© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Nineteen: Out of Order
It
was the day of the Cataclysm, about Noon, and people were beginning to
experience the foreboding of approaching doom, the presentiment of incarnate
dread. But Rooster had no thoughts about the coming evening, or moons, or
warring Sisters—no, for he was facing his very own private doom, up close and
personal, as the great parasite from Frederic’s bowels swelled with indignation
and hatred, just inside the entrance to the crystal cathedral of Hot Springs.
It was seething, insane, but oh so clever. Rooster was crouched down low, ready
to spring, his entire body drawn together in a compressed coil.
“You are not coming in here,” Rooster
growled, standing in six inches of warm water, his body dripping, bracing his
arm against the rock wall, ready to push himself off the wall and launch
himself, up under the parasite. He knew that at any second it was going to come
off the ground in a rearing roar of challenge, and Rooster must strike at that
moment, while momentum carried the monster up, and backward—that’s when he
would strike it with all his weight and might, like hitting a football tackling
sled—it had been years and years since he had initiated any such physical
exertion of force and power, but he had never had a body like the one he
inhabited now.
The parasite was massive and powerful, but Rooster
himself was incredibly massive and powerful, and he was entirely freshened and
invigorated by the healing waters. In fact, he felt bloated from the healing waters, ready to explode with power, much
larger than his very large self. His face locked in a leer of imminent
violence, Rooster found himself almost laughing. He felt good, and even though
he understood that it might not end well, for him. He couldn’t help but relish
the swiftly approaching clash of fury.
And now, with Frederic returned from the very
edge of death, Rooster had so much inspiration for heroic deeds—he was ready to
offer up all of himself to protect his friends. Yes, for the first time in his
whole life, in any world, he felt like a hero.
The moments prior to the crash of powerful
forces stretched, the creature was utterly still, save for its heaving, labored
breathing.
Then suddenly, the monster reared, roaring,
and Rooster dove in, his powerful legs splashing, driving himself forward into
the terrible, slimy bulk of the creature. The monster squealed with the
indignation of a herd of swine—Rooster drove it back, at first a full foot in
distance at their point of impact, and then two feet more as he continued his
momentum, straining the creature backward, another two feet—and they reached a
point of straining equilibrium, two forces straining and grunting.
The creature squealed, inhaling.
Then, the monster roared in exhale, and now
it surged forward upon what seemed newly sprung insectile legs, scrabbling and
scrambling, and Rooster was flung back, end over end, clearing ten feet before
he came down headfirst into the shallow waters farther back into the Hot
Springs. He landed in the waters, perhaps two feet deep, sprawling, knocked
dizzy and disoriented—he jerked and pushed himself up sputtering.
The monster was as powerfully strong as an
elephant, and now it rushed forward to meet the floundering man who had only
half risen before the parasite was upon him as its long body surged forward and
slammed down upon him.
The waters surged up hissing, and Rooster was
slammed down beneath the horrible mass of steaming, clawing legs and the oozing
torn flesh of the wounded creature smashing him flat beneath the shallow waters—lobster
claws pinched and clapped, roach feet ripped and slashed—but Rooster scrambled
beneath it, punching and kicking, and smashed beneath the waters—he actually
managed to lift the creature up a full two feet off of himself, before it
smashed him down again, buried in the sloshing waters. They raged against each
other in a strange clash of beings that could have no positive ending.
The creature screamed. It desired to rend
this human distraction into a thousand pieces, but something was wrong. The
creature squealed and screamed, thrashing. Somehow the insignificant creature
below its monstrous body was hurting it, but not just in its thrashing—no, for pain
surrounded and suffused all of its body. This was something new, and terrible.
The parasitic creature squealed, twitching in pain.
The waters hissed upon the parasite creature’s
entire length, bubbling and steaming. The parasite roiled back and away, but
still the pain followed. Ichor flowed from the creature and mixed with the
waters, and the waters actually rose up as in flood, foaming, and the creature
screamed.
The water! It was acid to the monster!
Even as the water acted as poison while the
parasites were in the human body, now it reacted even more powerfully, water
and air interacting like acid, and steam billowed about the creature. The water
was deadly to the parasite.
It instinctively pushed itself up out of the
water and surged and splashed, squealing in pain. But the water was everywhere
in this cave, dripping down from above, splashing up from beneath and whichever
way the creature turned, water splashed and hurt it—the very air was saturated
with the deadly chemical reaction.
Rooster thrashed up out of the water throwing
punches wildly as the creature retreated backward toward the light of day.
The creature pushed itself back toward the
entrance of the cave, bleeding ichor and slime, and the infuriating human
followed it, splashing up water that stung and burned.
Rooster didn’t realize what was happening
other than he knew the enemy was before him, and retreating, and he attacked
it, punching the monster with his wet fists. The creature screamed and lashed
out at him, but even his wet body proved anathema to it, and he drove it
back—he had no understanding of the water and its peculiar properties and how
it was aiding him in his battle against the creature, he only understood that
the monster was fleeing before him and he came thrashing forward into it,
boiling the water up with his kicks and punches, and the monster hissed and
screamed with every wet touch.
The parasite desired no part of this. Fight
was a distant memory—this was flight, panicked hysterical flight. All confused
thoughts of revenge and annihilation were gone, it just wanted out of this
horror pit, it wanted away, away as far as possible from this insidious human
that dripped and splashed pain and acid.
Rooster chased the monster to the door and
seized its tail as it inverted its body, coiling and thrashing, and he gripped
the swollen tail with its rows of pinching claws, and he forced it down into
the splashing, hissing waters, and the whole shallow pool seemed to react in
exploding foam, bubbling, and Rooster felt the reaction all about him like an
infected hand in a sink full of hydrogen peroxide, and yet still he did not
comprehend the nature of the creature’s retreat, or what was actually happening
in this battle.
The monster literally dragged Rooster up out
of the waters and surged him across the rocks into the entrance to the caves, scraping
him off against the jagged rock, knocking him aside, escaping.
The parasite scrabbled upon the stones and
rolled in the shallow layer of dirt upon the stones—it wanted the water off its
body, but still it steamed and melted in the pain of the wetness.
Dazed and discombobulated, Rooster pushed
himself up, pulling himself up along the stone corridor, and he vomited even as
he ran, even as the monster itself vomited and purged itself of the stinging
acid waters. Small rounded pillbugs washed out in a reeking flood from the
monster, and these writhed and burned in the expurgated slew, skittering in
pain.
A figure rushed past Rooster, bumping into
him, and he caught a glimpse of a soaking-wet Frances as she passed.
“Wait, what are you doing!” he cried,
stumbling forward into the light of day.
The day outside the cavern was much cooler
compared to the atmosphere of the cave, and their bodies prickled in the
comparative chill.
“The water!” she cried and he saw that she
was carrying the water bottles in each hand, and she was definitely on the
offensive, going after the creature.
He pursued her out of the caves as she attacked
the parasite, splashing the water out of the bottles, jerking the plastic
containers like syncopated cannons, jerking and recoiling, blasting the
creature with surges of water.
The parasite reacted instantly to the small
woman’s attack, squealing in pain, shrieking with a noise so terrible it
actually made Rooster throw his hands over his ears, shielding himself from the
physical pain produced in his head from those screams, a thousand wounded pigs
crying out.
The parasite monster scrabbled away from the
water attack, and Frances pursued it, and then Frederic was there beside his
mate, gasping, staggering, but faithfully gluggling the waters from the
canteen, splashing the creature. As the parasite whirled before them, its
massive tail snapped back and around and knocked them together off their feet,
their water containers tumbling.
It was not attacking them, only fleeing,
slithering like a snake now or monster slug, withdrawing its roach legs into
itself, yanking back its wounded lobster claws, rescinding into itself,
reforming even as it surged and slithered away, keening and moaning, leaving a
nasty trail of ichor and blood. It was now some terrible worm, rolling over
itself, tumbling upon the stones, thrashing and writhing away.
“It’s okay, it’s going,” Rooster coughed,
kneeling between Frances and Frederic, checking to ensure they were not
damaged. Both were coughing, bleeding, and Frances attempted to get to her
feet.
“We have to finish it off—don’t let it get
away,” she cried, stumbling. “Drop boulders on it, cut it into pieces!”
Rooster caught her by the arm and pulled her back,
and eased her down next to Frederic, who was heaving and bursting with labored breath.
“I don’t know if we can kill it,” Rooster muttered. “We hurt it, somehow, but I don’t
think it can die.”
“The water,” she said, “we have to get more
water and go after it.”
“I don’t think we could kill it even if we
could get some fire hoses,” Rooster wheezed. “That thing is already almost cut
in half—probably we’d just be spreading out the problem. If it breaks in half,
there will be two of them.”
“Go after it!” she commanded, but Rooster was
done for, spent, his head whirling.
“That was incredible, old man,” Frederic
coughed, “how you fought it like that. I mean you just went at that thing!”
“If I had known it was the water, I would
have challenged it to a splash fight,” Rooster laughed. “Touching that thing,
ooh, I don’t know. I hope we never run into it again.”
“You were very brave,” Frances said,
dejected, but still admiring the big man, slumping into a huddle, shivering.
“I wasn’t going to let that thing get to you
guys,” Rooster said, glaring at the trail to where the creature had vanished
over the lip of the stone climb. His hands flexed into fists—perhaps he would
go after it, but his vision seemed bleached, everything too white, and he sank
to one knee, and vomited.
“So that’s the thing that came out of me?”
Frederic said, lying down in the sun, taking deep breaths.
“That’s it,” Rooster said, “only it’s been
feeding, I think on the dead bees below. Probably other things as well. I could
see all kinds of legs and appendages moving beneath its—blubber.”
“Blubber!” Frederic laughed, which turned
into a barking cough.
Mister Bumbles came crawling across the
stones and huddled close to Frances, buzzing.
“That’s some bee,” Frederic said, looking at
the bumblebee, and then closing his eyes tightly. “I thought I dreamed all that
about the giant bees.”
“Let’s get back into the cave, we all need
the healing waters,” Rooster said, feeling his side—now that was decidedly a
broken rib in there, he could feel the break. He vomited again. There was blood
in the glurp. He could hardly breathe. He had been damaged again by the
parasite, severely this time. His skin was cut and torn in many places. Dragged
on the rocks, pinched by those claws, and tumbled every which way, poor Rooster
was a mass of abrasions, contusions, breaks, and bruises.
“I think we’re going to regret that we didn’t
hurt it worse than we did, while we still had the chance,” Frances said,
holding onto Rooster’s arm, attempting to aid the big man before he collapsed.
“I think we’re done with it,” Rooster
muttered, wiping the bloody vomit from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Plus, I think, the more we replace our old-world bodies with this new water, I
think we are going to prove less and less attractive to the brute. It’s
probably going to dry up out there, and just die, like any broken bug. Oh,
sorry Mister Bumbles.”
The bumblebee had buzzed loudly, and Frances
petted its fur.
“We need to get Mister Bumbles into the cave
as well, hopefully the water will heal his wings,” she said, soothing her hands
gently along the bumblebee’s twisted wings, one of them looked as if it might
break away.
They had all taken their share of lumps from
the parasite monster—especially Frederic, who had carried it around inside his
own body, where it had almost killed him, eating him from the inside.
Later, they would wish they had listened to
Frances, and hurt the creature worse while it was wounded, and so...small, and comparatively insignificant.
They would all think, oh, those were the days.
One thing about strong parasites, they can
adapt, and learn, and strengthen. And
they remember. And they never give up.
It was the day of the Cataclysm, about Noon,
and Joss Chen strolled out onto the deck of the small sky vessel, or aeroship docked near the tall narrow
building that appeared to be some sort of—lighthouse, skyhouse, or skydock. It
wasn’t a lighthouse, and the ship wasn’t exactly a ship, not exactly, and Ulf
stood just inside the door of the building, peering out, unsure of whether or
not he wanted to emerge onto a deck so high above any unseen ground (the ground
must certainly be down there, somewhere very far below, but peering over the
side Joss Chen couldn’t see farther than one hundred or so stories down, and
then it just seemed to go to dark clouds and roiling fog, or mists). It all
seemed crazy, almost as insane as his dimly remembered visit to the Clown Town,
that place all in black and white. And after serving them breakfast, Phoebe had
vanished, without a word of explanation.
They had searched for a while, attempting to
find some exit leading downward, through the building itself, but had only discovered
locked doors deeper than one floor below, and the doors and walls were thick,
like a real lighthouse. There were floors above, as well, but they didn’t wish
to go that way.
“Come on, I guess this is where we’re
supposed to go,” Joss said to the Viking. He had dressed in the leather gear that
had been laid out for him on the bed, some tight leather costume all in browns
and blacks, and seeming somewhat nautical in theme. But this was no costume,
nor cosplay—these were very real, well, battle gear, designed to be warm, and
yet provide a layer of both movability and armor-layered protection. He
especially liked the tall boots that came up over his knees and swelled at his
thighs. And really, he had to admit it to himself, they looked and felt pretty
cool—mucho badass. Plus, the gear was comfortable. He liked it. He almost hated
to admit it, but he liked all of this. Somehow, Phoebe had found a way to tap
into Joss Chen’s most fabulous childhood dreams.
He was going to be a captain, of his own
aeroship, aeroboat? And he was going to fly!
He was going to soar above the clouds, riding the winds of the sky.
Before he mounted the somewhat silly “boat,” Joss
slowly walked around the entire round dockyard—up high in the sky, and with
only one “ship” in port, a sleek-looking vessel made of hardwood, and appearing
to be waxed brightly like a surfboard, it sat nestled in two mighty cradles.
Even the cradles didn’t seem all that realistic. It all struck him as part of
some children’s game, albeit an entirely real simulation. And, he had to admit
it to himself, it was all pretty cool.
Yes, yes, the whole thing struck Joss Chen as
silly֫—Steampunk, hardly feasible. A
sky ship, or aeroship, that used sails for wind and a big canvas bag to retain
hot hair, sort of a hot-air balloon, glued together with an ultra-light sailing
ship. He supposed it could be used in the water or in the air, kind of a
multipurpose fantasy ship, or yacht—an aeroyacht,
then. It looked more like a yacht than a ship. What was it, seventy-five feet
long, maybe eighty feet? It was difficult to judge the side, because it was
just so weird. Twenty feet wide? Probably, the most it could comfortably carry
would be ten or so people, maybe as many as twenty. But he hadn’t even explored
below the decks.
He glanced at the building—there was probably
room for another ship docked on this side, and there seemed to be more than
four sides to this building, this sky tower.
“I not go there!” called Ulf, his big square
hands cupped around his big round hole of a mouth. He had donned all his gear
and he looked fairly ridiculous, his short heavy legs, his monstrous shoulders.
Even though he was not fat, he was huge,
like a very short giant.
Joss Chen continued to walk as close to the
sailing yacht as possible, without actually boarding her. Okay, yes, it was a
very nice fantasy boat, very nice looking, he admitted it, but there was no way
he was going to accept this silly adventure—Phoebe needed to give him something
a little more...realistic. Please,
something not this silly. But yes, there was something highly attractive about
the suggested adventure, the nautical clothing, the ship sitting here, and Joss
grinned, leaning out to look at the back of the ship—was that the bow? Or wait,
was that the grim—no, not grim, but...stern?
“I said, I not go there!” hollered Ulf,
roaring, going red in the face.
There, in fancy letters was the name of the
ship: Phoebe. Of course. What else?
This was where he was supposed to go. So, after a long time staring, he finally
strode across the gangplank, which emerged from the building and was not part
of the vessel, and out onto his ship, his lady. He felt the wind snap out and
buffet him.
“You do realize that you are inside an absurd
tower that is impossibly tall, and we are locked out of all the levels except
the top two?” Joss Chen called back to the Viking, reasonably.
Immediately the Viking came jogging out onto
the platform and immediately the wind increased in volume, as if someone were
sitting at the controls, and as soon as the Viking emerged, the wind engaged,
or the atmosphere activated—or, the game
was afoot.
The Viking staggered about, comically lifting
and dropping his feet, looking very much the drunkard, swaying this way and
that, but in truth there was very little real comedy in the moments, as a few
missteps and Ulf would be plunging toward a death that would be long in coming
as he fell into the bottomless void. To his credit, the Viking ran forward with
conviction, aiming for the airship and not minding the dangers, and taking a
final daring dive, the big man tumbled into the airship, where he immediately
tangled himself in the netting that retained the massive hot-air bag, a huge
oblong half-filled container that looked like it might inflate to ten feet in
height, thirty feet in length, and almost as wide as the ship. The Viking clung
there, his face pale and tinged with green.
“See?” laughed Joss Chen, “that wasn’t so
bad, was it?”
“Bad,”
burped the Viking, and then launched into a series of painful hiccups.
There was a rattle of booted feet and two
very odd-looking—sailors, came
trotting onto the deck, up from below decks.
“Berg, present Sir!” shot the first, a very
incomplete-looking individual, in fact, there was something of the robot about
him, or manikin. He was very short, with an exaggerated “V” of a chest, and
short, muscular arms. He was very blond, unnaturally yellow-headed, as if he
had just finished dying his short hair with a bottle of very cheap paint. He
looked like a cartoon character.
“Gurg, present Sir!” shot the second sailor,
looking a twin to the first, only this automaton had a shock of red hair
standing up on his small round head.
The two simulated sailors stood at strict attention, side by side, garbed in almost
comical costumes that suggested sailoring.
Striped black and white long-sleeved shirts, seeming more skin than clothing,
and shiny white bell-bottom pants. And to top it all off, they were barefoot
upon the shiny wooden deck of the vessel. Their bare toes seemed only half-drawn.
“You two sailors come with the ship?” asked
Joss Chen.
“Indeed, Captain Joss, Sir!” shot Berg—it
seemed that everything these two said came out at Marine volume, barked obnoxiously
loud and monotone. Good soldiering, and all that. Good sailoring?
“We come straight from the Looking Glass,
Captain Joss Sir!” shot Gurg. “Volunteered, we did Sir!”
“Aye Sir!” yelled Berg, “when old Mister
Dodgson give out the new jobs, Sir, old Gurg and I said we wanted to serve ye
on the Phoebe, we did Sir! We go with
Captain Joss, Sir, that be our choice, Sir!”
Joss Chen shook his head. What a deal. Still,
it was certainly adventure, all of this, and he wanted to get on with it. The
purity of the air made his toes tingle, and his face felt half-frozen in the
icy wind. This was life—this was living. It didn’t matter what he knew, or the
worse things that he suspected.
What mattered was that life was in him, he
was life, and he smiled almost insanely as he threw out his arms to welcome it
all. Glory in it, life, living, and things to come. He felt like bellowing out
at the top of his lungs the hills are
alive with the sound of music! Yeah, but that would just be silly, wouldn’t
it?
He felt like spinning around and around,
dancing and leaping and hollering. The two sailors, or airmen, or whatever they
were, were staring at him dumbly. Joss Chen forced seriousness into his face
and bearing. Right then.
Gurg was the redhead, and Berg the yellow
dandelion. He’d have to keep that straight in his head.
“Let’s get to it, then!” Captain Joss Chen
laughed, “prepare for flight!”
“No, wait, just wait,” gurgled Ulf, yet
tangled in the bag netting. “Think it, first, think!” He looked absurdly pale,
even for a Scandinavian.
The two automatons leapt into action, like
tigers, Berg leaping into the rigging, climbing as easily as a monkey, and Gurg
literally diving down into a hole in the deck (Joss mentally noted the location
of that hole, as he didn’t want to make an inadvertent plunge), and a moment
later there came the loud roar of fire, and the airbag immediately surged with
life, standing up in its netting, shivering all the timbers of the sleek aeroship.
Sails dropped from above, fluttering hollowly.
“Cast off lines!” Captain Joss Chen shouted.
“Lines, Sir?” Berg, or maybe Gurg queried, pausing
in his flurried activity to scratch his head.
“Whatever,” laughed Joss Chen, “I’m figuring
it out as we go along. You just tell me what to do, Sailor.”
“Aye aye Sir! Ye just stand back there behind
the big wood wheel, and you’ll know what yer about, Sir!” Gurg or Berg guffawed,
and returned to his racing and leaping about the deck, yanking on lines,
pulling levers, unlocking various mechanisms, all the while humming gleefully
beneath his breath.
“Oooh!” cried Ulf, staring and hiccupping.
“Maybe wait! Oooh! Not yet!”
“Go below decks, Ulf,” Joss Chen laughed,
nodding toward the small door of the little cabin, as he situated himself
behind the big wheel, placing his hands on the handles.
“I stay with you!” the Viking hollered,
tangling himself and untangling himself.
The Viking finally freed himself from the
netting and came crawling across the deck in a scramble—mostly on his hands and
knees, but often dragging his lower body behind him—he looked like a big,
frightened dog, tongue lolling, eyes rolling in terror. Joss had to admit, it
was all pretty funny. He chuckled, and the low laugh built into a more
impressive release of mirth, and soon he was bent at the knees, laughing harder
than he had ever laughed in his entire life.
The aeroyacht quivered and Captain Joss Chen
noted the first aggressive bump throughout the vessel against the cradle as
they swiftly became lighter than air. He wiped his eyes and took a stance
behind the wheel, swaying. They were practically there. He flexed his hands upon the spoke-end handles of the wheel,
feeling a very real thrill race throughout both the sky yacht and his body,
ricocheting up and down his spine. The wheel felt very good in his hands, and
now he felt a dancing shiver run below his feet and his knees automatically
dipped to provide the necessary balancing sway—it felt like dancing.
And then, through some mechanism apparently
based on weight or lack thereof, the retaining cradle extending from the side
of the spire suddenly gave way, clattering against the building, and the
aeroyacht fell perhaps twenty feet in a start, until it was caught by the wind
and moved out and away from the tower, and the bow dipped, and they nosedived
into the deep of the vast sky. Captain Joss Chen’s stomach dropped toward his
feet as icy wind slapped him in the face, and both aerosailors wailed in alarm.
Apparently, he was supposed to do something at this point, but in truth, he was
exulting in the plunge, observing the “ground” of clouds below the vessel,
falling like an aerodynamic dagger toward the clouds.
“The wings, Sir! The wings!” shouted one of
the aerosailors.
Joss Chen glanced over his shoulder and
observed the great needle of the tower, standing at what appeared to be a full
mile above the clouds (and it could only be a guess how much of the tower there
was below those clouds), and by the rapid shrinking of the sight, he realized
they were falling much too swiftly, and he quickly glanced at the bank of
instruments before him, just behind and above the wheel.
There were old-fashioned looking dials
surrounded by brass, with hands spinning like insane clocks. There were several
buttons, a tiny wheel, and about twenty black pegs or switches, plus two brass
levers and ten or more smaller levers made of polished wood. All this he noticed
in one or two seconds that felt like eternity.
He focused on the two thick brass levers, the
sun glinting off them like gold, and he yanked down the lever on the left side
and was startled as an expanse of flapping wings burst out on either side of
the yacht, popping into existence like a parachute.
Their fall immediately slowed, the vessel
bucking and bouncing as if it were riding ocean waves, and Joss Chen pulled
down the brass lever on the right, and was rewarded to a second burst of wings
at the stern of the vessel—four wings on either side of the vessel, they looked
like something Leonardo da Vinci might have sketched, great and curved like the
wings of birds, humped up and grabbing wind.
The vessel descended into a more gentle arc,
still plummeting, but now he found that he could steer their course, and
pulling back on the wheel Joss was pleased as the aeroyacht leveled off, and
they sailed in the sky, swift and sleek. He tried great swelling turns,
slaloming—the ship leaning extravagantly this way, and then that way—and pulled
back sending the vessel upward, pushing deep and plunging. This felt like
magic. It was like riding a motorcycle, only much bigger, much faster, and in
the sky; they raced the very clouds, maneuvering, and Joss Chen was surprised
that he was smiling—it seemed his very being was smiling, through and through.
This was—something. Yes, all the
somethings he could have ever desired.
After an hour of this exhilaration in the
sky, Joss Chen finally collected himself, and looked about himself. Poor Ulf
the Viking was sleeping on the deck, or he had finally passed out. The brute
had tied himself down close to Chen’s feet, and curled about with a rope around
his waist.
They were sailing level and the airbag was
tight and full of hot air—the bag radiated heat, and the air did not seem quite
so icy.
The yellow-haired sailor came lurching along
the deck, balancing what looked like a tray above his shoulder. He looked
fairly graceful in his sure-footing—Joss Chen figured this must be what airlegs looked like, to be so sure of
yourself up in the sky on a vibrating deck.
“Some freshment,
Sir!” bellowed the sailor, arriving at Joss Chen’s side, swaying and rocking on
his bare feet.
The sailor placed the tray on the top of the
instrument panel and it adhered there. There must be magnets in the tray, it
snapped down so completely upon the metal cabinet.
“Ah, freshments,
is it?” Captain Joss Chen grinned, poking through the tray. There was a big mug
of something dark, steaming—it looked like coffee. He hoped it was coffee, or
at least tea. And there was a loaf of crumbly bread, a lump of some kind of
dark—fruit? And some dried-looking
stuff that might be jerky. A leather water bag. He hoped it was water, and not
wine, or rum, or whatever trope that sailors drank. “Thank you very much—Gerg?”
“Burg,
Sir!” bellow the sailor. Right yellow-haired Burg. Red-haired Gerg, remember
that.
“Thank you Burg,” Joss Chen said, and lifted
the mug to his nose. Ah, coffee! He sampled a sip, and it was strong, black
coffee, very strong. Good, and heartening. “Would you like some?”
“We don’t eat, Sir! But thank’ee!” bellowed
Burg, sounding proud. “We are automatons from the Looking Glass, Sir—Gerg and
me. We don’t eat or sleep or make a mess. We serve, Captain Joss Chen, we serve!”
“Well, that’s all handy,” Joss Chen said,
sampling the bread, which was very hard, crunchy, and required some gratuitous jaw
pressure to break off a piece. He was lucky he didn’t have any fillings in his
teeth, or biting this bread would prove risky business. But it was surprisingly
tasty, like sourdough, but sweeter. The fruit was something squishy, kind of
like a prune, but even more akin to a fat, dark strawberry, and very juicy, only
not too sweet.
“Coffee,” groaned Ulf, stirring on the deck,
tugging at his self-tangled limbs.
“Let’s get our friend Ulf some hot, black
coffee,” said Joss Chen, laughing at the Viking’s poor, sad face.
“Sir!” bellowed the aerosailor, “this fellow
is not real, let him get his own freshments!”
“Now Gerg, this is my friend,” said Joss
Chen, “and I want you to treat him the same way you treat me.”
“Burg, Sir!” bellowed Burg.
“Yes, yes, Burg, I’m sorry,” Joss Chen said,
closing his eyes for a moment and shaking his head. He had to keep their names
straight. “Please get Mr. Ulf some black coffee.”
“With cream and sugar, please,” croaked Ulf,
now on his knees, staring about himself, looking green and dazed. “I like it
black, with cream and sugar. Lots of cream and sugar.”
“Look at him, Sir!” bellowed Burg. “He’s
practically an automaton! Let him get his own freshments!”
“What are you doing!” bellowed Gerg, striding
forward stiff-legged and looking ready for a fight. “You heard the Captain, and
you obey the Captain!”
“You get freshments for that thing,” bellowed
Burg, pointing an accusing finger at Ulf, who was now sitting against the
wheelhouse, near Joss Chen’s feet.
“Him!” bellowed Burg, “let him get his own
freshments!”
Joss Chen rolled his eyes. Wherever he went,
people seemed to be—people. Everyone
wanted to be the bright star, everyone wanted to advance, everyone craved the
attention, especially if that advancement entailed stepping on someone’s head
and grinding their face into the ground.
“Fine,” Captain Joss Chen snapped, “I’ll get Ulf his black coffee with lots
of cream and sugar.”
“No Sir! Ye cannot do that! Sir!” bellowed
Burg, or was it Gerg?
“It is bad for the men, Sir!” bellowed Gerg,
or was it Burg?
“The men?” queried Joss Chen, leaning upon
the great wheel.
“Yes Sir!” bellowed the brothers, together.
Or maybe they weren’t brothers, not exactly, but they certainly were twins
(save for their absurd hair colors).
“What men?” queried Joss Chen, his features
twisting incredulously.
“The men, Sir!” bellowed Burg and Gerg, in
perfect unison, while pointing fingers at each other. “The morale and the
obedience of the men, Sir! We must maintain order, Sir!”
That was weird, as if they had memorized and
prepared that little speech and delivered it right on some cue. Someone behind
these numbers had to be messing with him. Someone with a twisted sense of
humor.
“It’s like being back with Barney and
Rodney,” muttered Captain Joss Chen, shaking his head, his eyes closed, “with a
little Jethro thrown in for good measure.”
“Sir!” bellowed Gerg and Burg.
Captain Joss Chen stood away from the wheel,
and ironed out his posture so that he towered over the automatons.
“Get me a second mug of coffee, immediately,
Sailors!” bellowed Captain Joss Chen, glaring daggers at the two. “That is a
direct order, and if there is any slacking, I’ll flag the both of you!”
“Flog, Sir!” bellowed the automatons.
“That’s an order!”
The automatons snapped to attention and
saluted him smartly, and then dashed off together, fleet of foot upon the
heaving deck.
“Don’t forget the cream and sugar, lots,”
muttered Ulf the Viking, weakly.
“Don’t forget the cream and sugar, lots!”
bellowed Captain Joss Chen.
“Aye, aye, Sir!” bellowed the sailor
automatons.
“Should have ordered no spitting in the
coffee,” muttered Ulf the Viking.
“Don’t I know it. Children. Everyone is a
child,” muttered Captain Joss Chen. He tossed the other half of his hardbread
to the Viking. The Viking caught the morsel, examined it with horror, and then heaved
it back. With terrible gulps, the Viking scrambled for the side of the vessel,
where he heaved and heaved.
Captain Joss Chen, smiling, looked out at the
vast encompass of sky and far-below clouds. They raced upon the winds, sunshine
stark upon them. And it was all glorious.
It was the day of the Cataclysm when John
Galt emerged through the Red Door into High Vale, and simultaneously bumped
into three rough-looking characters, spreading them apart like bowling pins.
They were short stumps of men, with incongruous tufts of feathers bristling
from their small, sloped heads. The three men started, and then were upon him,
tackling poor John Galt to the hard ground before he even finished his mumbled:
“Oh, excuse me!” He had tried to say it, as he was never a rude man, just one
of those automatic things you say, like bless
you when even a stranger sneezes, but instead he only blurped out: “Ohexcu!” And they were down, the three
of them, tangled and kicking, with a few bites thrown in for good measure.
They rolled on the ground and John Galt
wondered where Jethro was—he had assumed his friend was right on his tail, but
as he tumbled across the rocky ground with his attackers swarming all over him,
he realized it must be one of those High Vale time lags, and Jethro might not
come through the Red Door for another one or two days.
“Caught him!” one of the featherheads
shouted, clasping his hands over John Galt’s mouth, as if he expected his
captive to utter a spell—maybe ohexcu
was a dirty word in these parts.
John Galt reached to touch his left shoulder,
where he felt the insistent tingling, but the men, although very small, seemed
much stronger than himself, and they spread-eagled him upon the stones. It
seemed suspicious, as if they were waiting for him, and he suspected that the
odd woman with the green eyes had set him up, enticed him to pass through the
Red Door, and had these bizarre little guys waiting for him.
If you
ever see a man with a strangely flat and melted face, and with feathers for
hair, you better run—not that there is any place to which you might escape.
Whoa, that was hardly a memory. It was like a
still, small voice, whispered directly in John Galt’s ear. That warning, from
the strange woman, about a man with feathers for hair. He looked about him, as
best he could, and all three of these rough men fit that description, the
strange melted faces, and the feathers. But running did not appear to be an
option. He would have to play this by ear, and survive, if that was even
possible.
“At’s right, whot? At’s right, we got ye, we
did,” one of the strange men giggled in a very high-pitched voice. John Galt
couldn’t quite make out the accent, and the words were fairly garbled, but he
understood the gloating. “Oy, we gottim just like we planned!”
“It’s not ’im, look at ’im, this bloke is
toasted, doancha see?” one of the other strange men said, this guy with a much
lower, croaking voice. “Dark folk, see, like sin a mun!”
“It’s a dee guised, ’at’s whot!” the
high-pitched squealer squealed. “A dee guised, look it be paint, ’ee’s painted
’is face, that’s whot! Hidin’ ’ee’is!”
“Not ’im, but’ee might know ’im,” the growler
growled.
They had his hands tied now, and his legs
trussed so that he could only take short, mincing steps when they had him on
his feet. There were several more of these strange-looking ruffians surrounding
him now, at least a dozen, all of them with the melted-looking features, save
for their great noses. In fact, their noses looked a lot like bird beaks,
hooked, hanging far out above their slit mouths. They didn’t seem to have lips,
and John Galt felt a creeping illness souring his whole body.
“Oy, this bloak doan like the looks ’o’us, do
he?” the tallest of his captors demanded, a broad-shouldered fellow with bright
yellow feathers—much more extravagant feathers than all the others. The others
were gray sparrows, and this larger version was a plump canary. Even his
clothes were more colorful. This apparent leader was something of a dandy. He
strode about John Galt, studying him closely. Then he scoffed. “But he ain’t
the Pugilist.”
“Not ’im, but’ee might know ’im,” the growler
growled, again, and it seemed like déjà vu to John Galt, so closely did he
repeat the words and inflection.
“Listen guys, I don’t want any trouble,” John
Galt began, but the burly yellow-feathered dandy silenced him with a fist in
the gut. John Galt gasped. He had never been struck in his entire life, and
this contraction of his entire body seemed like the first quick steps toward
death.
His nervous system seemed frozen, and he
couldn’t even gasp. All his air had been explosively discharged, and now, he
was at bone-dry empty, and could not pull in any life-giving oxygen to
replenish his life force. But he never looked away from the yellow-haired
dandy’s eyes. They stared at each other as John Galt remained doubled over, not
making a sound, save for tiny mechanical squeaks that issued independently from
his chest. The yellow-haired dandy stared into his eyes contemplatively.
And then, almost without his realizing the
change, air came flooding into John Galt’s lungs, and he stood straight,
looking calmly at his antagonist. With no aggression in his gaze, but openly
staring directly into the leader’s eyes, practically challenging the bully to
do it again and see what would happen, go ahead and strike me, yeah, right
here, come on, hit me. John Galt maintained a straight face, pretending that
nothing unusual had occurred. Sure, he got punched like this all the time.
Punched right in the belly while he wasn’t expecting it, and while his hands
and feet were tied. He did his best to show no pain, not even discomfort.
The leader smiled around his strange
nose-beak—by far, this man had the largest nose John Galt had ever seen. The
bluest eyes, too—icy white blue, and such a confident sneer. He nodded, and it
almost appeared that he winked, or at least gave a half-wink or twitch of his
eye that only John Galt might see, and strode away as if he was done with the
situation, all this was so far beneath him, leaving John Galt standing, trussed
in leather twine, his chest heaving as the miraculous air flooded into him,
reviving him. In truth, John Galt still felt that he might die, just keel right
over, and never move again.
“Ow long we waitin’ fer other one?” one of
the thugs queried.
“Soon, ee’ll be’ere, any minute, ye’ll see,
any minute,” a new one said, and his feathers seemed to be iridescent blue, and
there was something about the way this one was looking at John Galt—it made him
very uncomfortable.
An hour later John Galt was trussed inside
the small wagon and they were bumping across the plains, moving away from the
Red Door and that other world, that place of all his friends and family.
Perhaps they would never see each other again. But John Galt thought not, for
Jethro Mouch was smart, and resourceful, and he could imagine the balding nerd
coming along, stealthily following their many tracks, sneaking in during the
dead of night, cutting John Galt loose, and their escaping—he could visualize
this all so well, he was more than ninety percent certain it would actually
happen, and thus was taken completely unawares when a voice from behind the
company came calling from quite a distance.
“Hello! Wait! Wait for me! Hello!” the voice
cried, and as the ruffians slowed, their little mouths gaping like astonished goldfish,
why here came good old Jethro Mouch, waving his pipe in the air above his head.
It sounded like Bilbo Baggins chasing the dwarves on the morning when he almost
missed the big adventure.
Poor Jethro Mouch came running, short of
breath, red-faced and coughing, right into their very midst, before the
incredulous ruffians tackled him, trussed him, and tossed him into the wagon
beside John Galt.
“What kind of idiots are you hanging out
with?” Jethro demanded, bleeding from both nostrils, out of breath—what little
hair he had remaining on his head pulled up in outrageous tufts. He looked like
a balding hedgehog.
“I thought we should take the rough route,”
John Galt said, yawning. “Get our hands dirty, you know? Come on, it’ll be fun.”
Jethro Mouch stared at him as if early Alzheimer’s
had just kicked in.
“I mean these leather straps, the way they
cut into our skin? See how you’re already bleeding? That taste of blood,
slightly tinged with mucous? I mean come on, Jethro, this is some pretty
authentic stuff. You can’t pay for this kind of adventure!” John Galt said, his
expression utterly seriousness, yawning again, displaying absolutely no humor.
“Man!” shouted Jethro Mouch, “this place is
tilted! It’s out of whack, damn it! The whole program is out of order. I want a
refund! Some gift, damn it, some gift! Do you hear me? Hey, I’m talking to you,
Abyss, I want a refund!”
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Nineteen: Out of Order
If you like Rood Der, try
Vestigial Surreality online free:
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der. All Rights Reserved by the Author, Douglas Christian Larsen. No part of this serial fiction may be reproduced (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews) or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Wolftales UNlimited, but please feel free to share the story with anyone, only not for sale or resale. This work is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental (wink, wink).
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