A silly little ditty about space-time (430 hits)
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Submitted by Fungah (View user info) at 2007-10-18 08:29:53 EDT
A collection of spiders leaped up from the table and ate her face. Oh we cried and we cried we did.
Mikhael had said to me, a grin on his face: "Let us attatch tiny springs to spiders and put them in a box. Let us wrap the box in shiny paper. Let us put a big, pink bow on the box." I laughed. It was a good idea I said. Now poor Poppins has no face.
There was no way for us to know that these spiders were in fact carnivorous. Who ever knew spiders could be carnivorous? Certainly we didn't. I remember the whole event clearly. Frank Sinatra was singing something, as he often did at this time of day. Frank Sinatra was our Parakeet. He had pilched that famous piece of nomenclature from the leader of the rat pack himself; Warbux Teddy-rat, who had in turn stolen the name from some nobody lounge singer from the twentieth century.
Our living arrangements are also very necessary to detail the whole glipe experience of the face-eating that this indeterminately long block of text serves to explain. The reader be warned however, that as soon as this event has been described in sufficient enough detail this block of text will, like a snow-ball or tumbleweed gather momentum, mass, and a loose downwards trajectory before crashing into a near infinite minutiae of component parts. Sadly, the eating of Poppins' face is the most exciting part of this tale. Oh dear, I appear to have gone off on a tangent. Perhaps writing this would prove more successful were I a swallow. Ah, there we are.
As I was attempting to explain in the last paragraph with my stubby orangutan fingers, me and my two flat-mates live in a small house in sparsely populated area of Zimbabwe, Canada. Out front of our humble shanty there is a charming rose bush, a small cobble-stoned walkway, a regal spread of azalea bushes and morning glory vines arrayed in wooden flower boxes, one hundred square feet of rigorously manicured lawn, and a tear in the fabric of space-time. Of all these items the azalea bushes are doubtlessly most exciting. These bushes rise up out of their flower boxes like a pack of purple giraffes in the morning. Indeed, so miraculous are these azalea bushes, that three years running they have won first place in the Zimbabwe village fair. The ribbon I was so honorably awarded for these bushes is displayed prominently in a picture frame above our mantle, and brings a smile to face every time I see it. The joy that ribbon brought me was, on that day, diminished slightly, as I realized poor Poppins would never be able to smile again. Poor, faceless Poppins.
I had, for a time lived alone in this flat, located at 93 Africa Drive, near the outskirts of Zimbabwe. There was a charming expanse of grass that stretched, for a short jaunt at a slight downwards slope, into a thick patch of forest. When I first moved to 93 Africa Drive this forest played host to the typical assortment of blue jays, orioles, cardinals, ducks, bucks and raptors that make their homes in any Canadian forest. I would spend days outside on my porch in the sunshine during summer, reading and enjoying the cheering these specimens would produce from my neighbors. This forest, in a very real sense, brought the community together.
I met Mikhael on one of the lazy summer days where the air is like a thick soup, the sun like a restaurant heating lamp. I was enjoying bird song and the steady flow of Budweiser from my double holstered beer helmet. Mikhael looked most glarmy as he approached the backyard from the front of the house. He was screaming, very irate, and tightly gripping a Thompson semi-automatic machine gun I was to later discover he had pilfered from some American GI from the front. One can understand the apprehension I felt seeing him in his thick, green, woolen jacket, USSR emblazoned ushenka and muddied combat boots on this lazy July afternoon. Mikhael, who was at that time a nameless, irate passer-by was gesturing madly and firing his sidearm into the air. He looked terribly out of place. His jacket looked quite nice however, and fantastically matched his bright, green eyes.
"Now slow down", I said to him casually as errant rifle rounds split the air. "Would you like some tea?" Mikhael, who clearly did not understand me leveled his rifle at my head and screamed at me in Russian.
"Put that thing away", I said, gesturing towards an empty lawn-chair beside me "and sit down before somebody calls the police". I lifted myself from my seat and sauntered into the house to prepare a cup of tea for my guest. I hummed to myself as I skittered around the kitchen, catching glimpses of Mikhael's face outside of the window, staring dumbly around him and squeezing off rounds in the general direction of bird-song.
Clutching the handle of my stout, but not so little tea pot I prepared a tray suitable for any English garden, arrayed with biscuits, scones, crumpets, and a small pack of crisps. Apprehensively, I surveyed the spread. Feeling a slight feeling of Canadian patriotism rise within me I swapped the English spread for something more local. I replaced the biscuits with a salad bowl full of Grolsh, the scones with a plate of hummus, and the crisps with a helping of matza bread. The platter, more accurately reflecting my Canadian cultural identity raised within me a sense of righteous affirmation that now, and only now was I properly playing the host.
Mikhael simply stared dumbstruck as I laid out the platter, pouring him a cup of tea. With nary a word or glance in my direction he scoffed down the hummus and the matza bread with his grimy little soldier-fingers. Before I was able to have so much as a sip, he had downed the entire bowl of grolsh. Quite shocked, I was only able to stare as he fell limply to the left and collapsed on my porch. His Thompson discharged as it hit the decking, the bullet piercing some poor Blue Jay's batting helmet.
I knew as I sat there sipping my tea, staring at Mikhael's drunken, barely breathing body that we would become fast friends.
2
The reader must here bear with me as I set the stage for the inevitable coming off of Poppins' face. Dear reader, picture me: an elderly widow of seventy three years sitting lonely in her late-but-sometimes-early father's rocker in front of a fireplace, clutching a copy of Dickens' Hard Times and a pair of scissors. Let no one tell you otherwise, there are but two ways to rewrite history: with a pair of scissors or a time machine, and I had yet to discover the latter. I was held rapt by the crackling fireplace, and the snippity snip of my steel-carbide pen when Mikhael came grogging down the stairs. Grogging is something very similar to walking dear reader, with the key difference being that the grogger must be hung over the point of still being drunk.
"Where am I beingk?", Mikhael said to me in broken Russian. I laughed that senile, grandmotherly laugh that only the schizophrenic and the elderly are capable of.
"Why, dearie", I said in my most grandmotherly tone "you're in my house."
Mikhael looked at me, puzzled. "I am remembering that I was-" he grasped an imaginary rifle and pretended to squeeze off rounds "many Germans. There was a... how you say..." he cupped his hands under his chest, as if to illustrate a rotund pair of breasts.
"Breasts?" I enquired.
"No, like this." He made hopping motions through the air with a scissored index and middle finger.
"Rabbits?" I volunteered, making cursory rabbit ears over my head.
"Ah yes. Rabbits. They were much fluffy. Yes." He smiled, as if remembering a fond memory using his brain. "I was having running past Gorbichov Kremlin. Was my army friend. I chase rabbits past dead people and were many bombs exploding. I chase because I scared, and they were fluffy, and I wanted to save. Then Germans, they are, how you say..." he thrust his hips into the air in my direction.
"Sex?" I offered.
"Yes, they make sex with me. Then are done, and screaming German. Sieg Heil! And Bratwusrt they are saying. Then I am here, and wery scared. Mikhael, is me, think: rabbits make Germans sex with me. So Mikhael is hearing animals, and he is running towards them, for shooting, when you are there, and you give him taste-mush and beer that's good. Rabbits were making traps for Germans I am thinking. They are fluffy, and Germans know red army weaknesses are the fluffy."
Mikhael stood looking at me awkwardly. I gazed slack-jawed into the fireplace.
"I am must get going soon, if I am having running from the wars they will have-" he made a gesture beside his head, as if firing a pistol.
"Alright deary, It's too bad you don't want to stay. Oh but it was nice having company for once. Ever since my grand-children died in that horrible harness racing accident. I told Fred that two nine year olds couldn't compete with thoroughbred chestnut stallions. Why I remember..."
"Goingk must I be." Said Mikhael, backing slowly towards the door. He was such a dear.
"Well, at least let me show you the way out."
"Yaw. Alright", he said.
I hobbled after Mikhael towards the door. "Whereabouts did you come in then Mikhael?" I asked him gingerly.
"I come in on middle of lawn, there big poof, I here. No rabbits come though. Only Mikhael."
"Mikhael, don't you want your coat or anything before you go?"
"No, no. You are, how you say... terrifyingk." He was such a dear.
"Say Mikhael, where did you learn such good English?" I asked him from the stoop as he took off at a sprint from my porch.
"You leave Mikhael alone, woman!" He yelled in response. Poor boy must have been shy.
Mikhael stood then in the middle of my perfectly manicured lawn and hopped around like a monarch butterfly, spreading its beautiful wings for the first time. Indeed, Mikhael was waving his arms around as if attempting flight, running in circles, and screaming all manner of things. Some of these snippets of Russian wafted back to me on the porch, and were like the soothing caress of auditory seafoam on the toes of my eardrums.
It was as I was turning around to return to my important work with the English literature and my scissors that I saw the tear for the first time. It was about the size of a saber-toothed tiger, that is, about two regular tigers wide. As it opened, a rich opalescent white bathed my front lawn, gradually cresting towards a rich, shifting, kaleidoscopic orgy of colour. Like a sparrow laying an egg, Poppins was pushed through this tear, wet and sopping, as if emerging from space-whale's vagina. Now, before talking to Poppins I had never heard of a space whale before, but like everything else in my life that was about to change. Poppins rose, her shadow rising before her as if to signal the coming of an important event. With a crack of thunder, the sky split open, and rain fell upon the earth like droppings from a cave full of fox bats, that is, thickly, and slightly stinky.
User Reviews
Submitted by MouthSore (user info) at 2007-10-18 19:56:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2007-10-18 17:02:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
...
what?
Submitted by Wompom (user info) at 2007-10-18 13:31:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Not bad on the Russian-speak. Not good, though. But good enough.
Submitted by triangle_man (user info) at 2007-10-18 11:17:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
tea time
Submitted by Zampano (user info) at 2007-10-18 10:24:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
My one complaint:
'All right', not 'alright.'
Sorry. I'm an asshole.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-10-18 09:04:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good voice
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2007-10-18 08:54:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fun to read.
Submitted by DudeThatsBOSH (user info) at 2007-10-18 08:40:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
tubular