The Planet of the Pompous Pillbugs

Commander Brogan Lannrat gave a determined grimace, displaying the square, well-formed teeth that had previously attracted favorable attention from more than a few highly skilled Lounge Dancers on the Planet of the Green Lagoons.  “No puffed-up pillbug is going to look down his nose at me.”

“Pillbugs don’t have noses,” noted crew biologist Mecky St. John.

“I don’t care what part of anatomy they might or might not look down from, they won’t be looking down from it at me.”  Lannrat stood, hands on hips, at the entrance to the Prime Bugorium, the elaborately ribbed and segmented bug government headquarters on the Planet of the Pompous Pillbugs.  The purple-and-black granite of the planet’s surface spread out in undulations behind him like series of giant, oversize, rocky ear canals.

“The pomposity is something you have to accept.  It’s a part of their DNA,” explained Mecky St. John.

He and Lannrat had traveled to the Bugorium gates on their Bounce Bike, Space Command emissaries on a secret mission to investigate Pillbug intentions.  Space Command intelligence officers had picked up unsettling noises in the cyberverse about Pilbug territorial prerogatives, setting off alarm bells at Blouder Base.

“After their evolutionary triumphs over the small-giraffe, this planet’s pillbugs have an attitude problem that’s insufferable,” Mecky explained, in that nearly insufferable, wheedling crew biologist voice of his.  “They’re the only bugs within three systems that possess the power of speech.”

“Fortunately I possess the power of ignoring speeches,” said Lannrat.  He gave his signature commanding guffaw, which tended to intimidate anyone with a less robust sense of humor in his immediate environs.  “Now let’s see just how nervously these bugs quail when an authentic, full-bodied human challenges them head on.”

Lannrat strutted toward the guard-bug standing sentry at the Bugorium entrance, his space boots stomping the granite with the full force of the militaristic chieftain that he considered himself.

The guard bug wobbled slightly on his lowest legs, a sleek, imported black helmet sheathing the upper part of his body.  Two of his many upper-right legs twitched restlessly, sending the spear he held into wobbly gyrations.  “Who approaches the Bugorioum?” the huge arthropod asked, in a somewhat rusty voice since it was pretty infrequent that any visitors actually approached to even try gaining entrance to the massive grey complex.

“Humans,” sneered Lannrat.  “I suppose you’ve heard of them?  Although the elevated, sophisticated nature of our affairs rarely leads to an intersection of our world with yours.”

The pillbug twirled his lance in an impressive flourish with seven or eight legs until it’s glinting point was just a pillbug-leg length from Lannrat’s check.   “What is your business at the Bugorium?”

“Haha!”  Lannrat laughed, as though the deadly pillbug lance was little more to him than the plaything of an inconsequentially rolling, insignificant, dirt-speckled millipede.  “Very entertaining!  I salute you on your twirly skills, your dexterous thrusting.  It’s a veritable floorshow for the visitors: Pillbugs on Ice!”

Mecky St John trotted up, coughing into his hand with exaggerated embarrassment.  “You’ll have to excuse my Commander, oh Pillbug officer.  He’s not accustomed to dealing with the more intelligent members of the gargantuan bug community.”

“Don’t apologize for me, Mecky,” Lannrat snorted, knocking aside the pillbug’s lance with a jerk of an arm.  “This bug needs to learn his proper place in the cosmos, below the great chain of human beings.”

“Commander Lannrat,” Mecky warned, “I don’t think it’s advisable…”

But it was already clear that Lannrat’s move had been inadvisable, since the guard was flailing all of his ungrounded limbs and running straight at the Commander, shaking his helmet and emitting a piercing tone that made a typical whistle seem as low-pitched as a foghorn.  Lannrat stood his ground, and was just about to experience a full collision with the onrushing bug flesh when the pillbug halted.  A crackle of energy had darted through his helmet and with this signal the bug had ground to a stop.

A voice boomed with authority from a helmet-implanted speaker.  “Guardsman, escort the intruders to the Bugorium Auditorium.”

“Haha,” Lannrat chortled again.  “They think we’re common intruders.  Wait until they realize they’re dealing with superior beings here.”

“Commander, I don’t think you understand…”

As the guard turned to lead them into the Bugorium, Lannrat gave a light kick to his shell.  “Show us the sights, bug man.”

Just minutes later, Lannrat and St. John found themselves in the large, but clammy, ceremonial auditorium, adorned with a dozen detailed sculptures of great pillbugs of yore, most of which, to the untrained human eye, looked remarkably alike one another.

Brogan Lannrat stood in the middle of the floor, hands on hips, looking up scornfully at the stone table where a council of especially sententious-looking pillbug potentates sat in a semi-circle.  “You call this a central Bugorium?  Ha.  I’ve seen more ornate arthropodean chambers in my niece’s Insect Farm.”

Mecky St. John was next to Lannrat, trying to keep a lid on his frightful quivering at the concerted pillbug power arrayed against them.  “That attitude may not be our best approach, Commander.”

The pillbug dignitaries seemed to agree with St. John, since they proceed to make munchy, gabbling, pillbug-language sounds across the table to each other.  Finally, the central pillbug turned to the intruders and addressed them in a heavily accented speech that sounded like a man speaking through a tiny megaphone packed with pebbles and cottage cheese.

“You have brought your gangly, unfortunate people-bodies to our planet without the proper identification, visa cards or recommended two-week vacation package vouchers.  Why should we not immediately consign you to our Sponge Prisons?”

“Ha,” reiterated Lannrat.  “The Sponge Prison hasn’t been built that can hold Brogan Lannrat.  You clearly haven’t heard of my escape from the Solitary Maximum Spongiform Security facility on the Planet of the Armored Earthworms.”  Lannrat threw some vigorous air-punches to demonstrate how he’d been able to damage his holding cell’s sponge walls.

The pillbugs made more gabbling and gargling sounds that might’ve been the bug equivalent of laughter.  “Your body motions are diverting,” allowed the head bug.  “But they do not address our question.  Why have you come here, all unbidden, to soil our domain?”

Lannrat gritted his perfectly even and remarkably square teeth.  These pillbugs simply wouldn’t let up on the pomposity.  “Listen, you puffed up, overlimbed ambulatory pebble.  Space Command polices this galaxy and we’ve picked up way too much chatter lately on your insidious moon-gobbling plans.  As far as we’re concerned, you primitive talking fossils already take up way too much galactic real estate.”

The bug bigwig was unpleased.  “Your insolence is beyond bounds, Commander.  Bug-guards, teach these fleshy ones some manners!”

Before the Space Command officers could take defensive maneuvers, two of the auditorium pillbug sentries instantly rolled themselves into pill form while simultaneously collapsing onto built-in, full-size floor trampolines.  With an aggressive spin they bounced off the trampoline surfaces to the center of the chamber, both guards smacking into either side of Mecky St. John.  St. John let out an unmanly shriek and collapsed, messy blood dripping from the collapsed sides of his head where the naturally well-armored bugs had impacted.

The bug leader waved a series of impatient legs at Lannrat.  “Clobber the other one!”

But Brogan Lannrat wasn’t too be bug-bombed so easily.  The security bugs had frisked him of his Spoggle blaster upon entering the Bugorium, but Lannrat had cleverly secreted a miniature bandolier of poison Muq’u darts in his upper mouth cavity.  Using a few lighting-fast foot-and-knee movements from the martial art of Brim Pucha, Lannrat jumped in front of the dignitaries’ semi-circular table, ripped the bandolier from his mouth and let fly with five expertly placed Muq’u darts that lodged in the tender underbellies of the sententious pillbugs.  The pompous monsters’ many legs writhed agonizingly in a spontaneous, coordinated display of insane pain and then, one-by-one, the oversize arthropods tottered and, in a Muq’u-petrified state of immobility, crashed to the chamber floor.

But the Commander was not around to see the results of his fusillade.  By the time the first bug fell, Lannrat was long gone, hustling down the, fortunately, well-signposted halls of the Bugorium to the exit, lashing out with Brim Pucha kicks and Muq’u darts whenever his perimeter was broached by a many-legged armadillidium.

Within a few sweat-packed minutes he was sitting back in his World Floater, hitting the control sequence for blast off.

“This is Lannrat,” he signed in to the Blouder Base mission frequency.  “Mission aborted.  These bugs are up to no good, no question about it.  I’ve seen all I need to see.”

“Report team status, Commander.”

“St. John’s not here.  He was pretty badly bashed by those bugs.  Might even be dead.  At least sustained some brain injuries that would be damn inconvenient to recover from. But that bug-hugger’s permanently cured of his bleeding-heart bawling, leastways.”  Lannrat gave a rough, commanding chortle as the World Floater achieved liftoff and he zoomed away from the purple-and-black landscape of the inhospitable and doom-inducing environs of the Planet of the Pompous Pillbugs.

 

 

Be amazed by more tales of Space Command in Space Command and the Planets of Doom: http://amzn.to/atEZo9

The Abstract Detective and the Case of the Linear Murders

“This is the fourth murder in a row this week,” muttered Sergeant Bonedead.

“One right after the other?” asked Rita Doublegirl, crime beat reporter for the Daily Objective.

“No, I mean actually in a row.  The site of the killings forms a straight line right across Squalortown.”

Rita made a pout with both of her lips.  “And Squalortown used to be such a pleasant little city.”

The Abstract Detective stood with his arms akimbo right above the chalk outline of the latest victim.  “It makes you wonder,” he pronounced.

“Why someone would do such a heinous deed?” asked Bonedead.

“No, how they came up with that weird word, akimbo.”

Continued: http://bit.ly/Hdp9hG

The Theater of the Tiny

As they made their way toward the Theater of the Tiny, Alan had to conceal his skepticism.  Deirdre was so excited by the entire concept of really, really small drama that it was almost infectious.  He didn’t want to spoil her enthusiasm with his well-honed, cosmopolitan world-weariness.  After all, he’d seen Japanese noh drama, Baroque French masques and Sino-Senegalese performance art.  The theater could hold few surprises for a man of his experience.

“I’ve always thought regular drama was too large,” Deirdre was saying.  “It was a theory of mine, ever since I was twenty-three.  So the subtlety of this tiny drama just blew my mind.”  Her eyes lit up at the memories of the spectacular tininess.  “Their revival of Anna Christie had this amazing miniscule seaport set.  I just imagined crawling into one of those tiny boats like I could sail off on a tiny globe-spanning ocean.”

“And I suppose they drink tiny drinks in the bar scene?”

“You have no idea how skillfully they do it.  A thoughtless actor would just down a tiny drink with one normal-size sip, leaving nothing in the glass for additional sipping through the remainder of the scene.  But these actors of tiny drama, they measure their sips ever so carefully to fit into the entire tiny world of the piece.  Yet they do it in a way that makes the sips look totally natural in their miniature plane of existence.”  Deirdre made size gestures with her hands, bringing her fingers nearly together to show various extremities of tininess.  “Watching the performance, I feel like I’m becoming a small ant, watching professional ant performers, only incredibly well-trained ant performers with great enunciation that have the emotional range of a Katherine Hepburn or a Robert Mitchum.”

Alan raised his eyebrows.  “How do these actors even get into tiny acting?  I mean, you must have to meet some demanding physical requirements…”

Deirdre grasped his arm quickly with the urgency of a girl thinking he’d completely misunderstood.  “That’s just it.  Everything is done with such mastery that the actor’s physical size is irrelevant.  Just through their performance they evoke in the audience the essence of the tiny.”

“So what you’re saying is that their motions…”

“It’s not even just in the motions.” Deirdre fixed him with an intense look, her eyes turning to him at the same time that they seemed to slightly recede.  “It’s in their entire persona.  They even have to make their eyes tinier, to psychically shrink down their corneas to an appropriate dimension, to match the tininess of the piece.”

“You say tininess of the piece, but surely the play’s the same size.  If they do Macbeth, the play isn’t any smaller.”

“Not in any textual way, no, but the characters are reflected through an entirely tiny lens.  It’s almost as though you need to squint a little to see the small Banquo getting murdered.”

Alan gave her a playful elbow jab.  “Yes, the sad death of little Banquette.”

Deirdre just looked at him blankly.  They were getting closer to the theater, the Tiny Drama banners popping up here and there, but Alan seemed no closer to understanding.  “You’re making jokes.  You just don’t get it, do you?  Tininess can be tragic, Alan.  In fact, Tiny Drama Macbeth was much more moving than full-size Macbeth when I saw it in New York, even with live horses and dogs.”

“Well, if they ever do tiny Death of a Salesman, let me know, because I’d love having the chance to overlook the entire inconspicuous thing.”

Deirdre was at a breaking point.  Her lipstick was just the right shade of livid red to express her outrage.  “You see these Tiny tickets?” she demanded, holding out the passes she’d acquired at a miniature price.  “There were two of them, but they’re so small, one just slipped through my fingers.”  Deirdre let a miniscule pink ticket fall from her hand down into the normal-sized, rain-filled gutter at their feet.  “I’d rather concentrate on this Tiny performance by myself than sit next to a snide, snipping size snob.  I’ll see you back in boring old regular-size world, Alan.  I’m going to the land of the tiny!”

With that Deirdre stalked off, joining the lively stream of enthusiastic patrons pouring down the ramp into the Theater of the Tiny like busy brown squirrels diminishing in the distance as they ran down an angular hallway.

Alan tsked to himself, checked his smart phone and smiled.  The Theater of the Tiny could wait.  He had a complementary ticket to the new Cirque du Chien show, Humongo Venti Grostesqurie.  “Now that’s entertainment,” he said in satisfaction.

 

 

Check out more absurdity in my collection Space Command and the Planets of Doom: http://amzn.to/atEZo9

 

Diary of a Netflix Worker

June 13 – Stuffed red envelopes with DVDs

June 14 – Stuffed red envelopes with DVDs

June 15 – Another busy day of stuffing red envelopes with DVDs. Mr. Rodriguez says that if I keep up the good work, he may promote me to the film removal tables soon.

June 16 – I was stuffing red envelopes with DVDs when I noticed an unusual occurrence. Hector Farley had just ordered Hot Tub Time Machine for the fourth separate time within three months. And he didn’t even report any damage with the previous discs. Who would order Hot Tub Time Machine four times? Surely, he can’t be planning to watch it for the fourth time? Hector Farley certainly bears some monitoring.

June 17 – Identified another unusual pattern. Hector Farley has Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay in his queue, despite the fact that he just watched it last week and has already rated it 5 stars and commented that it’s a ‘masterpiece’.

June 20 – Hector Farley has finally given himself away. Today he added a compilation of skits, The Daily Show Ridicules Michelle Bachman, to his queue for the third time. Only one thing ties together these three videos: they all star Rob Corddry. Clearly Hector Farley is obsessed with Rob Corddry. What could cause such a fascination with a perpetual supporting cast member?

June 21 – Last night I watched Hot Tub Time Machine again, this time taking careful notes. Looking closely at Rob Corddry’s performance, I detected nuances that had escaped me on my initial viewing. (Granted, during the first viewing, I was distracted by sampling the tasty new cinnamon-flavor Orville Redenbacher popcorn). His apparent devil-may-care characterization of Lou Dorchen is actually layered with shades of regretfulness and tinges of melancholy – one can see the dashed hopes of once-promising romances in the man’s thoughtful corneas. The other characters call him ‘Violator’ but clearly Lou has violated primarily his own hopes for a fulfilling destiny. This is a character who has lived with bitterness and come to know it well.

June 22 – Compelled to watch Hot Tub Time Machine once more. This time I grew impatient every time the film dwelled on John Cusack’s character. I couldn’t wait to return to more of Corddry’s performance as Lou, wrestling with the existential perplexities of his past, frustratingly unaware of the final ironic twist that awaited him at the film’s climax. Finally gave up on the endless scenes dawdling over Cusack’s love life and started streaming Rob Corddry’s home videos from YouTube. Lots of skits of rare, rough-hewn genius. Some excellent early work featuring Rob and really long hot dogs.

June 23 – Called in sick and made my own edit of Hot Tube Time Machine, eliminating all of the scenes focused on Cusack.

June 24 – Spent a lot of time last night on the Corddry discussion boards. There is still a lot of outrage in the community that Rob was passed over to star in Mr. Popper’s Penguins. A tragic missed opportunity. There’s an evident unfulfilled desire out there for ever more work from Corddry.

June 25 – I see a potential business model emerging here: Corddryflix. By taking all of Rob’s movies and YouTube clips and making them available in one convenient place, I can corner a niche -market. In addition, by selecting various underwhelming films and inserting footage of Rob Corddry, I can not only improve the quality of the movies, but serve the burgeoning community of Corddry fans who can’t get enough of their idol.

June 27 – Worked on my manifesto for Corddryflix. “As a Netflix employee, I’ve often been tempted to ponder the vagaries of stardom, the apparent whims of dame Fortuna: how do some celebrities with no apparent talent become huge box office draws, while other thespians with the gravitas and charisma of a Gielgud labor forever in the shadows, hoping for a measly guest shot on House? But with Rob Corddry, there is no mystery to his success. His craggy, shaven-headed machismo, his mellifluous, exquisitely-trained vocal delivery and the subtle gradations of his comedic personae, from violent, drug-fueled rube (Cedar Rapids) to reckless party-animal whirligig (Hot Tub Time Machine) are the work of a thoughtful, tireless observer of the human animal and his multifarious behavior patterns. This site is dedicated to those portrayals.”

June 28 – Notified Mr. Rodriguez I’m quitting to devote myself completely to my dream of running Corddryflix. He wished me ‘lotsa luck’ like a true gentleman. The future beckons. This could be the greatest envelope-stuffing adventure of my life.

- Check out Space Command: “Each slyly crafted tale is set on a world from far Earth, but the humor is quite terrestrial.” http://amzn.to/atEZo9

When I Interviewed the Governor of Tennessee.

She arrived in a dented white SUV and parked on the weedy street leaving one door open. Her coat was slightly moth-eaten and her sallow face with its poster smile tried to look its best without going for a cigarette. We sat on the porch and near the empty pool and inside at the white tablecloth dining set and she bulked up slightly as she talked, her cheeks puffing out, her hair taking on new puffs.
She’d been a survivor, with her husband doing things in the pool halls and gentleman’s clubs and ordering sleazy burgers at all hours of the night in the long motels that lined the motorways. She’d made an escape out of smoking and spending hours doing the laundry when it didn’t need to be made and her mouth still made random smoke-sucking motions. I tried to organize my questions about liberation and the tourism industry and the incapacitating darkness that was overtaking certain areas of the state, but she deflected my questions with a series of non sequiturs and ellipse-broken phrases about the things she had done for the snack industry and the pest-removal sector.
I was embarrassed when she didn’t get the proper respect from my family. When my father looked through the hallway in his favored faded t-shirt and salmon robe, reminding me of my chores. Or my unimpressed mother who interrupted the governor with insistent questions about what she was doing to thicken newspapers and put meatier vegetables into the generic soup. My mother had a preoccupation with carrots and their proper percentages and the governor became sidetracked trying to address these issues of roots and circumferences.
We were outside for a time in the hot tub, the one that we’d bought in bulk, under the unadorned branches of the walnut tree. The governor now talking in an unstopping explanation, unprompted, defending her positions on gas station toiletries, shopping mall concrete, paragraphs separating the institutions from fat and salt, library directories of unsanitary stopping outlooks and the institutionalization of interspersed parks for reviewing trees. The security she’d brought stood outside the hot tub, sometimes shuffling and desiring a hot dog, running a hand over his thin, plastered hair and adjusting his cheap glasses.
Despite everything, she was still the governor. She’d arrived of her own volition and she was answering the questions in the style to which she was accustomed, ignoring, shellacking over my hesitant hints about her past. All of her attention was on the rig-crowded highways of the state’s condition, all of her body was devoted to the policies generated and messaged to her from roadhouses and fishing holes. She had her preferences for coating over everything with layers of pebbles and macadam until it all matched the resolutions, the drafts, the bylaws that had been negotiated.
Finally, when things were turning the color of umber and we’d run out of the glazed pastries, she walked off of the patio and, with her coat clutched around her, she found her way back to the vehicle, the security bloated in his white shirt, with a Styrofoam cup, holding the door open, his shoes speckled with mud. I hadn’t remembered all of the answers I wanted to get, but I had a photo of the governor on the porch, her hair looking thin, gazing away at a sign on the road. And I had some excerpts of quotes when she made some candid remarks about the bakery outlet and her thoughts on teachers who hadn’t been inspiring to her. I watched her drive away down the dirt road, mother in the background, with just about the exact amount of ruefulness that I’d expected.

Unpopular Children’s Stories: The Three Silent Fish and the Adventure of the Stuffed Pony

The Three Silent Fish swam in an inlet near the happy town of Sundsvall off the Bothnian Sea.

Hilgar, the flounder, was the first Silent Fish. He was a strong swimmer, and a big fan of the ocean.

Hilgar had a direct, forthright attitude and made a good leader. He could size up other fish with one quick look of his piercing eyes.

Like most flounder, Hilgar was used to swimming in a school of fish. Lots of flounder, all together. But sometimes he would just take off with the other two Silent Fish.

The other flounder thought Hilgar’s behavior was unusual, but he didn’t give a damn.

Hilgar looked back at the two Silent Fish who closely followed him.

Just behind Hilgar was Spiro, a handsome silver bream. Spiro was a fast, skilled swimmer. He was impulsive, and afraid only of procrastination and ambivalence. Any situation rife with ambiguity was sure to give Spiro a wave of nautical nausea. But now he was swimming with all his strength. Go, Spiro!

Puk-Il, the little herring, swam almost next to Spiro. Puk-Il was in some ways the most mysterious of the Three Silent Fish. The other fish knew very little about his childhood or his early education, and he had an abiding interest in Mediterranean history which was rare among herring.

Hilgar once more looked ahead. It was a good thing. He was just in time to make a downward evasive swimming maneuver! Descending through the water, a big, dark, four-legged shape was making its way toward the Three Silent Fish.

After the Three Silent Fish had evaded the bulky, hairy shape, they swam in a tight, adventurous circle around it. The dark shape landed on the inlet’s shallow floor, displacing sand and crunching the head of a small ghost shimp.

After his first cursory examination, Hilgar judiciously made the sign to indicate that it was a strange object from the world above. Spiro looked on forthrightly in agreement. Puk-Il just swam in another circle, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Spiro swam to a part of the object that looked like its front. Glassy, wide-open, upside-down pony eyes looked out at him. Spiro looked back at it. He decided to resume swimming in a circle.

Hilgar daringly swam through the middle of the object’s legs. The legs towered above him, dark and mysterious. He didn’t recognize the object as a stuffed pony. He was unfamiliar with ponies, as well as the finer points of taxidermy. But the legs made a good boundary to swim within.

Puk-Il looked on, not participating in the antics of the other fish.

Eventually, Hilgar grew tired of swimming back and forth between the vertical pony legs. His adventurous mind was not gaining any further information about the stuffed pony and he was feeling restless. He was also growing hungry again, and a whole inlet of worms was out there, waiting to be discovered.

Hilgar decisively looked at Spiro. The bream loyally fell in behind him and the mysterious Puk-Il swam to Spiro’s side. Hilgar swam off in the lead again, away from the sunken object, renewing the search for knowledge and food.

The Three Silent Fish left the stuffed pony far behind, heading out for other watery horizons and new, unanticipated adventures.

One of your favorite scenes…

Here’s one of your favorite scenes from my novel ‘House of Prension’.  Follow the link for the complete novel:

Not Jabbs  (From ‘House of Prension’, Chapter 14)

Some bolder Jabbs showed themselves the next morning: they’d watched the foreigners with trepidation during the Fog Hour from the safety of rocky nooks.  As the Prensioners stirred, the Jabbs apprehensively continued a vigil.  Pinkface slyly noted their surveillance as he rose, quietly shifted into a sitting position and made traditional placating gestures.  Aulic pointed out the dried eggplant squares, making motions he hoped would be interpreted as an invitation to try a sample.

After long minutes of this face-off, a few Jabbs cautiously skittered forward, offering stock greeting phrases.  Despite their strange appearance, they were quite fluent in Mervan.  A broad-faced specimen, an apparent leader, skittered about at the group’s front staring at the newcomers with the same motionless gaze of the others.  Pinkface made a diplomatic overture.

“Jabbs, we come with peaceful intent, almost as if we are people who might want befriend you.”  He coughed uneasily.  “Although that is certainly not strictly necessary.”

            The lead Jabb moved his head from side to side, which involved moving his entire body since the parts were continuous, appraising the visitors.

“You are not Jabbs,” he said at last.  His voice had the characteristic Jabb squealing sound of rocks scraping against a metallic surface. 

            “No, of course we’re not Jabbs,” said the Elder impatiently.  “Do we look like Jabbs?”

            Aulic rested a calming hand on Pinkface’s arm.  “We’re from a different tribe.”

            “A different tribe of Jabbs?” asked the Jabb leader.

            “No, we’re from…”

            “A tribe of people across the desert,” inserted Pinkface.

            “Perhaps a long lost Jabb tribe that has changed in appearance and manner so much as to be an entirely strange looking group of beings . . .” the Jabb leader began.

            “No, we actually have nothing at all to do with Jabbs,” Pinkface insisted.

            “Then you should not be here,” the Jabb reasoned.

            “We’re visiting,” said Aulic, before Pinkface could make an insult.

            “I see.”  The leader folded two appendages.  “Do you plan to poke in Jabb tunnels, find a luscious one for your own?  Excavate grub worms, uninvited?”

            “Absolutely not,” Pinkface assured him.

            “Then we can relent in our vigilance.  We invite you for grubs.”

            “I should remind you we’re not Jabbs,” Pinkface repeated.  “I cannot make that point too strongly.  Your grubs may be an inappropriate nutrition form for us.”

            The Jabb kicked with his stubby legs, as though acknowledging the Elder.  “I have eyes in my head,” he said.

Arvin squinted.  “Is he being rude?” he whispered to Pinkface.

Pinkface spoke out of the side of his compressed mouth.  “Not at all.  It’s a Jabb trait to make remarks on utterly obvious subjects.  It’s a recurrent meditative practice, a way to maintain their attachment to reality.”

The Jabb went on, gesturing at the desert.  “The rocks are dry today.  Dry for everyone.” 

Pinkface winced.  The Jabb speech tones grated on his ears like the skull of a long-dead hum squirrel scraping repeatedly on a jagged granite escarpment. 

“We spread our appendages to welcome you.”  The Jabb wiggled his upper limbs and extended them, stepping closer to Pinkface.

            “That’s a wonderful gesture, but we must move on speedily . . .”

http://amzn.to/dxiBMc

http://www.scribd.com/abstractplane

http://twitter.com/brianhenry63

House of Prension – New Novel (Excerpt)

Here’s the opening of my fantasy novel ‘House of Prension’.  You can read more at Scribd.com by following the link below.

A top review from Amazon.com wrote: 

“In this story a teenage boy of royalty is facing a maturity ritual and dealing with other royal protocol he is not really into while under the constant scrutiny of his older brother and throne heir. The author creates a whole new world with different classes of people and rituals. Yet with the style of writing the author makes everything so real, the reader has no problem imagining the world that has been created on the page. A lot of times in fantasy or Sci-Fi stories I tend to get lost at the beginning of the book, trying to figure out what’s what and who’s who in the author’s world. It usually takes me a few chapters to familiarize myself with the new world and its people. I didn’t have a problem at all following this author or keeping up with his imagination. Aulic is an interesting lead character and his life in Prension is intriguing. The author sets the stage for a wonderful novel sure to entertain and delight. In a few short pages I was deeply invested in the characters and story. The story flows smoothly and this is a book I would definitely buy.” — Amazon Top Reviewer

 

            Aulic Prension lay still on the courtyard bench against the backdrop of a peach-painted wall concentrating intently on thoughts of an obese waxen figure.  The figure was a pale white one, the unattractive white of sour milk, and around its base misshapen protuberances, small dried drippings and streams of wax, stood out in bumpy relief. 

The Grey Hour had settled in on Prension Town and the dwindling orange light was muted and meditative.  There was an anticipatory air before the lavish Autumn Girl dance set to begin in a few hours.  The moments before a dance were an odd time, perhaps, for a session of Dream Hand practice, but Corben Corsaire, the most respected Prension Dream Hand, was determined to squeeze in another session before Aulic’s Maturity Ritual.   

Even though he was intent on his teaching, Corben, an occasional painter with a remarkable eye for color, couldn’t help noticing that the tan-brown streaks in Aulic’s hair complemented the peach wall.  His concentrating face with its closed eyes was rendered especially striking by the distinct strip of scalp showing down the middle part of his hair.  It was an unusual but noble style, this scalp-strip, forbidden to all Prensioners except members of the royal family.  On Aulic, the strip worked unusually well, since his hair naturally had a center part.  On others, the strip was less felicitious.  His mother, Empress Landau, never looked quite right with it dividing her mounds of curling brown and blonde hair, and so she often favored an empresses’ headdress. 

“You must think of the Pudding Dinner Ghost legend.  That’s the kind of lumpishness and bumpy waxiness I’m imagining.”  Corben could keep the desired avatar firmly in mind even with his eyes open, a talent possessed in full only by the most masterful Dream Hands.  For Corben, it was as though the Pudding Dinner Ghost was vividly superimposed on the image of his pupil.

Under Corben’s tutelage, Aulic was attempting to envision this same waxwork.  If he summoned the Ghost to his mind in a full-fledged form, he’d be that much closer to mastering the creation of his own Dream Avatar. 

But Aulic found it difficult to focus on figure contemplation as dance tunes trickled from the windows of the ballroom where poko musicians were rehearsing.  The same dances were brought out each year to the Autumn Girl ball-goers’ predictable delight.  Though he tried to form the Ghost Corben had sculpted a few days before, Aulic’s attention was constantly drawn away by the interminable bolka rhythm.  Hearing the thudding of mallets on lizard skins, he could picture only the clicking of reveler’s shoes on the floor, the rhythmic signals of men’s extended arms, their festive finger clicks, and the circle of maidenly grins, moving in a blurry rotation. 

The annual ball extended back in time even before Dovan’s reign.  Girls would spend all summer anticipating the chance to demonstrate elegant heirloom gowns.  For centuries the ritual had endured, with the same bolkas and spanilles trotted out, the same baked mammals trussed up and smothered with sweetened fruit sauce, and the same spiced ciders and weed brews dispensed by poko attendants. 

            With such distractions rampant, Corben was not hopeful about the session’s outcome.  He knew Aulic possessed an agile mind and a memory attracted to facts and detail.  But his interest in dream arts was minimal and he was rarely engaged in creative tasks.  Corben felt his sensibility was analytical, one to cast an evaluating gaze over other’s creations.  It was not unusual for a Prension to be meditative, but few were so skeptical in their mindset.  Many courtiers found Aulic’s frequent acerbic comments unsettling, his spiked observations annoying, but Corben maintained an indulgent smile at his remarks.  Perhaps his mystical leanings, his devotion to the oft-disdained Dream Hand rites, encouraged him to empathize with the young rucklen.

Aulic perversely kept seeing an old emperor’s rigid face rather than Corben’s wax figure.  He was a Frissen Emperor Aulic had read of in the dense Brown Tomes that covered entire walls of the court library.  The emperor’s small, unattractive head came unbidden into his thoughts, its features pinched and squinted, his mouth ranting with ever increasing speed about insufficiently compliant neighbors on the Frissen borders.  Aulic recognized the head as that of Tor Molk, with his well-known nose appearing as small and squeezed as it was in the anecdotes, his eyes a drippy shade of moldy green and his hair plastered with sweat onto his short forehead.

Somehow this unpleasant head appeared of its own volition with a vividness Aulic never experienced with Corben’s inert figures.  With each effort he made to refocus, Molk’s visage grew denser and more insistent.   Just as the head’s jabbering reached a physically impossible rate, there was a clatter and intrusion of outside voices. 

A crowd had suddenly appeared in the courtyard.  A break had been called in the ball preparations and the toiling pokos and half-girls had quickly spilled outside, making dripping comments and laughing dull, half-girl laughs.  Concentration would be impossible with the crowd clustering in noisy batches.

“We should have gone to my wax hut!” Corben declaimed in frustration. 

 

Continue the chapter at the link below or buy on Kindle at Amazon!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21149397/House-of-Prension-Chapter-One

House of Prension on Kindle

Bad Trees

By midnight, I knew all the trees were evil.  They were darker than before.

Shadow owls flitted confidently in the blackness.

I peeked out from behind the blackest shed, waiting for the obese man from number 328 to appear.

The obese man had told me about the secrets of the trees.  He had sat there in his cinnamon shirt in the dilapidated room, the creaking sounds of his rocking chair making the only disturbance.

“The tree killed my brother,” the obese man revealed, his shirt wrinkled with the folds of his stomach, the strands of his remaining brown hair dripping past his ears and onto his shoulders.  “The tree with the walnuts.”

I had endured plenty of dreams about the trees.  The dreams usually came at night, after I had drunk too much anise liqueur and watched old Shelley Winters movies on the small black-and-white TV in my room.  I knew about the dreams from my dream journal, where I’d written entries like, ‘Last night, I had a dream that a tree split down the middle and gave birth to a giant cocoon-like armless ghost that proceeded to disturb the entire neighborhood.’  And, ‘Last night I had a dream that I was lost on a deserted World War II beach when a group of trees blocked my way.  They bushwhacked me and humiliated me in front of the troops, and then I disgorged several oysters.’

It was a relief to hear the obese man confirm my fears.  My sister, Angelique, had just laughed at me.  She had interrupted my sleep, poking me in the stomach with a splintery broom handle.  “You freak, shut up!  Lionel needs his sleep.”  Then she would laugh her bitter laugh. 

As I peeked out again, I could discern the obese man.  He was where he had promised, crouching behind the doghouse with a Black and Decker flashlight.

I scurried over to his side.

“Did you hear them?” were his first words to me.

“The trees?”

“They’re onto us.”  He had explained his theory earlier.  That the revolutionary war ground that we lived on was dense with the bodies of decayed and unidentified British soldiers.  Desperate to regain access to the atmosphere, the buried soldiers’ souls had forced their way into the begrudging trunks of the trees, only to find themselves unable to extricate their spirits from the bark.  In the ancient, weathered trees, the spirits whispered to one another of their undying hatred for Americans and their American ways.

“I heard them,” he continued.  “If we try anything they’ve planned to do something terrible with their roots.”

There was then a sharp breeze, and the branches above us creaked and whispered, casting aspersions on our national pastimes and typical choice of dessert items.

“Blast you, blast you all to hell!” I cried, running with ill-considered ardor at the nearest trunk and beating on it with my frustrated fists.

It was then that Lionel, Angelique’s boyfriend, came running out of the back porch, his pajamas aflutter, firing his rifle in the air.  “Goddamn it!  Goddamn it, Anson, get your butt back in bed so I can get me some sleep!”

It might have been the report of the rifle, or the increasing shrieks of the Brits in the wind, or the loud howls of the poorly fed Labrador from the doghouse, but it was then that the obese man clutched his chest, dropped the flashlight, and cold beads of sweat began to make a slow dance on his forehead.

Angelique attended the funeral, with its large coffin and treeless grounds, but I stayed home.  I had to watch the trees, exultant in their moment of triumph.

Thankless Joe and the Electronica Chick

When Allensford knocked on Thankless Joe’s door, he had high expectations.  Allensford had woman trouble and Thankless Joe was known far and wide for his songs about gritty love affairs and for the numerous encounters with notorious women he’d met on his hard-partying tours.  Women who’d been seduced by his gravelly blues voice, his surly, large-bodied sexuality and his frank, deep, heavy-lidded gaze.  Surely, Thankless Joe would be a fount of valuable advice on the tribulations of love.

            Allensford knocked again on Joe’s door when the first knock went unanswered.  Then he knocked yet again.

            After several more tries, and a near bite on the shin from Joe’s gray, flea-bitten mongrel hound, he walked around to the backyard and peeked through the kitchen window.  Through the dirt-smeared pane of glass, he saw Thankless Joe’s large, bald head lying on the kitchen table, his hands splayed out in front of him, one large, hairy thumb twitching aimlessly.

            Clearly, Thankless had spent a long night rocking some rough-hewn, seedy downtown juke joint and was exhausted.  It was only two in the afternoon and Thankless was nothing if not a night owl. 

Allensford tried the kitchen door and finding it unlocked, he went in and grabbed a soiled dishtowel from the counter.  Soaking it in cold water, he slapped it over Joe’s sweating head, taking care to first remove the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels from the table so Joe wouldn’t knock it over.

            Thankless Joe shuddered into motion, his body jittering.  The large expanse of flesh that made up his stomach and arm fat jiggled and fluctuated.  He threw the wet towel off his head with a surprisingly vigorous motion and shuffled back in his rickety chair, the kitchen floor creaking.  Joe looked around wildly, his small black eyes blinking in the glaring afternoon kitchen light.

            “What the fuck?   Who the fuck. . . ?” Joe cried.  His voice was hoarse and harsh, ragged from a long night of screaming.

            Allensford was used to Joe taking time to gain a full awareness of his surroundings.  There were days when he visited and Joe was not completely coherent until shortly before Allensford took off at sunset for his night job at the Four Lips Motel.  “It’s Allensford, Joe.   Had a long night?”

            “Jesus Christ, you freaking fuck.  What are you doing in my house?”

            Allensford laughed an indulgent laugh.   Joe was nothing if not authentic, a truly gritty, down-home, plain-spoken, roots-music man like they didn’t make anymore.  “Remember how you told me that if I ever needed some advice, no matter when, no matter what the problem, I should come by?”

            “I say a lot of stupid shit.”  Joe looked around with narrowed eyes.  “Where’s my whiskey?”

            “Well, I’m having woman trouble.”  Allensford gave a self-conscious rueful laugh.   “And if there’s one man I know who knows a lot about a lotta women, it’s you, Joe.”

            “I gotta take a piss.” Thankless Joe stood up and stumbled toward the bathroom.  He tripped over an empty bottle of schnapps and banged his head on the doorframe.  “Goddamn!”

 As the sounds of Joe using the bathroom filled the kitchen, Allensford outlined his romantic situation. 

            “See, I’ve been dating this woman, Alicia.  You’d love her, Joe.  She’s smart, wears these totally cool glasses, makes an awesome patty melt.  Just a real classy, all-around authentic girl.  Totally authentic.  From Idaho.  The problem is, I can’t stand her taste in music.”

            Allensford started to take a seat at the kitchen table, then noticed the unidentifiable green stains on the chair and thought better of it.

            “You know me, Joe.  I’m a roots music man.  It’s gotta be real, or I won’t put it on my stereo.  But this Alicia, she listens to nothing but electronica!”

            Joe emerged from the bathroom and took off his black, tattered T-shirt.  “Where’s the refrigerator?”

            “Right here, Joe.  By the oven.”

            “Goddamn.  Over there.  Hand me a beer.”

            Allensford grabbed a can of beer and handed it to Thankless.  He took a good look at Joe’s face.  As expressionless as it was, as unfocused as his eyes were, as soggy and shapeless as his lips looked, Allensford knew that in that unique head little shards of lyrical greatness were stewing.  Bits and pieces of undeniably powerful, primitive roots-music melody and shards of poetic, hard-luck phrasing were cooking that would soon bubble up from Joe’s mouth, spew out and coagulate like chili in a bowl into a new Thankless Joe song.

            Thankless took a gulp of beer and stared at Allensford.  “Who let you in?”

            Allensford shook his head in amazement.  “When you’re brewing up a new song, nothing distracts you!  Amazing.  But seriously, Thankless, what should I do about this girl?  This electronica chick.”

            “You ever see my chuggy dance?” asked Thankless, his mouth gaping.

            “Only a thousand times.”  Allensford grinned at the memories.

            Thankless did it again.  He stepped forward, shook his belly, stepped back, shook his belly again, and then repeated the whole process, doing two steps forward and back, then three steps, then four.  During the whole dance, he kept up a blubbering beat with his lips and slapped his hands on his bare belly.

            Allensford played along, chanting ‘chuggy, chuggy, chuggy’, just like the grizzled fans always did at Thankless Joe’s gigs.

            Thankless shook and jiggled for a good three minutes, then took another gulp of beer.

            “Is that your answer, Thankless?”

            Joe narrowed his eyes.  “You been at my shows.  You know what it’s all about.”

            “I do.  I do know what it’s all about.  It’s all about the roots music, that’s what it’s all about.”  Allensford shook his head.  How could he have been so shallow?  “I see what you’re telling me.  In your poetic, musical way, you’re telling me it’ll never work out with me and Alicia.  How could I ever trust a girl who listens to electronica?”

            For an answer, Joe slapped his belly again and fixed Allensford with a bleary look. 

            “It’s like you say in that song, Joe.  ‘She left me like the squaw left the papoose.  She left me and she went on the loose’.”

            Joe bit his lip.  “Jesus, some of ‘em are just that tawdry.”  He walked into the living room, slumped onto the dusty brown sofa, tossed some dirty undies on the floor and grabbed the TV remote.

            “I’m glad I came by.  Joe, thanks so much for listening.  Really, thanks.”

            “Don’t need to thank me.  That’s why they call me Thankless Joe.”

            “So right,” said Allensford.  A truer statement, he thought, had never been made. 
           “Why don’t this remote work?”