Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
One Man’s Heaven
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
Frank,
You oughta drop in. It’s all chew what they say about how grate hell is (sp? Nobody thought to bring a dickshunary. Thank God. Books would of made life in hell hell!)
It’s a never-ending bitch party with necked sand volleyball and castles that last forever (unless someone kicks ’em over. Someone usually does). One half of the place is frozen, the other a fiery lake. Remember the Polar Bare Club in Alaska? Like that accept we brake holes in the frozen lake, leap in, then dripping ice cubes, dash over to the one of fire.
Hey, remember the good times when we’d boozed up at ol’ fatty Slim Jim’s, then you’d talked me into driving us around town doing crazy shit like playing chicken with oncoming traffic or tossing the “Bridge Out” sign into the ditch? Damn, that was funny. At least I thought so until I drunkenly forgot about it on the drive home.
That’s what it’s like here–crazy fun! non-stop parties by the lakeside! the best practical jokes! One hot chick keeps an everlasting stash of whiskey chilled in the frozen lake. While we slurp Southern Comfort from rose-colored, plastic sand-buckets, the guy or gal who’s been the biggest pain in the neck of late gets roasted on a spit over the lakefire. It hurts like a son of a beach, but the pain receptors get charbroiled quick enough. Then we’ve got something to snack on with our buckets of booze. The meat rots fast, so we wolf it down. Tastes like chicken. Not a big deal to the guy being charred cuz he reappears after we’ve licked the last grease off our fingers.
You were always the life of the party, so I know you’d be a favorite as I’ve been. Life here is so much more exciting–better sex, sexier babes, faster boats, spicier meats, and no work. Heaven can’t beat this living.
RSVP. The guys look forward to meating you.
The Diplomat
Friday, October 19th, 2007
I had to kill the Diplomat. The elders said so, and nobody argues with them. He agreed to have breakfast with me.
I took him to the orchard, and he helped me make a fire pit. He talked about his home planet, Gaia, but he called her “Earth.” I said I thought that was a plain name for such a beautiful-looking planet. “I like it,” he said, “plain, yes, but there’s a lot going on under the surface there—like here,” he added, and patted the earth beside him with one wrinkled brown hand.
After I served him, I slipped my knife out. They said they chose me because I was the best rat hunter. The first ships from Gaia brought rats with them, and we lost a lot of harvests. “Gaia rat,” they called him. I thought rats never looked so peaceful.
“But won’t his people come with big ships and guns?” I had asked my father (not an elder yet—OK to argue).
My father said, “He came on foot. No big ships. Just a little old guy in a robe. His badge is faded, and the plastic on his communicator is yellowed. What do you think?”
I looked at the Diplomat peacefully eating. A film of grief started to form over my eyes but I wiped it away.
He looked at me and smiled.
“You were going to stab me with that, weren’t you,” he said.
I saw I had wiped my eyes with the back of my knife hand. I stared the blade.
After a moment I said sadly, “It’s still too late.”
He looked down at his bowl, then up at me. “Ah?” he asked, holding it up.
I nodded. His grin seemed to embrace me.
“I forgive you for killing me,” he said.
I did not wipe the film away this time, and I buried my face in my hands and howled.
After a moment he tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up, rubbing my eyes.
“My dear friend,” he said, laughing, “Did you think I prepared for this journey without defending myself? Did you think I had no protections?”
“I know you disarmed me somehow,” I said hoarsely.
“Well learned. And if you want to poison a human, galangal doesn’t really work. We use it in cooking.”
That’s when I laughed too.