© Copyright 2018 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Twenty-One: Lizards Galore
There
were about fifty of them out in the middle of the makeshift gladiatorial ring,
doing their flips and flicking, darting maneuvers, twirling spears and swords,
all of them in syncopation, all garbed in leotards crafted from pink human
skin, putting on a show for at least five hundred spectators up in the
bleachers. This was a small turnout day, with no special festival in progress,
no parades—in short, this was one of their boring, ho-hum days. And every one
of the warriors and watching spectators was a stinking lizard. Damn them all,
stinking lizards. Both spectators and gladiators, munching their version of
popcorn (raw chunks of fat, dried and chewy). A very tall, thin lizard strolled
about hawking his wares—fingers, sweet meats, and candy-coated teeth
(apparently, the lizards didn’t mind swallowing bones).
Rodney watched the spectacle with the curious
cattle, crowded up against the fence—the lizards had worked it out this way, of
course, to impress the cattle, because this way, they knew, the cattle did,
that there was absolutely no whisper of a chance at escape. And the even
stronger impression? That there was no way to fight back. The cattle stood no
chance against the oppressor, the master, the harvester—the lizard.
Lizards
were superior to humans, that was the whole point. I mean come on, who could
miss that point? Duh.
Rodney understood all this, because he was
one of the cattle, and he had always been a good student, if not exactly a good
cow, but he was beginning to wonder, more and more, if he had always been walking,
talking, food—processed meat in the
middle of the process. He always understood what people were trying to teach
him. And he had learned that he did not relish the idea of these reptiles
enjoying his meat, the very way he
had always enjoyed the processed meats from all his fast-food havens and
greasy-spoon diners, and delectable delicatessens; however, sooner or later,
Rodney would be on the menu. That was the final, heavy, dreadful point.
Unless he might escape. He had been
addressing the problem, how to escape, and he strolled about, every day,
examining the security measures, the lizard routines, and there didn’t seem to
be any way out of this nightmare, unless he might somehow...fly. These ruins extended for miles, and
the pens for the captives encompassed several acres, all of it fenced, guarded,
and patrolled.
He had ceased to think of this reality as
some extended dream. The pain was just too vivid and overwhelming. If you
experienced this kind of torture in a dream, you woke up. That is just the way thing
worked. And he decidedly had been doing absolutely no waking up. This was his
present reality, and as far as he might determine, there was no escape. The
lizards were good teachers, better, in fact, teaching him than his own native capacity
to learn from them. Oh yeah, he was fritzed, his mind blown. He was like the
other walking dead, hardly able to think or even process simple logic.
A distant part of his mind, pushed way, way
back, kept picturing his own sleeping figure at the base of an ornamental tree.
He did not like to imagine such a thing, not even in the faded distance.
Because the glimpse he caught of his sleeping self was the desiccated and
deformed remnant of a mummy. He had stayed here too long. More, he had stayed there too long. He had become a raisin,
over there. There was no way back from such a thing as this. And there wasn’t
the final destination, or point of origin—he could go crazy trying to parse
this out in his noodle, but then again, he had not been certain of his sanity,
not in a long, long while, not, in fact, since that day during their stupid
Viking meeting, when that guy, that anomaly,
had come bursting into their lives.
That must be his point of origin, when this
all began, his in the beginning. Was
that his base reality? And then the dream, he remembered he had dreamed that he
was a boy again, in the old family house, before he ever moved into the
basement and made that his man cave. Sheesh, he was the stereotypical Peter Pan
living in his parents’ home, in the basement. But the dream, it had been that
day when he had seed the spider come scuttling across the floor, and his angry
father had not seen the squirming monster, or wait, he had seen it, his father
had, except that he had seen something else, something not so monstrous, and he
had plucked this innocuous thing from the floor, and he had flung it at little
Rodney. That was a memory, wasn’t it? That had actually happened, years ago,
when he was just a little fella. And then he had dreamed about it, right?
Or wait, was that all something new? Like a
new data download, the Abyss messing with him? But no, he did indeed seem to
remember it, everything, except for the mirror boy. They had never actually
exchanged places, had they? Wasn’t that just a fantasy he had when he was a
boy, looking into that mirror world, peering past his reflected self, wondering
if there were some way to actually make the passage, just go through, and enter
the other world—because it did indeed seem like another world.
But in his dream about boyhood, he and the
mirror boy had exchanged places, and he had found himself in that dream land,
wandering to the ornamental tree, observing the solitary hanging fruit,
understanding that he was supposed to take, and eat. That the Abyss wanted him
to do that. Instead, he had collapsed. Had he wept? It seemed he could remember
weeping there, at the base of the little tree, wrapping himself around the sad
little tree that had no ornamental garden to surround it. He and the tree,
Rodney and his only companion, his only compatriot, and he had...what? He had
slept there, and found himself in that golden city, the place of all the golden
light.
He had fled toward the forest, munching on
bread, right? That all happened. Or was it an extension of the extended dream.
Where, in short, was he? Where the hell was his base reality? Damn it all, he
had seen the hungry ghosts, that’s what they were called. And that was the
first day, wasn’t it, in this reality, in this place, in this land of lizards?
On that first day—what was it? Weeks ago?
More than a month? Perhaps six weeks? But on that day that Barney led him to
the hunters, when those dancing little lizards had nipped chunks out of his
flesh, they had paraded him through a disorienting orientation process, with
the most bizarre string of inquisitors he could have ever imagined or dreamed
in a thrashing fever nightmare.
The first one was a very skinny, very green
lizard, only four feet in height, who was very clinical. He interrogated Rodney
about the Golden City. Had he been there? Had he spoken to anyone? What about
guards, or police, had he witnessed anything of the sort? Had he eaten any of
the food there? Even the bread set out in a poor bowl outside the gate?
It was all a blur. Rodney hardly knew what he
told the gecko, or salamander, or whatever it was. But the little green ones
seemed to be almost nice, or at least they treated Rodney with a certain degree
of removed professionalism. To them, Rodney was just part of the job, some more
red tape to process. No, but no, hey wait, that wasn’t it at all. What it was,
in fact, was some bored guys working at the slaughter house, just processing
the food. Rodney was food, moving through the assembly line.
The next questioner was a brute, with the
head and broad shoulders of a horny toad. This one only questioned him about
the Hungry Ghosts of the forest, and how many of them he had interacted with,
and this lizard was not very kind. He repeatedly smacked Rodney across the
face. His fists were larger than any human fist, and they bristled with sharp
little horns, or thorns. After Rodney’s eyes were almost swelled shut and his
lips torn and puffed up twice their normal size, and his nose and mouth coughed
out rivulets of thick, clotting blood, and it was then, when he had nothing to
lose, that Rodney had finally lost his temper.
“You damn lizard!” he shouted, seizing the
massive fat toad by the lapels of his black leather coat and shaking him.
The horny toad in his black uniform and tall
boots blinked at him, his thorny eyes winking slowly, deliberately, like the
old double blink, his stupid, alien face showing no expression, and then, after
a few moments, the monster leaned in close, and he said the words, so clearly.
The lizard, the horny toad, had said the magic words. Unbelievably. It was all
too much. The damn lizard had actually had the audacity to say those words.
That was the worst of it. To Rodney, nothing—no other humiliation, dehumanizing
pain, was worse than that, those words. The horny toad, leaning in close, and
his sour, flesh-stench breath suffused Rodney’s being, as he spoke, and said
the black magic words.
“Take
your filthy paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”
Rodney went livid. How dare he! Or, how dare it! Damn the thing, this brute of a
horny toad—this freak of nature had just insulted him with one of the most
memorable lines from one of Rodney’s most favorite movies. The horny toad had the
audacity to torment Rodney with a quote from Planet of the Apes, a Charlton Heston line, if you could believe it!
And really, that was just too much. Way too much. Rodney threw himself against
the monster, spinning the brute about, actually lifting its two hundred pounds
off the floor, and slamming it back into the wall—Rodney couldn’t weigh an
ounce in excess of one hundred twenty pounds, and this thing must weigh more
than double that, not even counting all its heavy leather armor, boots, and
coat.
The horny toad seemed to grin at Rodney.
“I like you...ape,” it croaked in a subterraneously deep voice, before backhanding
Rodney across the jaw, knocking him down to the floor—just one, almost gentle
swipe, that’s all it took, and Rodney saw stars. Everything flashed white, and
then he was on his back staring up at the alien reality looming over him. The
most obscene tongue was lolling about the thorny lips. And then the thing spat
on the floor right next to Rodney’s head. It was disgusting, and unsettling,
but the most upsetting thing was that the spit did not come out of the
creature’s mouth, as you might expect, but had jettisoned from the corner of
its eye!
Rodney moved his head to look at a steaming
black-red globule the size of a golf ball. It looked like blood. He smelled it.
It was blood. Rodney had screamed then, and lost all control of his bladder.
Everything was a nightmare. And he just couldn’t take any more, it was just too
much for any person to comprehend, let alone process and accept.
This dream within a dream within in a dream,
wrapped up in a nightmare, this Pandora’s Box in which he sleepwalked. This
funhouse hall of twisted mirrors.
That had been a day of nightmares, as new
meat processed in, one nightmare right after the other. They had moved Rodney
through a warren of offices, with each new abomination of a lizard demanding
answers about a different category of subjects.
Did he know of another world, or a portal?
Did he have any tattoos? What vaccinations was he lacking? Had he visited the
small, ornamental tree with the oddly shaped fruit? Did he know magic? Did he
know anyone wandering the Forest of Hungry Ghosts?
In one station, they prodded his left arm,
repeatedly, apparently seeking something mystical, or magical, or some sort of
technological implant. In another clinical setting, the series of small
lizards, no bigger than Jack Russell Terriers, examined him with a variety of
lenses and scopes, peering down his throat, prodding and palpating his
genitals, jamming things up his anus, questioning him about sexuality—did he
have children? Did he regularly dry hump other males of his species? Was he
attracted to other kinds of animals? In another, darker room, a bully that
looked like no lizard Rodney had ever seen had demanded quick responses—had he
ever owned a lizard as a pet? Had he ever led a rebellion? Did he find the
prospect of cannibalism offensive? And what was worse, eating the flesh of a
godlike lizard? Or consuming the sickly human meat? This lizard, dark with
little beads of color popping out of the darkness, kept in the shadows,
reclining in a chair made out of squeaky pink leather. It kept caressing it
hands, rubbing them unctuously, over and over, grinning with a wide head of
sharp little dagger teeth—this lizard scared Rodney the most, even more than
the abusive horny toad.
One of those questions had spiraled Rodney
into an almost overwhelming sense of guilt, for indeed, he had a few lizards as
pets when he was a child. Sure, he had lots of animals, insects, turtles and
ant farms and a pet raven. But there was something about the lizards. He liked
them well enough, but he had always sensed a certain, hidden malice in the
reptiles. They hated him, he had always known it. They were like cats that way,
willing to receive food from the humans they despised. He was their master, but
they had plotted escape. Even when he was a boy, sitting in his room, watched
always by that other boy in the mirror world, when he played with those pet
store lizards, they had watched him intently, with their cruel, alien orbs.
Rodney was an animal lover, and he loved his
pet lizards, but that had not quickened his sense of responsibility deep enough
to keep him from forgetting one of his little chameleons, only to find it
several weeks later, a dried-out husk of a mummy, buried beneath his monster
magazines and comic books. Through his neglect, he had murdered that pretty
little lizard with its magical coat.
And he fretted that this current nightmare
was all about that childhood sin. It was karma. They were onto him. They knew,
these denizens of hell, these dybbuks,
they knew, and that’s what all of this was about. He had starved a pet to death,
and then crushed it under monster magazines.
Rodney found himself banished to the hell of
a realm of the Lizards. From what he could discern, there must be about a
couple thousand lizards in these parts, and a few miles away, just about as
many humans. Apparently, the humans over on the far side of the forest were
doing the same things the lizard were doing over here. Each food for the other.
Supposedly, they ate each other, raped each other, pillaged and destroyed, and
apparently there was some form of human-lizard hybrid existing out there, a
product of all the raping, on both sides. The humans hated the lizard-human
hybrids, and the lizards hated the human-lizard hybrids, and each group set out
to out-torture, out-murder, and out-rape the other group.
Hybrids, Human lizards, and Lizard humans,
take your pick depending on the rapist, supposedly both were out there, and
probably equally hating each other, outcast from humans and lizards. Hating
their lizards, and hating their humans, and hating each other, but mostly,
hating themselves.
Rodney got it. He could identify. He had
always felt like an outcast, a stranger. Even among the guys, he sometimes
fancied he caught them looking at him, really looking at him, strangely, and
wondering.
And Rodney was here, in this hell, practically
a disembodied hungry ghost himself, a stranger in the strangest land.
These were the ruins outside the Golden City,
surrounded by the Forest of Hungry Ghosts. This was the Kingdom of the Lizards,
and the reptiles warred with the small townships of rustic humans on the far
side of the forest, far away from the Golden City, capturing people and
bringing them here, to either serve the Lizards, or feed the Lizards, or mate
with other humans, all for the glorious purpose of creating more servants and
food for the Lizards. There was even some hint that special brothels existed, where
lustful lizards raped bedraggled women and men. Brothels serving the lizards
who fancied human meat in other ways other than the delicious food they
provided their bodies. But supposedly these dark trysts terminated in the same
thing—meat.
Funny, funny lizards. See them run. See them
whip their tails. See them spit blood from their eyes. See them laugh, the
funny, funny lizards. Lizard, lizard burning bright, in the funkhouse of the
fright. I have a lovely bunch of lizards. Put the lime in the lizard and drink
it all up.
There were other things going on, as well,
Rodney understood. Experiments.
Torture. Mating experiments, vivisections and amputations and...combinations. Freaking Nazi lizards.
Most of the people in the pens with Rodney
were zombies. They didn’t speak. They didn’t weep. They didn’t fight. They
didn’t care. Except for the rogue humans, trafficking in the misery of the
broken ones, the profiteers marketing more and more debased forms of misery.
There were just a few of these, the bullies, who took extra rations for
themselves by plucking morsels out of the hands of the weak. Bullies who seized
the weak and made them the...objects,
of other prisoners, always preying upon the weak. And everyone was weak here,
even the bullies, yes, they were weak too.
There was one exception, however, at least a
possible exception—the Grampa, who
was some sort of broken colossus. Now, that guy was not weak. That guy,
practically, was no human. And didn’t he seem just a tad bit familiar, that
guy, the Grampa?
Rodney watched the prancing lizards in the
middle of the gladiatorial ring. You know what, he thought, you could get used
to just about anything, provided you had enough time. What wouldn’t he have
given, just a year ago, to see a sight like this? He used to dream about stuff
like this—other worlds, other intelligent life, aliens, visitors, watchers and
demons and angels—and now? Just look at him. All this, it was the most boring
exhibition he had ever witnessed. Here was Rodney, in another world, with lizard
overlords, and Rodney was mostly mind-numbingly bored. He just wanted to play a
video game, sipping at a Coke, nibbling at a burger, making crumbs all about
his game recliner, knowing his mother would wail about the mess, only later.
Ah, what an idealistic dream, to sit there in his chair, idly checking his
device, seeing if Barney had texted.
Stupid lizards, showing off. Big deal. They
were just like humans, certain they were God’s highest and most magnificent
creation, lords of the universe, plundering the lesser tribes. Those in the
image of god, and those below, without souls, eater and meat—this was
civilization, in every world.
At least the
kid was somewhere else. If he had to listen to even another minute of that
kid’s inane babble, he might stomp out onto the parade ground and urinate on
the statue of the Great Lizard, just to end it all as abruptly as possible. The
kid was on and on about his Grampa, Grampa this, and Grampa over there, and my
Grampa was a great warrior, my Grampa’s muscles, and my Grampa’s—ass. Damn, but it got old. Sure, the
little blondy boy—he was cute as anything—and yeah, okay, the Grampa was quite
a specimen, yes this was all true, but come on! Enough was enough. My Grampa is
the strongest, he killed the most lizards, he was the leader. Grampa Grampa
Grampa! Rodney couldn’t even bring himself to correct the kid—it’s Grandpa, idiot! Not Grampa, dummy, but Grandpa.
Quinnlan, just seven years old, was the cattle
pen gossip and thief, connecting all groups—he even had friends within the
Lizard Youth, as the young lizards condescended to talk to the gabby little
blond boy. Oh, he was food, just like everyone else, his number was coming up,
possibly at random, when one of the lizards wanted the taste of young meat,
older than veal. Golden meat, that was Quinnlan.
But more than anything else, the kid
especially liked bugging Rodney, who, worn down and pestered nearly to death,
told him tales about Star Wars and Star Trek, and monster movies (imagined
battles between Doctor Jekyll and Quasimodo, who would win, or Dracula versus
the Wolfman), that is, when he could ever get a word in, but it would need to
be an awfully thin word, turned on its very edge, so to speak. Quinn wouldn’t
shut up.
The boy would only listen at night, when he
was drowsy, his eyes growing huge, as Rodney whispered about Luke Skywalker and
Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Captain Kirk and Mister Spock. The kid really quivered when
Rodney told him about the Wolfman, and Frankenstein (although that last one was
odd, in that Quinn had seemingly heard about Frankenstein, but believed him to
be a real person, a sort of bright angel that traveled between many worlds).
And hey, Rodney did kind of look forward to those times, when the boy was
drowsy, when he was such a good listener, his big eyes shining, that
disjointed, out-of-time-and-place smile, that expression of resting delight
that so clashed with this time and place. Rodney looked forward to those
moments.
He could be a storyteller, then, and he might
fashion worlds out of familiar things, things he knew and loved, like Dracula,
and Lieutenant Uhura.
Rodney had never spoken to the Grampa, although
he had certainly seen the massive and twisted wretch of an old man, hobbling about
the yards, as he was certainly hard to miss. He was a big man, shaggy-haired,
bearded white, and mane pure silver-white and somehow beautiful on such a
craggy geezer—the brute of a man had shoulders out to here, with dark, tanned
skin, and some of the most serious walking-wounded scars Rodney could ever have
imagined. It seemed in the distant past the man had lost part of the left side
of his face, including his left eye, and part of his nose on that side. The
skin of the cheek had puckered down into a massive rivulet—you could probably
store your cell phone in that crack, if they had such things here. The ruin of
a man, still powerful, hobbled about the yard upon a thick, black, knobby
walking stick.
The Grampa’s left arm was scarred, but was
apparently still serviceable, and he was missing half his left foot, the
outside edge, retaining three toes (though even these were twisted and knobbed),
and part of his heel. The knee on that leg was cloven, barely moving, and
apparently caused the old man a lot of pain. But, the brute, who could have
played the part of Quasimodo in a horror-movie version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was still mobile, and indefatigable,
wandering all about the extensive network of pens and slaughterhouses,
apparently trying to boost the morale of the walking food, hobbling and limping
his way through the crowds of staring, somnolent zombie cattle.
Rodney had no idea what the big crippled man
was doing in his daily hobbled journeys. But he had seen Grampa arguing with
the Crone, a wizened little human lady that looked something like Yoda. She was
missing most of her hair, and her eyes were two huge circles, worn down to the
eye sockets, face puckered inward, wrinkled flesh of antiquity, beef jerky
walking. And her whittled-down teeth looked like dark pegs in her perpetual
rictus grin. One lower tooth jutted up between her lips like a dark tusk. Rodney
often caught the old woman watching him with those horrid, yellow orbs in those
skeletal eye sockets.
The Grampa did not speak—apparently the
inside of his mouth was destroyed (there were nasty scars covering his throat
and mouth)—and he resorted to making hand gestures and signals, but the Crone
whispered furiously as they argued, several times smacking the old man that
towered over her, striking him across the face and on the top of his head with
her knobby stick. The big ruin of a man stood there and took it, looking sad.
Rodney had only caught a snatch of one of these conversations.
“...the example,
idiot! You must sacrifice yourself,
and now, before they choose...” she
had whisper-shrieked. Rodney could barely hear her, and had moved closer,
pretending to study the sky. “...must remember you. What you used to...all must. Not this husk. They must not
remember this. (Some furious, spitting
whispers that Rodney could not catch, or could not decipher.) They must
remember the true you, and be inspired. You are one of the remaining children
of the Lady. And...him. They will
remember him. They must not retain
this current reality, this absurdity, this wreckage of what you have been
reduced, this pathetic monstrosity of you that clings to existence. Now, while
there is yet some of you remaining, you must act—now!”
The Grampa hobbled away, furiously, stomping
and surging upon his black walking stick, and the crone stood on her makeshift
crutch, a knobby stick, spitting and hissing like a starving cat. Then she
turned her furious gaze upon Rodney.
“You,
alien!” she shrieked, pointing a bony finger at Rodney like aiming a pistol.
“Hey, I wasn’t listening,” Rodney lied,
stammering and sputtering, backing away, preparing to bolt.
“Your only salvation is in aiding him, you
must stand by him, and you must save the boy,” she wailed, her voice eerie and
haunting, and it thrilled Rodney with gooseflesh.
Chills raced up and down his spine. It was as
if she was prophesying, and she was including Rodney in the mystery of this
world, this dream place, this tilted and twisted reality. Perhaps—the fantastic
notion whirled through his mind—this all really is just a game, and this is a built-in
quest, and the Abyss is involving me in that quest.
“Take him with you into the sky! That is your
only hope. Keep him alive, and find his father. Otherwise—the reptiles take
you!”
The Crone peered at him with such beady and
glowing eyes, Rodney nearly fainted, his heart slamming in his bony chest. Then
she cackled, in such a perfect interpretation of a witch’s high and reedy
laughter, that Rodney could think of nothing better to do than turn and run.
“This isn’t real,” he chanted, “this isn’t
real.”
He had to believe that—unreality, that’s what
all this was, it just couldn’t be real—that all of this was just some twisted
dream. It went on and on, of course, but it couldn’t be real. Lizards the size
of men, eating people. Lizards, telling jokes in water cooler cliques, lizards
urinating against the wall, whistling while they tapped a kidney.
“What isn’t real?” the cringe-worthy voice
popped, and Rodney glanced to see the little blond boy running beside him.
“Oh kid, why don’t you go play?” Rodney
snorted, seizing the side of a pen and vaulting himself around and inside. He
slumped down in the mud. At least this pen was deserted—small comfort. Hardly
comfortable, but at least a small comfort that he could sit alone, not
constantly crowded by zombie cattle.
The boy climbed up on the side of pen,
unheeding of the splintery wood. These were slaughter pens, usually reserved
for harvesting...veal, that’s what
they actually called it. Screaming babies were reduced to veal. Sitting like a
self-pleased baboon, the monkey boy grinned down at Rodney.
“What do you want to play?” the boy piped.
“The Nagas are coming out today, I saw one—wait till you see them, Rod Knees,
wait till you see them, I promise you they will give you nightmares, I mean,
their necks, have you seen their necks? Sure, the slithers are bad enough,
although I can’t see why everyone is afraid of slithers, but Nagas? Oh wait
until you see! It is priceless, Rod Knees, I promise you, priceless.”
“Ah, please, God,” Rodney said, hardly
blaspheming, turning his eyes toward heaven. Please God, how much more torment for little, insignificant me?
“Who is God?” asked the boy, peering down at
him with a grin.
“You got that
right!” Rodney snarled, hugging his knees up close to his chest. Oh but you got
that right, damn it, and damn it all, yes indeedy, you got that right, Monkey
Boy. And then, only half-jokingly, he began to chant, clicking his heels
together: “There’s no place like home!
There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!”
“What kind of game is—this?” Quinnlan piped. He neatly hopped over the fence and plopped
down in the dark, cool mud next to Rodney, and perfectly mimicked the man’s
posture, hugging his knees and clicking his heels.
Rodney glanced at the boy.
“Can’t you just—go away?” Rodney whispered.
“I don’t want you to be lonely, Rod Knees,”
the boy said, patting Rodney’s arm. “Don’t be sad. These are just tough times.
We’ll get through them, you and me, these bad things will pass, you’ll see.”
“Is your Grampa supposed to fight the
lizards? How in the world can he fight the lizards?”
“Oh, my Grampa,” Quinnlan laughed. “That’s
what he does. He fought the lizards for years. But they caught me and Mama, and
Grampa came after us, to get us back, and that’s when they caught him. They
used us as bait to capture Grampa. The Horny Toads planned it all out. They’re
very smart, those horny ones. And they had three
Gila Monsters get Grampa in a net, it took three of them. The Gila Monsters are
the meanest—if they ever bite you, they won’t let go, not ever. I don’t want to
terrify you, Rod Knees, but, you know, I’m just saying.”
“Yeah, but that witch, the white-haired
crone, what’s she want your Grampa to do? How is he supposed to fight them now?
He’s all in bits and pieces!”
“Oh, he can fight them. Big time. You’ll see,
Rod Knees, you’ll see! Nobody knows so much about fighting as Ole Grampa.
Granny—that’s what everyone calls her, but she’s just an old witch and doesn’t
have any kids, and she can snatch a coin right out of your ear when you least
expect it, I’ve seen her do it—but she wants Grampa to make his last stand,
like he was supposed to do, when he was the leader of the free people. He was,
you know, the leader, and everyone said Grampa was an egg once, in the Queen’s
Lair, they called him Sir Egg, but I don’t know what that means. I don’t know
what a Queen’s Lair is, or maybe it’s a Queen’s Ear? I don’t know. Or about Sir
Egg, I don’t know what that means either, but he was supposed to be an egg,
once, a long, long time ago, Rod Knees, like in your stories, a long, long time
ago, in a galaxy far, far away. I asked Granny, and she smacked me a good one.
She knows lots of stuff, Granny does, and she says that a sky dragon is going
to come. Maybe even today. It might come, and I would dearly love to see a sky
dragon, Rod Knees.”
“Sky dragon,” Rodney giggled, dashing a tear
from the corner of his eye. “That’s just what we need, more lizards, even in
the air, that takes the cake. Fly the friendly lizard skies! Yeah, just what I
need.”
“No, this will be a sky dragon on our side,
it will save us, Rod Knees. Watch for it. Granny says that when it appears we
need to go up the stairs into heaven. That sounds like fun, don’t you think?
Going up stairs into the sky? I’ve never seen that. I can’t wait, because I
want to see that—but even more, I really want to climb up, that sounds amazing.
Oh Rod Knees, we live in such wonderful times, don’t you agree, Rod Knees?”
Everyone about the pens had begun calling
Rodney that, Rod Knees, after they
heard the boy calling him that—but it was lizards that had first called Rodney
that. He figured the lizards did that on purpose. It was part of their plan.
Rodney was just too exhausted to correct anyone, I mean, who cares? Right? Ole Rod Knees, that was him, he could
play the part, sure, why not?
“Grampa killed a Gila Monster, and nobody
else ever did that, it’s cuz they are the mean ones, and that is all
ecological,” the boy continued, bragging, actually thumping his chest like a
gorilla. “You see that stick Grampa carries? That’s a magic stick. He calls it
a ukulele. A ukulele can beat a sword, a spear, even an arrow. Nobody can break
a ukulele. But I’ve seen Grampa bend it, that’s how strong he is, whenever
anyone starts bullying, Grampa bends the stick. That’s when the bullies run,
Rod Knees, when Grampa bends his stick.”
“Wouldn’t that be something,” Rodney sneered.
“Tiny Tim, Tiptoe Through the Tulips,
yeah, that sounds about right. That’s what we need, a hero with a ukulele!
Please, God!”
“There was a boy here named Tiny Tim,” Quinnlan
said, “but they ate him. He was nice. I tried to keep him hidden in the herd,
but they sniffed him out, that’s what they always do. The little ones are the
sniffers. They took poor Tiny Tim to the jerky dryer. Said he was crunchy, and
they like that sometimes. The fattest of us are the real prize, they love fat,
but skinny ones have a special crunch, and some of them love that. Good for
snacks. The bones too, they love our bones, like to crunch them, and suck out
the goo from the middle, I forget what they call it, the red-black goo. But
don’t try any of that, Grampa says we don’t eat meat, not any of it, because we
don’t know who it was. Just eat the onions, and the dandelions, and even the
old veggie tables are good. They like our teeth, too, Rod Knees? Did you know
that, Rod Knees?”
“Please don’t tell me stuff like that,”
Rodney groaned. He thought of poor little Tiny Tim, from A Christmas Carol, dragged off his crutches by the stinking
lizards. Rodney sighed. Oh, he couldn’t help it. Why not? Why resist? And he
suddenly burst into tears.
“Don’t be sad Rod Knees,” Quinnlan consoled,
patting Rodney on the shoulder. “I’ll watch out for you. That’s right! I know
my way around these parts! These lizards will’na get the best of me, because I
am Quinnlan with a Q, and you should always follow the Q. When the Nagas come,
you just let me do the talking, okay? Follow the Q. That’s what Grampa always
says, follow the Q, and so should you, Rod Knees, that’s what you do, follow
the Q.”
Rodney seized the boy and hugged him, and he
wept. Save the boy, that would be the
day. Ole Rod Knees couldn’t save himself, let alone anyone else. If anything,
this boy might save him. Just the idea of it made Rodney weep even harder.
Follow the Q, protect the Q. Yes, oh yes, indeedy-DO.
“There, there,” the boy crooned, hugging
Rodney. “It’s gonna be okay, you’ll see, it will all work out. This isn’t the
end, Rod Knees. Don’t give up. You never give up, that’s what Grampa always
says. We are to Pressure Veer, and Soldier On, ever hear that? Soldier On,
Grampa says, and Pressure Veer.”
Rodney snorfled, and coughed, and finally
blew his nose on his tattered sleeve.
“That is gross,” Quinnlan said, grimacing.
“Boogers galore. Snot everywhere. Boy, that’s kind of wonderful, how you can
cry like that—never saw anyone cry like you do, Grampa says you are special,
and that I need to watch out for you, and Granny says it too. But I don’t know,
you are pretty much food, but you cry good, I mean you cry real good,
sincerely, I mean that Rod Knees, sincerely.”
“Yeah, thanks, very comforting,” Rondey
sniffed.
“What’s a Q,
Rod Knees?” Quinnlan suddenly asked, as perky and as curious as ever.
“What do you mean, what’s a...Q?” Rodney said, wiping his eyes,
swallowing hard. Was the kid asking about a line that forms, a queue? Or a
hint, a cue? Or the letter Q?
“Grampa never says. He just says—follow the Q,” Quinnlan said, “and he
always calls me Quinnlan with a Q.
What is a Q?”
“I think...you...are the Q,” said Rodney.
“That’s just silly—you always say such silly
things, that’s what I like about you, Rod Knees. I can’t exactly follow the Q
if I’m the Q, because I would be like a dog chasing its tale, round and round
and roun, Rod Knees. You are truly the most funniest food I have ever met,”
said Quinnlan, his arm about Rodney’s neck.
“Is that how you think of us, as food?” Rodney asked, peering at the boy.
“Not us, but you, yes, you are food,” said
Quinnlan. “Definitely, you are food, and I bet you are delicious.”
“Really? How come I’m food, and you aren’t?”
Rodney asked, shaking his head, peering at the kid through his fractured
glasses, seeing the boy in shattered shards, oddly magnified, a puzzle-work
creation of uneven and moving pieces. He really ought to just toss these
eyeglasses away, because the world was even more distorted when viewed through
the spider-webbed lenses, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. When you
find yourself in a new world, somehow the old things from that other reality—the
old country—those things became all the more precious, even if illusory.
“You are afraid of them, the slithers,”
Quinnlan said. “Grampa said not to be afraid of them. If you are afraid of
them, then you are their food. That’s why I can visit them all, I even like
some of them—they are just like us, in so many ways that count. Always face
them, and remember that even if they are going to kill you, don’t be afraid,
and face them.”
Rodney snorted. The way this kid talked!
Rodney had never heard a human mouth talk so fast or issue such nonsense, and
nonstop—the kid was a genius of gobbledygook. He sighed. Ah well, let him babble,
it was so much better hearing the kid’s insanity than hearing his own magnified
thoughts of lunacy. Plus, the kid was, oh I don’t know, somehow, what? Refreshing? Amusing, sure, but there was
something about the kid that lifted up your spirits.
He heard a buzzing noise. Weird, it sounded
like sprinklers on a lawn ratcheting out the water.
“Nagas,” Quinnlan whispered, holding up his
index finger. “Now you remember Rod Knees, you just let me do all the talking,
you got that? You just follow the Q. Like Grampa says, just follow the Q. They
are coming here, to have a little look at you, Rod Knees, but try not to be
afraid, and follow the Q.”
“What
the hell is a Naga?”
Rodney snapped, but just a second later, he knew.
Or he didn’t know, not exactly—but he did see a Naga, as a creepy snake-like head
came winding around the edge of the pen, low down, close to the ground, a long
and forked tongue flickering before it like a Geiger counter. It was some kind
of snake, he thought, but then a second later he saw the long neck went up to
top a very human pair of shoulders, as well as the whole human torso. It was a
very human body with a four-foot snake neck, topped by a very creepy snake
face—a viper, with horns, and a triangular head, looking every ounce the personification
of...venom. Poison—lethality,
deadliness, poisonous, this human-snake hybrid, and its scaly nose was only
three inches away from his own nose.
“Ah, there you are, Q, and I see you are with
the...alien—good, good, very well
indeed,” the Naga crooned in a very deep and melodious voice. Rodney,
terrified, almost giggled. The monster sounded just like Jeremy Irons. Peaky
British elegance.
“Good to see you, Father Naga,” Quinnlan
said, standing and dusting off his knees, and bowing very clumsily, while
grinning at the obscene creature. “I’m just here with my friend, Rod Knees,
from the far off land of monsters, and superheroes, and comics, and the movies,
and buildings as tall as the sky.”
Rodney sat frozen, goggle-eyed, not sure how
much of the distortion in his vision was caused by his destroyed eyeglasses, or
was manufactured by his palpable terror. But he could not look away from it,
the thing, the Naga. This thing had
to be about the most terrifying thing he had ever seen, even in monster movies.
This thing would cause Bigfoot to flee, screaming. It was all sinuous and
gentle swaying and deadly almost movement, like when a rattlesnake finally
makes its deadly plunge, surging forward, the Naga seemed like that moment,
ever held barely in check, ready to strike.
“Very good, Q, very good, I am so, so pleased
that you have found our strange alien. He sounds most fascinating,” the Naga
said, words oozing sibilantly. Rodney thought he sounded like the snake in the Jungle Book. Or wait, maybe he was
thinking of the evil lion in The Lion
King, or Basic Rathbone as Sherlock
Holmes. But its words were succulent, and wealthy, and very...slithering.
Rodney almost giggled in his terror, for he supposed that if snakes could talk,
this is pretty much how they would sound.
“Please, tell me about your world,” the Naga
crooned.
“Oh, his world,” laughed Quinnlan, “he comes
from the most amazing world. He can see visions, right there in front of his
face, and the visions tell stories! Like the lizard theatre, the visions in
front of his face have players and music and stories, and oh, but it is a
wonderful world where Rod Knees comes from. A world of monsters, men who change
into monsters, and superheroes in bizarre colors, flying in the sky, can you
believe it? And the men turn into women, and the women turn into men, just like
that! If they want to, they do it, can you believe it, Father Naga?”
“If you say it is so,” said the Naga, “then I
must believe it, for you always tell the truth, is this not so, Q? You know, Q, somehow you know.” The creature
strode closer to Rodney and Quinnlan, its human body dressed all in black, save
for a white V at its throat. Apparently, the Naga was some sort of priest, or
at least that is how it looked to Rodney. But he mostly stared at its feet,
which were pink, and lovely, and entirely human.
“I do! I do tell the truth,” admitted
Quinnlan, smiling brightly. “Grampa says it is important to be honest, and to
be true to yourself, and to give a big howdy-do and hullaballoo.”
“Yes, your Grampa says a lot for a man who
cannot speak for himself,” said the Naga, slitheringly.
“Well, that’s what I am for, isn’t it?” said
Quinnlan, nodding. “I speak for them, all those who cannot speak—like Rod
Knees!”
The Naga face turned its nictating, reptilian
eyes from the boy, to Rodney.
“Let me hear you speak, alien,” the Naga
said, with command.
“Well, um, really, I should just let the Q
speak, he seems to know his way around,” said Rodney.
“My,” the Naga said, after a few thoughtful
moments. “That is odd. What is that, Q, a form of speech, or is it weeping?”
Quinnlan laughed. “That’s how Rod Knees says things, just like that. It’s how he
talks. He just said that he wants me to speak for him, since I know my around
the slithers. You don’t have to worry about Rod Knees, he is and always will be
good meat.”
“Now, now,” the Naga said, “I believe that is
your word for the people—slithers—and
I would be careful, if I were you, for that can easily be interpreted as a
purposeful insult. We call it a racial slur, and we do not appreciate racial
slurs, Q.”
“Yes, yes it is!” Quinnlan laughed.
“Slithers, that’s an insult! Yes, I agree, Father Naga, it is an insult. But
the slithers are so stupid, they don’t know it! They are not smart like you,
Father Naga.”
The Naga issued a peculiar noise, and Rodney
realized after a moment that it must be laughing. But the eyes stared. Snake’s
eyes. There could never be humor displayed in that strange, expressionless face,
or those cold, poisonous eyes. One cold eye seemed to be focused on Rodney, and
other upon Quinnlan.
“Strange,” said the Naga, “but you are not
afraid, not in the least, are you?”
“Nope, I am decidedly not afraid, not of
slithers,” said Quinnlan. “And not of you, Father Naga. But I like you, as I
like most slithers, you are all like a bunch of children. I think of you like
pets, and I think you are quite wonderful, I really do.”
“Very strange,” said the Naga, again, after
reflection. “As always, Q, when we converse, I am yet again convinced that
there just might be hope for your...people.
Yes, in you, I see there is potential, potential indeed, for human animals to rise higher than their
natural station. I see that potential in you, Q. Even intelligence, I think.
But we must steer your evolution, I think, to achieve your best potential, yes.
Wouldn’t that be something, to raise your kind higher than meat? What a
thought.”
“Grampa says I am very smart,” said the boy, proudly.
“And you do know, I know that you do, that
one bite from me would harden your body, like stone, and you would lie cold and
unmoving, like a corpse, and yet you would remain cognizant of every bite
during the feast,” said the Naga, now focusing both its eyes on Quinnlan. “My
sweet piece of meat, yes, you do know it is true, don’t you, Q?”
The boy howled with glee. He bent forward and
slapped his knees, his eyes closed in merriment.
Rodney swallowed hard, because it was close,
he could feel it in every fiber of his being, that the strange snake-man was
about to strike, bite the boy, and poison him, and yet Quinnlan seemed
oblivious, laughing with all his life force, bubbling with abandon. The strange
child was completely unconcerned with the danger of this eternal, fatal moment.
The Naga turned and strode away, its head now
high, perhaps ten or eleven feet up in the air, but not bobbing—it was smooth
and seemed to be slithering through the air with every step of its very human
feet. It did not turn its reptilian face to the right or to the left.
Apparently, it was...pissed. And
Rodney knew that Quinnlan could do that, seemingly without any effort on his
part. The kid had a talent for pissing off, he really did, it was impressive.
“Those are the boy Nagas, the girls are just
the other way around,” chuckled Quinnlan, wiping his eyes, finally calming
down, but grinning ear to ear.
“Why couldn’t that thing understand me? I
mean, I understood everything it was saying,” Rodney demanded.
Quinnlan stared at him for a moment. He
seemed to be judging whether or not Rodney would be able to bear the heavy
news. Rodney, you are an idiot. There,
that wasn’t so bad, was it? Big surprise. Rodney, you are a dunce, a mouth
breather, a worm among worms.
“Well? He was speaking English, just like me—and
hell, why in the world does everyone speak English, that doesn’t make sense—but
I could understand him, and he should have been able to understand me—what’s up
with that?”
“Up?” Quinnlan said, blankly, even glancing into
the sky.
Rodney sighed. “Oh good night, forget it, I
don’t care how this lopsided game works, it’s all just stupid—there’s no way
any of this could be real.” He pulled himself up and staggered, caught himself,
and began marching away—away, to what? That was the question, because there was
nowhere to go, except to wander aimlessly in the maze of the stables, pens, and
cages. They were in one big cage, after all, the zoo, where wandering lizards
could spot you and call out your number, and you would star in their menu that
same night. Rodney didn’t know how they had tagged him, but he certainly had a
number, and knew it well, ole 2821147.
The pattern in that was not lost on Rodney, oh yeah, he’d spotted the pattern.
These stinking lizards had singled him out because he was Jewish, that’s exactly what you’d expect of a reptile. They should
have tattooed a big yellow Seven on his forehead, that’s what they should have
done.
“I’m helping you,” Quinnlan said, with
absolutely no trace of guile, tagging along at Rodney’s side. “That’s my job,
that’s what I do, I help people. I like people. I like lizards. And so I try
and help you understand, but it’s hard, because you are all just so stupid.”
Herds of the zombie prisoners went staggering
the opposite direction, apparently heading toward the stadium. Rodney ignored
them, except for a few stumblers that practically tripped him—these, he shoved
out of the way.
“I’ll have you know I’m a pretty bright guy,”
Rodney said, stung. Nobody ever questioned whether or not he was intelligent.
It was his...thing, and had always
been his major deal. Everyone knew it, just looking at him. Come on, all
cultures understood the mark of the nerd. It showed in the eyes, like the Bat symbol flickering in the sky.
“Well,” Quinnlan said, smiling at Rodney
kindly. “I do think you...try.”
Damn kid.
“Rod Knees? Stand still and do not say a
word,” Quinnlan said suddenly, urgency in his voice. “Don’t look around, Rod
Knees. Don’t talk. I will help you. But try not to move. Try very hard.”
Rodney froze in place. He heard something approaching.
He swallowed hard, his eyes bulging as he stared down at the boy. Quinnlan
folded his arms across his chest and faced whatever was approaching. The boy
was grinning—heck, he always grinned, but Rodney sensed something in the kid’s
posture. The boy was terrified, as terrified as Rodney.
“What is it?” Rodney whispered, but kept
himself utterly still.
“Shhhh,” replied Quinnlan in an urgent
whisper, “it’s them.”
Them? Rodney felt like
running. What in the world was...them?
Giant ants? Nobody had ever mentioned...them—never.
A peculiar buzzing sound began and increased
in volume, quickly, like an approaching hive of bees—but this was an eerie
sound, that of ghost bees, or something much larger than bees, because melded
with the electrical buzzing noise was the coos and sighs and distant
laughter...of women. Women, or
ghosts. More hungry ghosts?
Rodney felt the skin all over his body lift
up in prickling gooseflesh. The breath in his chest heaved, and suddenly,
strangely, he felt his manhood inexplicably...stiffen, his groin pounding. And there was a—what was that? Weird, a...smell, cooking mushrooms, or onion and
spicy chives, and wow, what in the world was
that? The smell of green, green copper, wet and alive and swirling, and the
buzzing increased as if neighboring beehives were joining together.
“Just
pretend it is a dream,” Quinnlan whispered, and the boy sounded livid with fear.
“It is, it is,” Rodney whispered, “that’s
exactly what this, it’s just a dream.” Finally, they were getting down to the
brassest of tacks, reality, and what is it, and is a dream just as real as
reality? Yes, this is a dream, Quinnlan my fine little buddy, but pain in
dreams is just about as real as pain in reality. Are we the people, or the
butterflies?
And then they were there, twining about
Rodney and Quinnlan, their normal-sized female bodies very much appearing as
very normal women, save that they were the loveliest of women. At first Rodney
was certain they wore no clothing, these strange apparitions, but then he saw
they were draped with thin, shiny scarves, all glistening and silky, and then these
mysterious women laughed as they swarmed around the man and the boy.
“It is the boy!” one of the she-demons
giggled, wrapping coils of her body about the boy’s legs, one of her long, pale
hands stroking his face.
“Follow the Q! Follow the Q!” the other
strange women chanted, laughing and giggling, and all the while still producing
that otherworldly buzzing noise, and in his peripheral vision Rodney became aware
that they, each of these snake-like lizard women, had their own buzzing rattle,
the size of a pinecone, at the end of their scaled bodies. They were like
snakes, only not, and like lizards, except in perhaps a Salvador Dali way.
Rodney did not look at any of the women, not
directly. He believed Q, he trusted the Q, and he followed the Q. The Q knew.
Do not look at them. Pretend this is a dream.
But they were not snakes, not exactly, these
female Nagas, as they had perfectly formed legs—vestigial legs, the size of
fingers, running the length of their long serpent bodies, which coiled and
writhed, the rattles shaking like hyperactive maracas, vibrating so fast they
sounded like electrical cords overheating. They were the opposite of the male
Nagas, who had snake necks and heads, but otherwise humanoid bodies, whereas
these females were perfectly womanly above the waist, but serpentine the length
of their long bodies. And they moved far swifter than any snake or lizard
Rodney had ever seen, in any world, of any size. There was something
supernatural in their movements, not even considering the strangeness of their
forms and beings.
“We are not female—Nagas,” one whispered, drawing close to Rodney, her hot breath
burning his ear. “Naga are foul, strange-looking creatures, hardly human,
whereas we are...Nuwa, heavenly,
celestial—strange human aline, cannot you feel the difference? Look at me weak
human alien thing when I speak in your ear.”
Rodney could not help it, he looked at her.
He was compelled. There was no refusing this...Nuwa. No choice. And now? No will. He was gone. Oh yeah, it was
over.
Oh, but she was beautiful, beyond anything
Rodney had ever imagined, even in his most feverish prepubescent fantasies of
fantastic superhero women and monsters, all those images that floated through
his mind when he was a boy—oh, but he had never imagined anything like these
strange beauties.
The Naga, well, that poor creature was an
ugly monstrosity, but oh, oh but this
Nuwa. She had such eyes. At least this creature, this Nuwa, she was exotic,
or something akin to ancient Chinese, with such eyes, such curvaceous eyes,
with irises that glimmered violent and yet radiated green, striations of jade
in a velvet bed of violence and seduction, with slit pupils pulsating, drawing
Rodney in, and in, and deeper, in, ever in.
Rodney sighed.
“Yes, weak human alien thing, look upon me.
Look within me, I shall take you in, weak human, and you shall become something
more than you have ever been, or could ever hope to be. You shall feed me, weak
human, and you shall become me, weak human, is not this what you have always
dreamed? To become something better, something finer, and something...magical? Enter me and become me. Enter me
and become me.”
Yes, he
did, yes he had always, and yes, oh yes, he yes, whatever she said, let him
enter her now, let him enter her forever, for always, yes, an infinity of yes,
please. Oh please, oh please yes. Take me. Consume me. I am your meat. Yes oh
please yes.
Such a voice, was that a voice, or a sound in
his head? It didn’t matter, because it was beauty, that voice, like these eyes
that he never desired to glance away, never, yes, oh but yes, to enter her, to
feed her, to become her, that was his worship, what he had always yearned, oh
the yearning, yes, but he wanted her. Please yes, oh please yes.
“No,” Quinnlan interjected, suddenly. The boy
stepped up and out of the coils of the two Nuwa that had him entwined, and he
leaned close to the exotic beauty that was busily hypnotizing Rodney. “This is
not your day. Your world begins to end today, that is what is happening right
now, that is what drew you from the Forest of Hungry Ghosts.”
Rodney heard all this as if in a dream. He
understood the words, and strangely, the boy seemed to be repeating something
that Rodney had heard before, but he couldn’t quite place what it was. His
hackles lifted in gooseflesh, and he felt that uncanny sense of déjà vu
suffusing him. Hadn’t this all happened before—a thousand times?
He looked at the boy standing surrounded by
the bizarre lizard women, and it was as if he saw Quinnlan for the first time:
a shaggy-haired waif, far too skinny, with chapped lips, filthy hands and bare
feet—and the most angelic face he had ever seen! The Q was a revelation! A
miracle! Sometimes you just noticed that he wouldn’t shut up. Other times, like
now, you noticed that the kid was courageous, insanely brave, and that he was a
bonafide—prophet, a messenger, a
living miracle.
Rodney laughed.
The boy and the Nuwa gawked at him.
“It’s just, you know,” Rodney began, wedging
his words between his bursts of laughter and gasps of breath, “I really don’t
care anymore, you know—whether all this is really happening or not! It’s just
too bizarre. Too weird. I don’t care. I mean, come on! How can you...care...when you see a sexy snake woman
with tiny little vestigial legs poking out of her...scales!”
Quinnlan grinned at him.
“Yes!” the boy cried, “you are beginning to
see!”
And then the Nuwa were slithering away, their
rattles buzzing, their sinuous bodies strangely quiet. With supernatural grace
all of them were gone, out of sight, in seconds, perhaps twenty of them, racing
toward the stadium. They were suddenly gone.
Only then did Rodney hear the horns blaring,
and notice the prisoners rushing toward the stadium fence, the crowds bunching
and staring, pointing. Leaping lizards, that’s what Rodney saw, beyond the
crowds and the fence, great lizards launching into amazing acrobatic dives through
the air.
“It’s happening,” Quinnlan said.
Rodney burped. He might vomit. He scrubbed
his eyes with his fists. His eyes felt full of sand, and blood—it was eerie,
but he was feeling déjà vu again. Something was happening? That was kind of an
understatement, wasn’t it? Something was
happening, come on!
“We better go, because it is happening, Rod
Knees, and we do not wish to miss it,” Quinnlan said, taking Rodney’s hand,
pulling him along back toward the stadium.
Sometimes the kid sounded like something out
of Little Rascals, while other times
he might be confused with a cyborg—but right now, wow, he had the voice of
command, and Rodney was not questioning his orders. He followed. He followed
the Q.
The prisoners—the food—screamed. Rodney picked up his pace and soon passed and began
tugging the boy along behind him. No, they were not screaming. It sounded like
they were cheering.
“It’s Grampa,” said Quinnlan, voice barely
loud enough to hear above the mounting din of the watching prisoners.
Rodney squinted his eyes. Something had just
changed—the light? It was too bright.
The sun baked down, he felt rolling tides of heat washing against his face.
What was going on? Then that sensation was gone—the world seemed normal. Had he
just experienced a stroke? Some kind of brain fart?
“The sky dragon just accessed the crystal!”
Quinnlan cried, squeezing Rodney’s hand. “The sky dragon is coming! It’s all
happening, right now, Rod Knees!”
Rodney had no idea what the boy was babbling
about, he just wanted to get to the stadium fence and see what was going on over
there, and he tugged the boy along—for some reason the kid was slowing down.
Rodney glanced back at him and nearly stumbled. The boy was staring up into the
sky, his free hand shading his eyes, squinting directly into the sun.
“Come on Q!” Rodney shouted, nearly tugging
the boy’s arm out of its socket. He had to concentrate on the gathering crowds
of excited prisoners. He had never seen so many congregating together, there
must be thousands of the pale, miserable cattle. Rodney had no idea there were
this many of them, not even after weeks losing his hope at this place of waking
nightmare.
There were so many people pressing against
the fence that there was no way Rodney and Quinnlan would ever be able to
squirm through the mess of bodies. Rodney hurried around the edges of the
teeming crowd, wondering at their roaring, because the prisoners were truly
riled up. Something was making them awfully excited, and terribly happy. What
in the world was going on in that stadium?
“Up, Rod Knees—quick, Rod Knees, give me a
giraffe ride!” Quinnlan said, literally dragging his feet, anchoring Rodney to
the spot. Rodney sighed, exasperated. A giraffe ride, now? He had often given Quinnlan shoulder rides, and had referred
to them as giraffe rides, even though the boy had no idea of what a giraffe
was, but the kid had liked the name, and so now Rodney rolled his eyes and
swung the kid up—it was easy, even though Rodney had never been particularly
strong, because Quinnlan must only weigh seventy-five pounds or so, the kid was
way, way underweight, and his body so skeletal it was like lifting a balsawood
glider, or an inflatable pool toy.
With the boy on his shoulders Rodney did his
best to go up on his toes, attempting to achieve as high an elevation for the
boy as he might.
“Well!” Rodney hollered. “What do you see,
Q?”
“It’s Grampa!” shouted Quinnlan, shrieking
with delight. “It’s Grampa, and he’s fighting the lizards!”
Fighting the lizards! Rodney gritted his
teeth and started shoving the zombies out of the way. He didn’t have time to be
polite, these bunch of boobs! Damn them all, Rodney shoved the milling prisoners
out of his way—these at the back of the crowd seemed as desperate as he to get
in close and find out what was exciting everyone so much. Rodney had to get to
the short retaining fence that surrounded the stadium. Up high in the bleachers
the lizards were going nuts. It was like the home team had just got that
game-winning touchdown—while at the same time someone had wrenched the head off
the quarterback. Oh yeah, Rodney could hear it—excitement from the prisoners,
yes, but he heard the outrage, as well, that horror in the lizards’ cries.
Something was happening that the lizards were not too delighted about, and
Rodney had to witness whatever that wonderful thing could be.
Something good? In these stockyards of the
damned? That was impossible, which possibility made it all the more exciting.
Rodney felt he must be hallucinating. He could hardly breathe, and his heart
pounded in his chest so hard he might keel over at any moment, that’s what it
felt like, and he screamed: “Get out of the way!”
Quinnlan’s grandfather? Fighting the lizards?
That didn’t sound reasonable. The old man was a cripple, after all! But Rodney
could tell from Quinnlan’s bony legs squeezing his neck, the kid was
electrified up there mounted on his shoulders.
“Watch out Grampa! Yes! Yes! Hit him again
Grampa!”
“Get out of the way!” Rodney roared, actually
kicking out and shoving some poor people in the butt, knocking them down.
And then he heard the tramp of booted feet
behind him, and he hardly had to glance back to know that he was suddenly in
trouble, because what sounded like a platoon of soldier lizards was
double-marching just behind him, coming up much faster than Rodney and Quinnlan
were moving forward. Rodney screamed and pressed onward as people in front of
him dove to either side, clearing an aisle almost all the way to the stadium,
but Rodney was hemmed in on either side by the bodies of the struggling people,
and could go neither to the left or right, and he ran forward, the way clearing
comically before him, and Quinnlan roared encouragement from above, shouting
out for the Grampa. Rodney thought the boy had not a clue about the wall of
soldiers pressing in from behind, like a roto-rooter clearing out the pipes.
He could hear the shouted commands of the
lizards, the clatter of quarterstaffs and batons, the clashing rattle of swords
in scabbards.
Soldiers five across came on just behind
Rodney, and gritting his teeth, holding onto the boy’s shins for dear life,
Rodney dashed, screaming, barely managing to keep just inches ahead of the unstoppable
wall of soldier lizards. The stadium fence loomed before him and Rodney dove at
it, hoping to clear the four feet of fence top, but at the last moment a gate
parted before him and Rodney tumbled to the ground, rolling with Quinnlan into
the stadium, the troop of soldiers plowing on, around and over them, and Rodney
covered the boy’s body as best he could, as boots kicked him in the spine and
trod upon his thighs, and he was kicked over and over.
Rodney got his face smashed into the sand and
he felt his glasses shatter against his skull, and a boot took him in the
kidney, and he was knocked over, tumbling, rolling, and he scrambled and broke
free from the merciless centipede of stamping boots, finally, blessedly out of
the way of the soldier lizards streaming into the stadium. He had lost contact
with Quinnlan, and feared the boy must have been trampled. He pushed himself up
onto his hands and knees and he tasted blood in his mouth, blood and sand.
What in the world? Hadn’t this just happened?
The blood and the sand? Where was he?
The wind was still knocked out of him, but he
was able to glance about and see that the boy was there, unhurt, dancing about
on the sand like a wild fan at a soccer game, shouting and screaming, but
Rodney couldn’t hear anything, not a sound, and sitting back, willing himself
to breath, he clawed sand from his ears, and then blew his nose into his hand,
and finally, unimpeded by bloody sand, air rushed into his face and filled his
lungs, and ah, but he was alive, yes, he actually was alive, and sounds began
filtering back into his consciousness. He was alive. Dizzy, dazed, but alive.
And he vomited up blood. It was all pretty nasty, but then again, yes, he was
alive.
The soldier lizards were still pouring in
like a train, rushing past Rodney, who knelt there in the sand, blinking
stupidly, and the boy, who danced and shook his fists above his head. And then
Rodney’s vision resolved through the cracked lenses of what remained of his
eyeglasses, and he saw what all the ruckus was about, about twenty-five yards
away, where the old man—Grampa—spun
about on one leg in a ring of downed lizards, and goodness gracious, Rodney
calculated there must be at least twenty lizards on the ground, some of them
stirring weakly. Others, they just looked dead.
“Grampa, this is the moment! Show them,
Grampa! Show them lizards!” Quinnlan called, and Rodney blinked up stupidly
from his knees as the boy did a slow dance about him, and the soldier lizards
charged the old man with batons and clubs raised.
“This probably is it,” Rodney murmured,
trying to get to his feet. “The end of the world as we know it.”
© Copyright 2018 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Twenty-One: Lizards Galore
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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