Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
A Remarkable Reaction
Monday, March 15th, 2010
Making Divinity
The Cabbage-Patch God
The Dolls’ Crusade
A Natural Attraction
*A Remarkable Reaction
Since she was a small child, Kayla had created gods. In fact, anything she worshipped became a God (if it wasn’t already). For example, for three weeks when Kayla was 5 years old a newly raised Cabbage-Patch God had commanded the fealty of all other denizens of the toy shelves. Kayla had since learned to control her adoration, because it quickly became inconvenient to be trailed by a cloud of transitory deities. As a freshman in high school, Kayla seemed cool, sophisticated, maybe a little stuck up. Supernatural powers will do that to a young girl, no matter how sensible she is.
For a while, Kayla worried that any expression of animosity on her part might create demons, or at the very least destroy the people who angered her. It did not take long for her to realize she could hate anyone she liked: nothing would happen. This was a liberating discovery for a teenager. Life is good when you’re young, and imbued with a power most cannot even dream of. Even if you don’t use it. However, there comes a time in the life of every young person when he or she meets someone whose existence becomes as important as life itself.
The marriage of perfect form with flawless function that was Bradley Jones hit Kayla like a ton of bricks. It would be useless to describe his warm green eyes, his exquisite shell-like ears, or his curly auburn locks that Kayla longed to comb with her fingers. His broad shoulders, flat and creamy stomach, his straight and symmetrical nose; these too can be named, but to no purpose. We cannot truly appreciate the effect Bradly had on Kayla unless we remember the heat that caused our hands to tremble on that day long ago when we glanced at someone and realized for the first time that Beauty had come to earth.
—
“Bradley,” Kayla murmured as he leaned casually against the wall. Her heard pounded so hard dust particles danced with each pulse.
He raised an eyebrow and turned away.
Kayla would do anything for Bradley. Anything. But lest you fear that she created a monster with the power of a god and the self-control of a 17-year-old boy, let me allay your fears. Kayla loved Bradley with all her heart. She worshipped the very ground he walked on.
The end
Cricetinae’s Paroxysm
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
The Cave of Endless Hamsters was a supreme disappointment. Guided by the Turtle, who glowed a pale green, the fellowship (Anya, her father the cat, Mister Shiftless, and Mister Hopeless) proceeded through the cramped quarters, occasionally bumping a head on the cave’s ceiling, avoiding slactites and stalgmites, edging around pools of fetid orange water, and not seeing one single solitary hamster.
No hamsters. In the Cave of Endless Hamsters.
Twenty minutes later, they emerged through the other side of the cave, back into the harsh light of the Land of Grey Dusk. For Anya, it had been the single least interesting experience of her seven-year-old existence.
“Huh. So, um, where were all the hamsters?”
Mister Shiftless and Mister Hopeless shrugged. The Turtle wandered over to a bush and munched on the yellowish foliage. Her father the cat sat down next to a dead anthill and began licking his shoulder.
“Isn’t anyone else bothered by this? Something is wrong here.” Anya sat down on the ground next to her father. “I really wanted to see the hamsters.”
“Desire is an outgrowth of attachment,” said the Turtle with a full mouth. “It only leads to dissatisfaction.”
“Oh, be quiet and eat your leaves.”
Anya’s father the cat suddenly stopped his impromptu bath, and began scratching at the anthill. Digging and delving and destroying, inverting the hill into a dale, skritching and skrotching and skrutching until the ground gave an abrupt thump and rumble and lurch, as if a great beast beneath the earth had humped intself up and then back down again. The cat edged backward and pressed itself into Anya’s side, and then the both of them jumped at the same time as the pit violently inverted once again, erupting in a bursting stream of furry grey, white, black, and mottled, spewing out of the hole as if a hidden oil reserve, a Vesuvius of squeaking fuzziness.
“Wow!” Anya shouted as hamsters landed on her and all around her, Winter Whites and Roborovskis and Campbells and Ladaks and Tibetans and Sokolovs, fur and whiskers and wet little noses tickling her face and making her giggle. She reached down and hugged the cat, who patiently endured the flood of hamsters crawling over his head and body, and who purred softly, a minature engine in her arms. “Thanks, Daddy!”
Previously:
01: Mini Buddha Jump Over the Wall
02: The World, Under
03: Androcles Again
04: Look Into My Eyes, You’re Under
05: Shiftless, Hopeless
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