street he walked with head bent low, heading aimlessly towards a future he could not foresee. Someone shouted behind him. He turned to look.
“You! The Bird!” Mr. Galligook was jogging towards him. “I am so sorry.” The man said when he had caught up with him. “One of the senior men here happened to look over your application just after you left. I didn’t realize you were an actual bird.” With these words and a friendly smiled Mr. Galligook cajoled the Bird into returning to the building, this time to the office of Mr. Gray, who sent Galligook on his way and bid the Bird have a seat.