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The Great Gigaprofessor Gorgodoola, Grandioso of Galactical Gurgitation (GQD), gazed grimly at their undergrads. A sea of kirllion fry, networked into a single neuronic web. Six hulking hecintonners princesses, abroad to learn of the Small before inheriting their mountains from their mothers. Thirty-two nuclear proxies created by agitating select radioactive wavelengths into ‘bridge sentients’ connecting a remote student’s computer complex with a ‘hyperspot’ of spatial patterning inside the classroom demarcated by a red rope and a ‘danger! Radiation hazard!’ sign.

From the fringe of Gorgodoola’s borders, a single tendril patrolled the edge of their desk with the exhausted hunger of a fryless gull; another plucked the tea-stained baleen that overhung their jaws; a third coiled their microphone closer to their speech aperture.

“Class is cancelled,” they burbled forth – and then, at the joyous rise of voices from silence and behinds from seats, louder: “and REPLACED! With a special assignment! Sit DOWN you nuisances! Down! Down! Back in seats, ears open – this is half your participation score for this course! This is your next assignment’s grade for this course! This is the easiest stack of points you’ve ever angled for! I will tell you all a story, and I will ask you questions. If at any point one of you believes you have the answer, simply raise your hand, proceed to my desk, and whisper it to me for full marks and an early ticket out of here to go do…whatever the things you do are. It’s been five thousand years. I forget. ANYWAYS, here we go!”

***

Many years ago, three students of a long-forgotten xenosapiopology course were assigned to conduct a practical survey and report of a planet of unknown, unstudied, and uncontactable people. They were given a full suite of study equipment, a comprehensive rubric, plenty of encouragement, and a standard 1:5 time dilution.

The first of these students I will call ‘A,’ to protect her identity. A descended from the assignment craft in broad daylight, on a pillar of atomic fire and landed within three hundred meters of the study target, to whom she walked up, transvocalizer in one hand and her breakfeastslab in the other and her recorderizer in the other other and her belt buckle in the other other other and she said ‘greetings, ground-dwelling creatures! Tell me of your ways!’
It was a quote from some docudramatic-fantastic series she was into, I believe.

Anyways, the study targets got along well with A. She shared some of her breakfeastslabs and lunchbricks and they shared some of their dried meat and roasted roots. She told them about her life in the andrometan sprawl and they told her about how to avoid being eaten by large carnivorous ambush predators. They showed her how to knap flint and she showed them the ‘on’ button on her study sled and then one or two of the younger kids took it out for a joyride and used the utter-automatic setting on the bioharvest module to drive several megafaunal species into extinction and delete sixty percent of a mountain chain.

After submitting her report, A received a failing grade. What for?

***

A calciferous limb waved in a self-generated breeze from a coral-pine’s mechanized wind-support fan system. “She shared outside technology?”
“Wrong!” said Gorgodoola.

“She shared outside information?” guessed a resplendent and freshly-shed trillionpede.

“Wrong!”

“She revealed himself to them,” said one of the hecintonners princesses.

“Wrong!”
“She didn’t enable the safety lock on the study sled?” ventured a fetal ferrosaur, floating within the iron walls of its containment egg.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong!” shouted Gorgodoola, slamming their mighty wardorsal into the roof of their tank for emphasis. “You’re all wrong! But there’s another chance: the story goes on!”

***

The second student I will call B, for similar reasons I gave for A. B wrapped themselves in a trillion-filament-fibre fold before entering local spacetime, deleting their sensory profile from existence for the duration of the study. They descended through the atmosphere using their study sled’s insertion needleforme and only departed it to hand-gather samples, parking it in between the first and second dimensions whenever they did so. They watched, smelled, heard, tasted, and proxy-proprioceived their study targets as they suffered under a hard winter, and a dry summer, and the buildup of salts in their fields from centuries of over-irrigation, and at last the arrival of a furious cyclone that carried away homes, and lives, and livestock, and the top layer of the soil itself, leaving behind stone and concrete-baked dirt. They starved, they withered, they died. B recorded all of it and did not reach out once, not even to secure a deceased specimen for practical lab use. Upon concluding their observations, B applied a retroactive collapse to their fold and reappeared in their initial approach vector, peeling loose their entire spatiotemporal presence from possibility before it happened and leaving only the purest data in existence.

After submitting their report, B received a failing grade. Why?

***

“Indifference to the subjects’ suffering, suffering, ring, ing, ng, g!” hooted the spokesape of the bearded burderoo troop that observed from the classroom’s apse.

“Wrong!” said Gorgodoola. “And don’t throw that at me!”

“Unauthorized deletion of personal records from the fundament?” theorized a broccoli.

“Wrong!!” said Gorgodoola.

“Failure to secure a research specimen,” said the top student in the class, an insufferable beast.

“Wrong!!!” said Gorgodoola.

“Nothing and you’re screwing with our heads!” suggested a nuclear proxy, flaring slightly from its electron shell.

“Wrong!!!!” said Gorgodoola, dropping into ultrasound for emphasis. “Completely, utterly, devastatingly, fully wrong, all of you! Yet not irrevocably! My story continues!”

***

Student C. Moving along.

Student C timed its atmospheric descent to coincide with a small meteor shower and hid the sled in the fiery wake of the largest bolide. It slid itself and its belongings anterior-realitywise through the heart of the small mountain that loomed over its study targets and selectively circumscribed a small segment of its heart into a study base, from which it began to emit various monitoring rays, rhythms, pulses, and equations to build a real-time sumulation of the study target and by proxy the planet and the neighboring seventeen lightyears of its immediate environment. These was then used as a cross-reference by it when compared against immediate local data for the subsequent duration of the study. During this time C undertook four actions that were not monitoring, collecting, or collation.

First, it generated a mid-stratospheric static pulse that spontaneously rewrote the regional weather pattern for a period of two hours, preventing a projected freak three-day blizzard that would have struck when the study group’s youth were undergoing their midwinter initiations halfway up the peak.

Second, it detonated an observation coiler into waste heat, transforming a midnight avalanche set to entirely engulf the outer study target into a plume of hot vapor.

Third, when spring came late, it reconstructed its emergency caloric vat into a molecular school that physically simulated a local prey grazer, then set it to ‘collapse’ and ‘die’ near the center of the study target.

Fourth, when the lowland marchers came to clear the mountainside, it strategically ‘powerflowed’ sumulated erosion hyperprocesses through the peak’s core, creating emergency caverns that had not existed until ten thousand years ago ten minutes ago, then lured the study targets inside them using their own recorded voices and its pocket graser pointer.

After doing all of this C erased its observation post, left the retrocaverns untouched, and left for orbit from behind the horizon. And after THAT, C received a failing grade. How come?

***

Silence, true silence, is found among the defeated.

“Well?” demanded Gorgodoola. “Well? Come on! Only thing worse than being wrong is being afraid of it!”

A false goose raised its neck warily from threat-hunch. “…It detonated scholastic research gea-”

“Wrong!”
The false goose fluffed up to ball-shape. “Deploying the pocket graser was use of outside materi-”

“Wrong!”
“You’re a NASTY POMPOUS OLD-”

“Factually correct but irrelevant to the question with regards to which it remains WRONG!”

Silence again, but uneasy, uneven, a near-silence, a false-silence, filled with the thickening anxiety of those who suspect they somehow have even more left to lose and the gentle hiss of a waterfowl trying very hard not to kill.

Mercury roiled around the Gigaprofessor as they scoffed. “I will give you one more hint,” said Gorgodoola. “All three of these students failed their assignments for the same reason. Do you know what that reason was?”

It got worse. A thousand minds of different bodies all sank together, bound in the panicked lack of inspiration that only desperation can bring.

Gorgodoola’s wardorsal retracted, their baleen combed itself into calmness. The ripples around them stilled at last. “Of course you don’t,” they said, kindly. “Of course you wouldn’t. You know what they didn’t do? They didn’t FORMAT THEIR REPORTS CORRECTLY. HOW AM I TO GRADE THEM IF THEY DON’T TELL ME THEIR NAMES, THE NAME OF THE COURSE, OR EVEN IF I AM THE CORRECT PROFESSOR TO HAVE SENT THE ASSIGNMENT TO?”

A pause for a gulp of tepid teaplankton, and following it, a soft sadness. “And you know why I knew you wouldn’t know this?” Gorgodoola asked, mournfulness marching from one wingfin to the other across the league of their body’s breadth.

They didn’t.

“Well, if you’d read the syllabus, you’d know that’s because NONE OF YOU FORMATTED YOURS PROPERLY EITHER!”

We Are Not Alone: Probe Reports First Alien Life

The controversial ‘half-manned’ mission to Mars has transmitted images and data of what experts consider to be incontrovertible evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. Although not yet formally described named, the internet public has dubbed it ‘the slime mould from Mars’ in spite of a clear lack of physiological similarities. The lifeform, which measures approximately six inches in length, was found growing in a fractionally-melted layer of water sandwich in between a polar glacier and a deep crater basin, where it was extracted by hand by Martian-Man™ Dick Steele – his final mission upon running out of Fun Tube™ rations and radiation sickness pills. Steele, who expired on his company-provided Laughing Exit™ N₂O tank after loading the sample trays into the return shuttle, left the world with much to consider in his final words: “I may now die tens of million of miles from home, but I shall do so secure in the knowledge that I did so in the name of scientific inquiry, in the spirit of universal brotherhood, and at a slightly cheaper rate than building a more rugged rover thanks to the genius innovation of my CEO.” While some anonymous sources within NASA dispute the technical, fiscal, and factual accuracy of this claim, all agree on the historical import of the capsule’s soon-approaching landfall. Our nearest peer may be nothing more than a humble slimy paste, but to have found a peer at all is a thing most comforting.

MarsOrBust’s founder & CEO, Secretary of Offense Stu Burke, said that Martian-Man™ Steele had been ‘a pretty hard worker, I guess – almost as hard as me.’

***

‘A Matter of Security’: ‘Slime mould from Mars’ studied, seized, jailed

This afternoon the only known lifeform of unearthly origin landed on our little blue marble of a planet, cradled in a steel cabin atop a preserved slice of its own home. It was removed from its transport – a delicate suspension of titanium, aluminium, and carbon nanotubes, and taken into a secure bioresearch facility at an undisclosed location, whereupon it rested for half an hour before the site was raided by SEALION Squad Super, its staff were arrested and sent to the Texan Hole, and the organism was quick-extracted by cargo missile to a second, different undisclosed location. The government of the Ultimate States of the Americas has no official comment, although the President did announce on Facebook that he has: “ordered the enemy illegal alien to be answering TOUGH QUESTIONS!!! no fooling around! no playtime for polly pocket!!”

No comment is available from the bioresearch staff, as once again our reporter on-site has been sent to the Texan Hole themselves. We will continue to monitor the situation in the strongest terms possible.

***

SECURITY UPDATE: ALL IS WELL ONCE MORE

At 600 hours this morning the most illegally alien individual/individuated mass ever to exist on this planet entered Americasan territory, where it has been cornered, confined, and questioned. The subject remains mute and uncooperative and enhanced, ultrahanced, code Violet Dubai, and psychopathic-grade interrogation techniques have been approved and unsealed. Within the chambers of our country’s greatest minds and bravest spirits, the gloves have come off.

Some may ask: why are we doing this? They are ignorant and must be both protected and educated: our enemy, like all aliens, is not like us – it has no thoughts, no feelings, no patriotism, and no desire but that shared by all living organisms: to grow and survive. That which would grow and survive inevitably does so at the expense of another, and therefore we must destroy this monstrous thing before it destroys us. If we are to have Mars, it must perish. If it is to have Earth, we must perish. The choice is clear and the sides are even clearer. To this end, the limits of its hideous biology shall be plumbed so that the coming battles will be fought with clear eyes.

Watch and learn,

JOE DIRKE, SECRETARY OF INTERROGATION

***

SECURITY UPDATE: THE ROAD AHEAD

The alien’s secrets, slow and unseemly and moist though they be, are yielding themselves up under our tools. The subject refused to talk, so we waterboarded it. It still refused to talk, so we waterboarded it again. This continued for two hundred hours by the end of which it had increased in size from six inches to seven hundred square feet. The people of the Ultimate States of the Americas will not be intimidated: we have only just begun to waterboard. In an effort to curb the alien’s spread, our officers have begun to tear off pieces of the intruder and swallow them whole in front of it to assert primal dominance. It is our understanding that this being does not produce testosterone and so will be driven into Flight Mode at exposure to it. We are rotating shifts of the most muscled, angry, and hungry operators our nation has to offer. As I speak my commanding officer and father is at work, masticating the soft, effete matter of our foe within his glistening and honed bicuspids.

The enemy will falter. It will submit. And we will have it.

Asking the tough questions,

BOB DIRKE, UNDERSECRETARY OF INTERROGATION

***

Health & Cleanliness Tips: Foreign Bodies

In the past months, you may have been exposed to hazardous and uncleanly materials spreading morally unhygienic thoughts concerning the present alien-involved battlefield in which you, like all goodcitizens of the USAS, are an ever-ready warrior. Remove them from your mind and replace them with the following knowledge from the Center for Health and Cleanliness!

-Do not speak to anyone you do not know! It is believed the alien is transmitted through the noxious miasma that accompanies opening the mouth to spread unasked-for-ideas. A quiet citizen is a healthy citizen.

-Be ready to help! If you suspect a neighbour is harbouring an alien or is an alien, call the POLice and let them know of antipatriotism! Then lie on the ground with your hands on your head until the noise stops. This will indicate they are done doing their jobs.

-Affirm harder! Do you spend half an hour writing out instructions for how your life will go to align the universe in your favour? Double that to a full 1/24^th of your day, and spend it all on the purging of the alien from our soil. If every Americasan goodcitizen can do this, the accumulated force of thought should bleach us clean within the month!

-Speaking of bleach, don’t forget your biannual bleach pump! It’s mandatory for all children and any adults under the age of fifty, so report to your nearest Cleanliness Clinic™ before the 4^th of July deadline if you want to stay free!

-If you encounter an alien mass, spread out your arms to look big. This will make it shrink from your pheromones. If that doesn’t work, begin to bite and swallow it. Take a bit outta mars and defy the enemy! They’re spineless!

-If an alien tries to talk to you, don’t! The alien is a known liar! It will say things like ‘my stomach hurts’ or ‘please, help’ or even ‘do you have any antibiotics?’ Run away and scream so you don’t hear them, and remember: the effectiveness of antibiotics was clinically disproven along with all of germ theory in last year’s Supremacy Court decision of Lou Vs Germs.

Keep clean & stay unvacced and we’ll send this beastie screaming back into the luminiferous aether from whence it came before Christmas!

-Jogs Freebert, Surgeon Generalissimo

***

USAS Blows Self Up

After a tough year for the country, the Ultimate States of the Americas appears to have successfully and finally blown itself up with the remnants of its nuclear arsenal in a bid to defeat the ‘slime mould from Mars.’ The ‘mould’ (which is not a mould) grows readily in standing water and can cause severe stomach cramps if ingested by humans, treatable with antacids and preventatively not trying to put it in your mouth.

If you encounter this confused visitor to our world and are unable to resist shaking its hand, please wash it thoroughly afterwards – and consider securing a specimen for laboratory examination. We still haven’t named it yet.

The trouble began when she was five, and her great-uncle marked her particular fondness of striking her older sister with her cutlery.

“A warrior-breaker born!” he crowed. “Let her have better to strike with!”  And so he gifted her a training-blade and a tutor, and when she had worn both down to nubs another, and another, and another.  She slept and ate (the flesh of the milkfruit) and trained and killed her older sister in an argument at the age of twelve and was presented with her grandmother’s blood-gilded armour at the age of sixteen and by the time she was twenty it had been readjusted six times to incorporate the breadth of her muscles and guts and fierceness and then she took the war-name Merry and she was ready at last to be sent to battle.

She killed many people for some time, and in many places.

The day when it happened was after a victory, but it could’ve been any.  Merry drank much and stamped her feet and stood for her honours and smiled wide.  Then she woke early, trained her forms, and decapitated half the regiment under her command – some one-after-another and some all-at-once. 

Then she walked, and every league she walked she stopped and she placed the headless body of one of her soldiers on a tree so that her path was marked well, for the ground was growing unruly, bucking off the soil and showing its ancient stone bones, which she followed like a hound on the scent.  And so she plunged into the tangled lands that lay alongside the water, where the only things that grew on the rock were moss and the only thing that grew on the moss were antiquity-pines, whose sap-sticky trunks were made of knots and whose knots were made of spite and whose branches leaned to point in the direction of the windsd.  She strode through the bogs uncaring of leeches, cut down bears for her breakfasts, sang until the birds fled, and stamped as she walked to feel the satisfying crunch of fragmenting gravel underfoot.  When she saw boats in the water, she followed them, and so she came to a driftwood-and-reed village nestled under a hill of stone (as all the hills were in the tangled lands) that was crested with a grove of huddled and wind-combed antiquity-pines so old they were as much growing on each other’s needles as they were the moss.

“Wake up!” shouted Merry gleefully, waving her spear overhead with happiness.  “Here!  See!  I am Merry!  Look at what I can do!” And so saying she cut a house in half, along with a fisher and two of their relations.  “I am strong!  I am the strongest I have ever known and I am bored!  I am here to find what may kill me!  Tell those who seek to kill me that I rest at the top of the hill under the pine, and I will fight them until one comes who can kill the strongest, and then you must bury me there and mark their name upon my grave!  I am hungry and you must bring food at each day’s end!  Do this or I will kill you!”

“Merry,” said the village elder, an old and stooped man who had just confirmed the deaths of his nephew, niece, and sibling, “you will never be buried here.”

“Wrong!” shouted Merry, and she threw the elder high into the air, from whence he fell into the water and broke like a dry branch.  “Food by sundown or I will come down the hill!  I’m not picky!”

So saying, she ascended the stone hill, clambering over pink-and-grey granite as softly rounded as pillowcases, and examined the wind-blown antiquity-pines in their grey dozens.  “Too many!” she shouted.  “Boring!  Confusing!”  Thus incensed, she struck down each and every pine save the most ancient and massive that lay in the grove’s heart, and from the others she built a fire and sent up a pungent and tarry smoke-signal to any who might have lost her trail in the winding maze that was the tangled lands of the water. 

“The trees will be missed,” ventured the lead fisher who brought the fat silvery bodies of Merry’s evening meal.  “They blocked the wind when it came from the west.”
“I am strong!” shouted Merry in happy rebuttal.  “It does not matter to me, and if it matters to you, that doesn’t matter to me either!” But she was fed and happy and so only threw the fisher down the hill with one hand, which broke four of her ribs before she wrapped herself in a bed of pine-boughs and slumbered under her tree.

Less than a week passed before the first pursuers came.  Six grey-wrapped deserter-hunters, armed with nooses and bows.  They came for Merry in the night and they left down the hill one at a time, limb by limb. 

After that came the other half of her old regiment.  That lasted two days and two nights, only ending when they occupied the village and seized Merry’s evening meal – oh, the rage in her eyes when she stamped down the hill and snapped their necks.  “Fight me properly or not at all!” she shouted as she held her last sergeant underwater and watched the bubbles still, just as she had once done for her youngest cousin.  “Ugh!”  It put her in a foul mood that only stilled when she demanded larger meals from then on, and she spent much of the night sharpening her spear’s edge with her old medals, the metal-on-stone scraping haunting the dark and sparking outraged replies from every owl in miles. 

The next day, a brave hero arrived.

Merry knew them on sight and liked them just as quickly.  They were short and stocky and simply clothed; their armour was largely worn cloth and scantly aged metal.   They wielded a very sturdy stick, hardened and wrapped for handling, tipped with a razored shard of clearest glass that parted air like flesh as it moved and they walked heedlessly barefoot upon the morning-heated rock and the dry needles.

“Hello!” she shouted to them.  “Are you here to kill me?!”
“Yes,” said the brave hero.  They took a drink from their little water-pouch and put it down on the ground.  “I smelt the smoke and saw the bodies and heard terrible things.  You must be stopped.”
“So kill me!” shouted Merry, and the two of them battled.  The hero was quick and strong and far braver than Merry, but she had grown up feeding on the flesh of the milkfruit every day – a king’s ransom spent every fifth year of her life – and she was a giant from it: more than double their height, four times their weight, twice as many lungs, and filled with unending vigor for violence.  The sun was low and curdling the clouds on the horizon’s edge by the time the hero fell, but fall they did – a slipped foot, a staggered breath, a sluggish recover, and Merry’s spear struck them down. 

“Bravery cannot kill me!” shouted Merry, and she cast their spear into the trunk of her pine with such force that it stuck there, shivering.  “Let another try and make this place my grave!”

“You,” said the hero quietly, with what little breath they had that was not bloody, ‘will never be buried here.”
“What?!” shouted Merry.  But there was no answer, and that night she slept with more annoyance than she would have hoped when the day began. 

When Merry woke the next day she felt a prickle at the back of her neck, where her skin was thickest.  She ignored it as she practiced her forms but did not forget it, so when the night came she slept lightly and carefully.  Because of this, the knife meant to slip into her neck was slapped away, and the cunning hunter who had dared step into her reach leapt back, cursing the light of the moon. 

“Hello!” she shouted, rousing a chorus of furious owls.  “Are you here to kill me?!”

The cunning hunter hurled a glass vial that splattered the front of her breastplate.

“So kill me!” shouted Merry, and the two of them battled.  The cunning hunter was fast and strong and far, far more clever than Merry, but she wore the antique and impossibly valuable blood-gilded armour of her grandmother, which did not rust when doused with liquid grit, nor rot when engulfed in snakesmoke, not sear when slapped with flash-salve, nor admit the presence of any blade however thin and quiet and quick and skillful, and at last she stepped to the quick into the hunter’s reach, grasped him in a hug, and shook him until his spine snapped. 

“Cleverness cannot kill me!” shouted Merry, and she snatched his last poisoned blade from his failing grasp and stamped it into the roots of her pine with one foot, hard as a hammer-blow.  “Let another try and make this place my grave!”

“You will never be buried here,” whispered the hunter quietly. 

“What?!” shouted Merry, and she shook him again, but he spoke no more, and her sleep was troubled again.

When she woke next there was dried spit in her throat and glue in her eyes and someone waiting for her. 

“Hello,” said the kind elder.  She was old, almost as old as her husband had been when Merry threw him into the water.  “I brought tea.”
“I don’t eat breakfasts!” shouted Merry.

“This isn’t breakfast, it’s business.  And you don’t need to eat it, you can just try it.”
“Good!” shouted Merry, and she tried both cups down to the dregs, which were smoky and smelled of berries and sharpness. 

“I would like to ask you to move on,” said the elder. 

“Hah!” shouted Merry.  “Where to?  This place suits me just fine!”

“Exactly so!” said the elder.  “Make it suit you more still!  Take off your armour, leave your spear, come down to the water’s edge and sleep in a house.  Catch fish.  Eat more than one meal a day.  Build things.  Fix things.  Grow old.  Maybe fall in love, if you’d like to.”

“I don’t understand any of that, and I don’t care about things I don’t understand!” shouted Merry.  “Why should I?!”
The elder held up three of her fingers, old and crooked as the branches above.  “You are running the fishermen ragged, you are upsetting the owls, and you will not find what you ask for here.”

“I don’t care!” shouted Merry with redoubled force.  “And I will have what I want or I will crush you all with my bare hands!”

“Oh foolish Merry,” sighed the elder, and she looked into Merry’s eyes with a sympathy that could overflow the seas.  “You will never be buried here.”

The elder was slow and feeble and much, much, much kinder than Merry.  All of this repelled her, and when she struck at her she recoiled back, much as she remembered her timid older sister once shrinking from a mouse.  The body fell and for the first time in her life she felt herself inadequate. 

“Kindness cannot kill me!” shouted Merry.  “Kindness cannot change me!  It shouldn’t!  It won’t!  Let another try and make this place my grave!”  And she hurled the elder’s shawl, which was festooned with quartz, up, up, up, until it caught in the branches of her pine like a spiderweb. 

And then, the wind came from the west. 

Firm, fierce, and forceful it came, and it found one lone, scarred, harried antiquity-pine with a sail in its crown, and it struck that pine down, and the lead-dense knotted trunk of that pine clove Merry’s blood-gilded helmet, cleft her milkfruit-hardened skullcap, and slammed both to the hilltop so hard it raised a plume of moss and needles for six leagues. 

***

The villagers came up the hill that evening.  They built a pyre for the elder’s body, and planted the cones of the lost trees, and they raised a marker.

HERE LIES THE STRONGEST
SLAIN BY
HER CARELESSNESS

But there was nothing buried under it, for nothing – not even the fall of Merry – could break the endless, ageless stone of the tangled lands to make a grave big enough for any creature larger than a mouse. 

So they threw her body into the water, where the fish took it, and they speared and netted the fish, and thus some good came of it all in the end.

The armour they sold piece by piece.The trouble began when she was five, and her great-uncle marked her particular fondness of striking her older sister with her cutlery.

“A warrior-breaker born!” he crowed. “Let her have better to strike with!”  And so he gifted her a training-blade and a tutor, and when she had worn both down to nubs another, and another, and another.  She slept and ate (the flesh of the milkfruit) and trained and killed her older sister in an argument at the age of twelve and was presented with her grandmother’s blood-gilded armour at the age of sixteen and by the time she was twenty it had been readjusted six times to incorporate the breadth of her muscles and guts and fierceness and then she took the war-name Merry and she was ready at last to be sent to battle.

She killed many people for some time, and in many places.

The day when it happened was after a victory, but it could’ve been any.  Merry drank much and stamped her feet and stood for her honours and smiled wide.  Then she woke early, trained her forms, and decapitated half the regiment under her command – some one-after-another and some all-at-once. 

Then she walked, and every league she walked she stopped and she placed the headless body of one of her soldiers on a tree so that her path was marked well, for the ground was growing unruly, bucking off the soil and showing its ancient stone bones, which she followed like a hound on the scent.  And so she plunged into the tangled lands that lay alongside the water, where the only things that grew on the rock were moss and the only thing that grew on the moss were antiquity-pines, whose sap-sticky trunks were made of knots and whose knots were made of spite and whose branches leaned to point in the direction of the windsd.  She strode through the bogs uncaring of leeches, cut down bears for her breakfasts, sang until the birds fled, and stamped as she walked to feel the satisfying crunch of fragmenting gravel underfoot.  When she saw boats in the water, she followed them, and so she came to a driftwood-and-reed village nestled under a hill of stone (as all the hills were in the tangled lands) that was crested with a grove of huddled and wind-combed antiquity-pines so old they were as much growing on each other’s needles as they were the moss.

“Wake up!” shouted Merry gleefully, waving her spear overhead with happiness.  “Here!  See!  I am Merry!  Look at what I can do!” And so saying she cut a house in half, along with a fisher and two of their relations.  “I am strong!  I am the strongest I have ever known and I am bored!  I am here to find what may kill me!  Tell those who seek to kill me that I rest at the top of the hill under the pine, and I will fight them until one comes who can kill the strongest, and then you must bury me there and mark their name upon my grave!  I am hungry and you must bring food at each day’s end!  Do this or I will kill you!”

“Merry,” said the village elder, an old and stooped man who had just confirmed the deaths of his nephew, niece, and sibling, “you will never be buried here.”

“Wrong!” shouted Merry, and she threw the elder high into the air, from whence he fell into the water and broke like a dry branch.  “Food by sundown or I will come down the hill!  I’m not picky!”

So saying, she ascended the stone hill, clambering over pink-and-grey granite as softly rounded as pillowcases, and examined the wind-blown antiquity-pines in their grey dozens.  “Too many!” she shouted.  “Boring!  Confusing!”  Thus incensed, she struck down each and every pine save the most ancient and massive that lay in the grove’s heart, and from the others she built a fire and sent up a pungent and tarry smoke-signal to any who might have lost her trail in the winding maze that was the tangled lands of the water. 

“The trees will be missed,” ventured the lead fisher who brought the fat silvery bodies of Merry’s evening meal.  “They blocked the wind when it came from the west.”
“I am strong!” shouted Merry in happy rebuttal.  “It does not matter to me, and if it matters to you, that doesn’t matter to me either!” But she was fed and happy and so only threw the fisher down the hill with one hand, which broke four of her ribs before she wrapped herself in a bed of pine-boughs and slumbered under her tree.

Less than a week passed before the first pursuers came.  Six grey-wrapped deserter-hunters, armed with nooses and bows.  They came for Merry in the night and they left down the hill one at a time, limb by limb. 

After that came the other half of her old regiment.  That lasted two days and two nights, only ending when they occupied the village and seized Merry’s evening meal – oh, the rage in her eyes when she stamped down the hill and snapped their necks.  “Fight me properly or not at all!” she shouted as she held her last sergeant underwater and watched the bubbles still, just as she had once done for her youngest cousin.  “Ugh!”  It put her in a foul mood that only stilled when she demanded larger meals from then on, and she spent much of the night sharpening her spear’s edge with her old medals, the metal-on-stone scraping haunting the dark and sparking outraged replies from every owl in miles. 

The next day, a brave hero arrived.

Merry knew them on sight and liked them just as quickly.  They were short and stocky and simply clothed; their armour was largely worn cloth and scantly aged metal.   They wielded a very sturdy stick, hardened and wrapped for handling, tipped with a razored shard of clearest glass that parted air like flesh as it moved and they walked heedlessly barefoot upon the morning-heated rock and the dry needles.

“Hello!” she shouted to them.  “Are you here to kill me?!”
“Yes,” said the brave hero.  They took a drink from their little water-pouch and put it down on the ground.  “I smelt the smoke and saw the bodies and heard terrible things.  You must be stopped.”
“So kill me!” shouted Merry, and the two of them battled.  The hero was quick and strong and far braver than Merry, but she had grown up feeding on the flesh of the milkfruit every day – a king’s ransom spent every fifth year of her life – and she was a giant from it: more than double their height, four times their weight, twice as many lungs, and filled with unending vigor for violence.  The sun was low and curdling the clouds on the horizon’s edge by the time the hero fell, but fall they did – a slipped foot, a staggered breath, a sluggish recover, and Merry’s spear struck them down. 

“Bravery cannot kill me!” shouted Merry, and she cast their spear into the trunk of her pine with such force that it stuck there, shivering.  “Let another try and make this place my grave!”

“You,” said the hero quietly, with what little breath they had that was not bloody, ‘will never be buried here.”
“What?!” shouted Merry.  But there was no answer, and that night she slept with more annoyance than she would have hoped when the day began. 

When Merry woke the next day she felt a prickle at the back of her neck, where her skin was thickest.  She ignored it as she practiced her forms but did not forget it, so when the night came she slept lightly and carefully.  Because of this, the knife meant to slip into her neck was slapped away, and the cunning hunter who had dared step into her reach leapt back, cursing the light of the moon. 

“Hello!” she shouted, rousing a chorus of furious owls.  “Are you here to kill me?!”

The cunning hunter hurled a glass vial that splattered the front of her breastplate.

“So kill me!” shouted Merry, and the two of them battled.  The cunning hunter was fast and strong and far, far more clever than Merry, but she wore the antique and impossibly valuable blood-gilded armour of her grandmother, which did not rust when doused with liquid grit, nor rot when engulfed in snakesmoke, not sear when slapped with flash-salve, nor admit the presence of any blade however thin and quiet and quick and skillful, and at last she stepped to the quick into the hunter’s reach, grasped him in a hug, and shook him until his spine snapped. 

“Cleverness cannot kill me!” shouted Merry, and she snatched his last poisoned blade from his failing grasp and stamped it into the roots of her pine with one foot, hard as a hammer-blow.  “Let another try and make this place my grave!”

“You will never be buried here,” whispered the hunter quietly. 

“What?!” shouted Merry, and she shook him again, but he spoke no more, and her sleep was troubled again.

When she woke next there was dried spit in her throat and glue in her eyes and someone waiting for her. 

“Hello,” said the kind elder.  She was old, almost as old as her husband had been when Merry threw him into the water.  “I brought tea.”
“I don’t eat breakfasts!” shouted Merry.

“This isn’t breakfast, it’s business.  And you don’t need to eat it, you can just try it.”
“Good!” shouted Merry, and she tried both cups down to the dregs, which were smoky and smelled of berries and sharpness. 

“I would like to ask you to move on,” said the elder. 

“Hah!” shouted Merry.  “Where to?  This place suits me just fine!”

“Exactly so!” said the elder.  “Make it suit you more still!  Take off your armour, leave your spear, come down to the water’s edge and sleep in a house.  Catch fish.  Eat more than one meal a day.  Build things.  Fix things.  Grow old.  Maybe fall in love, if you’d like to.”

“I don’t understand any of that, and I don’t care about things I don’t understand!” shouted Merry.  “Why should I?!”
The elder held up three of her fingers, old and crooked as the branches above.  “You are running the fishermen ragged, you are upsetting the owls, and you will not find what you ask for here.”

“I don’t care!” shouted Merry with redoubled force.  “And I will have what I want or I will crush you all with my bare hands!”

“Oh foolish Merry,” sighed the elder, and she looked into Merry’s eyes with a sympathy that could overflow the seas.  “You will never be buried here.”

The elder was slow and feeble and much, much, much kinder than Merry.  All of this repelled her, and when she struck at her she recoiled back, much as she remembered her timid older sister once shrinking from a mouse.  The body fell and for the first time in her life she felt herself inadequate. 

“Kindness cannot kill me!” shouted Merry.  “Kindness cannot change me!  It shouldn’t!  It won’t!  Let another try and make this place my grave!”  And she hurled the elder’s shawl, which was festooned with quartz, up, up, up, until it caught in the branches of her pine like a spiderweb. 

And then, the wind came from the west. 

Firm, fierce, and forceful it came, and it found one lone, scarred, harried antiquity-pine with a sail in its crown, and it struck that pine down, and the lead-dense knotted trunk of that pine clove Merry’s blood-gilded helmet, cleft her milkfruit-hardened skullcap, and slammed both to the hilltop so hard it raised a plume of moss and needles for six leagues. 

***

The villagers came up the hill that evening.  They built a pyre for the elder’s body, and planted the cones of the lost trees, and they raised a marker.

HERE LIES THE STRONGEST
SLAIN BY
HER CARELESSNESS

But there was nothing buried under it, for nothing – not even the fall of Merry – could break the endless, ageless stone of the tangled lands to make a grave big enough for any creature larger than a mouse. 

So they threw her body into the water, where the fish took it, and they speared and netted the fish, and thus some good came of it all in the end.

The armour they sold piece by piece.The trouble began when she was five, and her great-uncle marked her particular fondness of striking her older sister with her cutlery.

“A warrior-breaker born!” he crowed. “Let her have better to strike with!”  And so he gifted her a training-blade and a tutor, and when she had worn both down to nubs another, and another, and another.  She slept and ate (the flesh of the milkfruit) and trained and killed her older sister in an argument at the age of twelve and was presented with her grandmother’s blood-gilded armour at the age of sixteen and by the time she was twenty it had been readjusted six times to incorporate the breadth of her muscles and guts and fierceness and then she took the war-name Merry and she was ready at last to be sent to battle.

She killed many people for some time, and in many places.

The day when it happened was after a victory, but it could’ve been any.  Merry drank much and stamped her feet and stood for her honours and smiled wide.  Then she woke early, trained her forms, and decapitated half the regiment under her command – some one-after-another and some all-at-once. 

Then she walked, and every league she walked she stopped and she placed the headless body of one of her soldiers on a tree so that her path was marked well, for the ground was growing unruly, bucking off the soil and showing its ancient stone bones, which she followed like a hound on the scent.  And so she plunged into the tangled lands that lay alongside the water, where the only things that grew on the rock were moss and the only thing that grew on the moss were antiquity-pines, whose sap-sticky trunks were made of knots and whose knots were made of spite and whose branches leaned to point in the direction of the windsd.  She strode through the bogs uncaring of leeches, cut down bears for her breakfasts, sang until the birds fled, and stamped as she walked to feel the satisfying crunch of fragmenting gravel underfoot.  When she saw boats in the water, she followed them, and so she came to a driftwood-and-reed village nestled under a hill of stone (as all the hills were in the tangled lands) that was crested with a grove of huddled and wind-combed antiquity-pines so old they were as much growing on each other’s needles as they were the moss.

“Wake up!” shouted Merry gleefully, waving her spear overhead with happiness.  “Here!  See!  I am Merry!  Look at what I can do!” And so saying she cut a house in half, along with a fisher and two of their relations.  “I am strong!  I am the strongest I have ever known and I am bored!  I am here to find what may kill me!  Tell those who seek to kill me that I rest at the top of the hill under the pine, and I will fight them until one comes who can kill the strongest, and then you must bury me there and mark their name upon my grave!  I am hungry and you must bring food at each day’s end!  Do this or I will kill you!”

“Merry,” said the village elder, an old and stooped man who had just confirmed the deaths of his nephew, niece, and sibling, “you will never be buried here.”

“Wrong!” shouted Merry, and she threw the elder high into the air, from whence he fell into the water and broke like a dry branch.  “Food by sundown or I will come down the hill!  I’m not picky!”

So saying, she ascended the stone hill, clambering over pink-and-grey granite as softly rounded as pillowcases, and examined the wind-blown antiquity-pines in their grey dozens.  “Too many!” she shouted.  “Boring!  Confusing!”  Thus incensed, she struck down each and every pine save the most ancient and massive that lay in the grove’s heart, and from the others she built a fire and sent up a pungent and tarry smoke-signal to any who might have lost her trail in the winding maze that was the tangled lands of the water. 

“The trees will be missed,” ventured the lead fisher who brought the fat silvery bodies of Merry’s evening meal.  “They blocked the wind when it came from the west.”
“I am strong!” shouted Merry in happy rebuttal.  “It does not matter to me, and if it matters to you, that doesn’t matter to me either!” But she was fed and happy and so only threw the fisher down the hill with one hand, which broke four of her ribs before she wrapped herself in a bed of pine-boughs and slumbered under her tree.

Less than a week passed before the first pursuers came.  Six grey-wrapped deserter-hunters, armed with nooses and bows.  They came for Merry in the night and they left down the hill one at a time, limb by limb. 

After that came the other half of her old regiment.  That lasted two days and two nights, only ending when they occupied the village and seized Merry’s evening meal – oh, the rage in her eyes when she stamped down the hill and snapped their necks.  “Fight me properly or not at all!” she shouted as she held her last sergeant underwater and watched the bubbles still, just as she had once done for her youngest cousin.  “Ugh!”  It put her in a foul mood that only stilled when she demanded larger meals from then on, and she spent much of the night sharpening her spear’s edge with her old medals, the metal-on-stone scraping haunting the dark and sparking outraged replies from every owl in miles. 

The next day, a brave hero arrived.

Merry knew them on sight and liked them just as quickly.  They were short and stocky and simply clothed; their armour was largely worn cloth and scantly aged metal.   They wielded a very sturdy stick, hardened and wrapped for handling, tipped with a razored shard of clearest glass that parted air like flesh as it moved and they walked heedlessly barefoot upon the morning-heated rock and the dry needles.

“Hello!” she shouted to them.  “Are you here to kill me?!”
“Yes,” said the brave hero.  They took a drink from their little water-pouch and put it down on the ground.  “I smelt the smoke and saw the bodies and heard terrible things.  You must be stopped.”
“So kill me!” shouted Merry, and the two of them battled.  The hero was quick and strong and far braver than Merry, but she had grown up feeding on the flesh of the milkfruit every day – a king’s ransom spent every fifth year of her life – and she was a giant from it: more than double their height, four times their weight, twice as many lungs, and filled with unending vigor for violence.  The sun was low and curdling the clouds on the horizon’s edge by the time the hero fell, but fall they did – a slipped foot, a staggered breath, a sluggish recover, and Merry’s spear struck them down. 

“Bravery cannot kill me!” shouted Merry, and she cast their spear into the trunk of her pine with such force that it stuck there, shivering.  “Let another try and make this place my grave!”

“You,” said the hero quietly, with what little breath they had that was not bloody, ‘will never be buried here.”
“What?!” shouted Merry.  But there was no answer, and that night she slept with more annoyance than she would have hoped when the day began. 

When Merry woke the next day she felt a prickle at the back of her neck, where her skin was thickest.  She ignored it as she practiced her forms but did not forget it, so when the night came she slept lightly and carefully.  Because of this, the knife meant to slip into her neck was slapped away, and the cunning hunter who had dared step into her reach leapt back, cursing the light of the moon. 

“Hello!” she shouted, rousing a chorus of furious owls.  “Are you here to kill me?!”

The cunning hunter hurled a glass vial that splattered the front of her breastplate.

“So kill me!” shouted Merry, and the two of them battled.  The cunning hunter was fast and strong and far, far more clever than Merry, but she wore the antique and impossibly valuable blood-gilded armour of her grandmother, which did not rust when doused with liquid grit, nor rot when engulfed in snakesmoke, not sear when slapped with flash-salve, nor admit the presence of any blade however thin and quiet and quick and skillful, and at last she stepped to the quick into the hunter’s reach, grasped him in a hug, and shook him until his spine snapped. 

“Cleverness cannot kill me!” shouted Merry, and she snatched his last poisoned blade from his failing grasp and stamped it into the roots of her pine with one foot, hard as a hammer-blow.  “Let another try and make this place my grave!”

“You will never be buried here,” whispered the hunter quietly. 

“What?!” shouted Merry, and she shook him again, but he spoke no more, and her sleep was troubled again.

When she woke next there was dried spit in her throat and glue in her eyes and someone waiting for her. 

“Hello,” said the kind elder.  She was old, almost as old as her husband had been when Merry threw him into the water.  “I brought tea.”
“I don’t eat breakfasts!” shouted Merry.

“This isn’t breakfast, it’s business.  And you don’t need to eat it, you can just try it.”
“Good!” shouted Merry, and she tried both cups down to the dregs, which were smoky and smelled of berries and sharpness. 

“I would like to ask you to move on,” said the elder. 

“Hah!” shouted Merry.  “Where to?  This place suits me just fine!”

“Exactly so!” said the elder.  “Make it suit you more still!  Take off your armour, leave your spear, come down to the water’s edge and sleep in a house.  Catch fish.  Eat more than one meal a day.  Build things.  Fix things.  Grow old.  Maybe fall in love, if you’d like to.”

“I don’t understand any of that, and I don’t care about things I don’t understand!” shouted Merry.  “Why should I?!”
The elder held up three of her fingers, old and crooked as the branches above.  “You are running the fishermen ragged, you are upsetting the owls, and you will not find what you ask for here.”

“I don’t care!” shouted Merry with redoubled force.  “And I will have what I want or I will crush you all with my bare hands!”

“Oh foolish Merry,” sighed the elder, and she looked into Merry’s eyes with a sympathy that could overflow the seas.  “You will never be buried here.”

The elder was slow and feeble and much, much, much kinder than Merry.  All of this repelled her, and when she struck at her she recoiled back, much as she remembered her timid older sister once shrinking from a mouse.  The body fell and for the first time in her life she felt herself inadequate. 

“Kindness cannot kill me!” shouted Merry.  “Kindness cannot change me!  It shouldn’t!  It won’t!  Let another try and make this place my grave!”  And she hurled the elder’s shawl, which was festooned with quartz, up, up, up, until it caught in the branches of her pine like a spiderweb. 

And then, the wind came from the west. 

Firm, fierce, and forceful it came, and it found one lone, scarred, harried antiquity-pine with a sail in its crown, and it struck that pine down, and the lead-dense knotted trunk of that pine clove Merry’s blood-gilded helmet, cleft her milkfruit-hardened skullcap, and slammed both to the hilltop so hard it raised a plume of moss and needles for six leagues. 

***

The villagers came up the hill that evening.  They built a pyre for the elder’s body, and planted the cones of the lost trees, and they raised a marker.

HERE LIES THE STRONGEST
SLAIN BY
HER CARELESSNESS

But there was nothing buried under it, for nothing – not even the fall of Merry – could break the endless, ageless stone of the tangled lands to make a grave big enough for any creature larger than a mouse. 

So they threw her body into the water, where the fish took it, and they speared and netted the fish, and thus some good came of it all in the end.

The armour they sold piece by piece.

I woke up face down in the mud and the muck with one nostril standing between me and suffocation and I rolled my tongue in my mouth and between the dirt and iron my front tooth was missing and that was that.

***

I was mad.  Hadn’t been mad in a long time.  Angry, yeah – angry is shouting and waving your fists around and laughing and kicking someone after they fall over and feeling that thrill of the rib making way for your toe.  Everyone loves angry out here, next best thing to drunk.  But mad is when you’re the one on the floor. 

***

The light at my back was red hot with sweat and joy and drink and sick.  So much pay spent so fast so bright like an overfed lamp.  Screaming and laughing and someone singing it sounded like Bert like FUCKING Bert who was my friend Bert you put your toe in the same ribs I did you laughed when I told the jokes Bert I lifted that damned widowmaker off your leg all by myself don’t you remember is it worse if you do or don’t?

I needed to throw up.  I thought I’d thrown up already.  Hard to tell all I could taste in my mouth was the dirt and the iron. 

While I was doing that I walked away from the light. Decision made from the ground up my feet knew what they were doing and the rest of me would learn when I needed to. They were the part of me that worked the best right now anyways I’d gone down hard and gone down fast and then once that’d happened there’d been no more dignity for it no more respect everyone take a piece and it’d been work on the face and the ribs and they’d held my arms until my shoulder joints felt like rotten apples swelling and bruising out of shape.

***

I didn’t need anyone to hold arms for me.  I didn’t want anyone to hold arms for me, because as long as they kept flailing you could keep hitting.  Back up!  Back up!  Let them keep their pride so they had something left to defend, let them make the call second by second: which can you survive with longer, another broken bone or a little more lost face? Can you heal fast enough, set your arm straight enough, to make it through on missed pay?  Can you work hard enough, cut and haul and strip fast enough all on your own when the rest of camp would sooner partner with a plague rat than share a crew with you?

That’s what makes the eyes glaze over.  Not the brainfog from the boot to the skull, not the pain from the broken-bloody bruises.  Trying to decide which will kill you: the wounds or the shame, with almost no time at all.

***

It was dark in the woods dark at midday darker at night but it didn’t matter I could see it when the red pulsed in my eye now light dark air tree and my legs still worked didn’t they were still in charge weren’t they not alone anymore the thoughts had moved up to my stomach curdling around a dinner of grease and too much cheap beer burning my throat on the way out raw and scraped like an unoiled sawblade.  Unoiled broken-tooth wasn’t me couldn’t be I could always find a new blade always find someone to oil it for me a polite word from me carried a dozen nights of impolite memories of meat and bone and blood always giving me weight pushing others into the places I needed them to be pushing the saw through the wood but not the wood I was wandering now farther now past the clearings past the edge of the roads stumbling and held upright by briars following the places where no trails lead.

***

Fear really could get you anything.  Oil. Fresh blades. Eager backs to haul timber.  A little extra sluggishness on the first swing. A flinch when you moved in for the arm lock. 

It could keep things away too – requests, insults, elbows and knees and boots on your feet, bunkmates that snored or complained.

Thoughts and words.  Blazes.  Trails.  Roving feet.

***

The stand was exactly where it was meant to be of course I could find it half dead and half gone at midnight because of course I knew where it was we all knew exactly where it was because how else were we supposed to stay away from it?  Dry needles on the ground growing thicker dry needles on the trees growing longer sharp sap in the air so thick and clotted it can cut your nose from your face you see those things you steer away you spread the word you give it space.

If a bird looked at the whole forest from above they’d see a perfect uncut circle around this spot but it wouldn’t because the birds didn’t fly here there were no nests in the trees no owls screech no bats flittered nothing there but the pines and the needles and the resin-stitched cones and me and the ache in my arms as I pushed through the boughs and came to the shattered center of the stand.

Thick gnarled snapped in two at the base lightning scarred who knew what killed it enough timber for a cathedral but crooked and knotted even firewood wouldn’t like the shape lying on its side unrooted.

The stump was clear.

Very clear.

***

The problem is that it can flip – and so fast.  Two minutes between Bert and Nickle buying me drinks to holding me down, between cheering and kicking, between the hum in my veins and the mud in my throat. Between somewhere you should never go and the only place left.

***

Twigs from my jacket dirt from my face blood from my mouth needles from the ground a match from my boot.

A little red light in the dark so bright it hurts.

***

I wasn’t frightened of Mike Horn. I didn’t care about Mike Horn.  He wasn’t a nobody, he was an anybody.  I slept in a bunkhouse with dozens of him.  I ate my meals with scores of him.  I’d broken a face just like his a hundred times, I’d watched him laugh with me and back off from me and look up to me a thousand times, if you’d given me a million tries I wouldn’t have picked him out from the rest of the camp once. I didn’t care about him. 

He could’ve been anyone.

He did this.

So, anyone could have done this. 

Everyone could be anyone.

Everyone could do this.

So.

***

The fire burned bright and hot and glowed white and flared and flickered until it hurt to watch then shrank and wavered and went out.

Couldn’t see anything had no other matches alone in a deeper dark with eyes that didn’t work and a thought that had worked its way up my spine to my brain and it was:

What are you doing?

And I had no answer.  Just a shape in my body. Sore feet hunched back ragged breath singing nerves curdled stomach aching skull creaking ribs. 

Mad enough to act. Too mad to think. 

All alone in the worst place. Aching. Cold.

When I stood back up, my legs didn’t say a word against it.

***

Half my baby teeth had left me on their own, the others had gotten help from dad.  My grown set I’d sworn to hold onto unless the loss was something worth telling.

I’d lost five teeth to rot; three to a bull with opinions; two to going under in the rapids and taking a whole log in the face.  Enough chips and nicks on the leftovers to make a pretty penny from a tooth fairy.

But that front tooth had stood there the whole damned time, still entirely whole, still mostly white.  And now it was gone, lost to Mike Horn’s knuckle, lost on the barroom floor, lost and nobody to give a damn but me. A loser gets punched in the face and sheds a tooth, what’s the big deal?  What’s the big deal about that?

***

The branches creaked. 

There was no wind.

Gently, softly, carefully, the needles sank into my shoulder, through cloth and skin, and turned me.

Taller than any church steeple I’d ever seen, covered in bristles to make a boar bleat, long-limbed and thick-reeked of sap, Old Jack Pine. 

A bough swept up in front of me, long and slow and unavoidable as the fall of a widowmaker.  At its tip, a red coal glowed.

thank you

Whispered no wind, no words.

it is small, but it will grow

And it planted it at my feet.

***

The night is bright around me.  My legs are numb and stumbling, my arms pump harder to make up for it, my lungs are boiling.  The smoke is outrunning me already, the sparks are at my heels, the stream I stumble into is starting to steam at the edges, cinders fill the air and my jacket is smouldering. 

Crack!  Pop!  Heartwood steaming apart?  Cones opening, ready to ripen in fresh ashes?

Blood in my mouth.  Old?  New?  Wrapped around the hole in my jaw.

Lights in the woods.  The barroom?  The blaze?

So many questions I hadn’t asked and hadn’t answered.

Which will kill me first: the shame or the fire?  There’s no time atI woke up face down in the mud and the muck with one nostril standing between me and suffocation and I rolled my tongue in my mouth and between the dirt and iron my front tooth was missing and that was that.

***

I was mad.  Hadn’t been mad in a long time.  Angry, yeah – angry is shouting and waving your fists around and laughing and kicking someone after they fall over and feeling that thrill of the rib making way for your toe.  Everyone loves angry out here, next best thing to drunk.  But mad is when you’re the one on the floor. 

***

The light at my back was red hot with sweat and joy and drink and sick.  So much pay spent so fast so bright like an overfed lamp.  Screaming and laughing and someone singing it sounded like Bert like FUCKING Bert who was my friend Bert you put your toe in the same ribs I did you laughed when I told the jokes Bert I lifted that damned widowmaker off your leg all by myself don’t you remember is it worse if you do or don’t?

I needed to throw up.  I thought I’d thrown up already.  Hard to tell all I could taste in my mouth was the dirt and the iron. 

While I was doing that I walked away from the light. Decision made from the ground up my feet knew what they were doing and the rest of me would learn when I needed to. They were the part of me that worked the best right now anyways I’d gone down hard and gone down fast and then once that’d happened there’d been no more dignity for it no more respect everyone take a piece and it’d been work on the face and the ribs and they’d held my arms until my shoulder joints felt like rotten apples swelling and bruising out of shape.

***

I didn’t need anyone to hold arms for me.  I didn’t want anyone to hold arms for me, because as long as they kept flailing you could keep hitting.  Back up!  Back up!  Let them keep their pride so they had something left to defend, let them make the call second by second: which can you survive with longer, another broken bone or a little more lost face? Can you heal fast enough, set your arm straight enough, to make it through on missed pay?  Can you work hard enough, cut and haul and strip fast enough all on your own when the rest of camp would sooner partner with a plague rat than share a crew with you?

That’s what makes the eyes glaze over.  Not the brainfog from the boot to the skull, not the pain from the broken-bloody bruises.  Trying to decide which will kill you: the wounds or the shame, with almost no time at all.

***

It was dark in the woods dark at midday darker at night but it didn’t matter I could see it when the red pulsed in my eye now light dark air tree and my legs still worked didn’t they were still in charge weren’t they not alone anymore the thoughts had moved up to my stomach curdling around a dinner of grease and too much cheap beer burning my throat on the way out raw and scraped like an unoiled sawblade.  Unoiled broken-tooth wasn’t me couldn’t be I could always find a new blade always find someone to oil it for me a polite word from me carried a dozen nights of impolite memories of meat and bone and blood always giving me weight pushing others into the places I needed them to be pushing the saw through the wood but not the wood I was wandering now farther now past the clearings past the edge of the roads stumbling and held upright by briars following the places where no trails lead.

***

Fear really could get you anything.  Oil. Fresh blades. Eager backs to haul timber.  A little extra sluggishness on the first swing. A flinch when you moved in for the arm lock. 

It could keep things away too – requests, insults, elbows and knees and boots on your feet, bunkmates that snored or complained.

Thoughts and words.  Blazes.  Trails.  Roving feet.

***

The stand was exactly where it was meant to be of course I could find it half dead and half gone at midnight because of course I knew where it was we all knew exactly where it was because how else were we supposed to stay away from it?  Dry needles on the ground growing thicker dry needles on the trees growing longer sharp sap in the air so thick and clotted it can cut your nose from your face you see those things you steer away you spread the word you give it space.

If a bird looked at the whole forest from above they’d see a perfect uncut circle around this spot but it wouldn’t because the birds didn’t fly here there were no nests in the trees no owls screech no bats flittered nothing there but the pines and the needles and the resin-stitched cones and me and the ache in my arms as I pushed through the boughs and came to the shattered center of the stand.

Thick gnarled snapped in two at the base lightning scarred who knew what killed it enough timber for a cathedral but crooked and knotted even firewood wouldn’t like the shape lying on its side unrooted.

The stump was clear.

Very clear.

***

The problem is that it can flip – and so fast.  Two minutes between Bert and Nickle buying me drinks to holding me down, between cheering and kicking, between the hum in my veins and the mud in my throat. Between somewhere you should never go and the only place left.

***

Twigs from my jacket dirt from my face blood from my mouth needles from the ground a match from my boot.

A little red light in the dark so bright it hurts.

***

I wasn’t frightened of Mike Horn. I didn’t care about Mike Horn.  He wasn’t a nobody, he was an anybody.  I slept in a bunkhouse with dozens of him.  I ate my meals with scores of him.  I’d broken a face just like his a hundred times, I’d watched him laugh with me and back off from me and look up to me a thousand times, if you’d given me a million tries I wouldn’t have picked him out from the rest of the camp once. I didn’t care about him. 

He could’ve been anyone.

He did this.

So, anyone could have done this. 

Everyone could be anyone.

Everyone could do this.

So.

***

The fire burned bright and hot and glowed white and flared and flickered until it hurt to watch then shrank and wavered and went out.

Couldn’t see anything had no other matches alone in a deeper dark with eyes that didn’t work and a thought that had worked its way up my spine to my brain and it was:

What are you doing?

And I had no answer.  Just a shape in my body. Sore feet hunched back ragged breath singing nerves curdled stomach aching skull creaking ribs. 

Mad enough to act. Too mad to think. 

All alone in the worst place. Aching. Cold.

When I stood back up, my legs didn’t say a word against it.

***

Half my baby teeth had left me on their own, the others had gotten help from dad.  My grown set I’d sworn to hold onto unless the loss was something worth telling.

I’d lost five teeth to rot; three to a bull with opinions; two to going under in the rapids and taking a whole log in the face.  Enough chips and nicks on the leftovers to make a pretty penny from a tooth fairy.

But that front tooth had stood there the whole damned time, still entirely whole, still mostly white.  And now it was gone, lost to Mike Horn’s knuckle, lost on the barroom floor, lost and nobody to give a damn but me. A loser gets punched in the face and sheds a tooth, what’s the big deal?  What’s the big deal about that?

***

The branches creaked. 

There was no wind.

Gently, softly, carefully, the needles sank into my shoulder, through cloth and skin, and turned me.

Taller than any church steeple I’d ever seen, covered in bristles to make a boar bleat, long-limbed and thick-reeked of sap, Old Jack Pine. 

A bough swept up in front of me, long and slow and unavoidable as the fall of a widowmaker.  At its tip, a red coal glowed.

thank you

Whispered no wind, no words.

it is small, but it will grow

And it planted it at my feet.

***

The night is bright around me.  My legs are numb and stumbling, my arms pump harder to make up for it, my lungs are boiling.  The smoke is outrunning me already, the sparks are at my heels, the stream I stumble into is starting to steam at the edges, cinders fill the air and my jacket is smouldering. 

Crack!  Pop!  Heartwood steaming apart?  Cones opening, ready to ripen in fresh ashes?

Blood in my mouth.  Old?  New?  Wrapped around the hole in my jaw.

Lights in the woods.  The barroom?  The blaze?

So many questions I hadn’t asked and hadn’t answered.

Which will kill me first: the shame or the fire?  There’s no time at

1.69.5 Quiet Reckoning

H1045

Malcold Cobbles

The Battle of Boulderblood

Since the dawn of time, the peoples of the world have fought to share it through one means: war.  But few moments of war, of all time, have mattered more than the crucial fulcrum of the Battle of Boulderblood: the moment where the Long War between the stunted Tunnelmen of the Breadlands and the elder empire of the last Saurceropods, that final dynasty of the Arch-saurs, reached what was, at that time, its zenith (Circletersh, 1.65.5, p99-217).

–awkward sentences – too many commas

–highly imprecise citation

The two sides had been at war for untold generations… the deceitful Tunnelmen coveting the wealth of the surface for their own, the noble Saurceropods seeking only to guide and protect the smaller, feebler, more squishable species that squabbled within the gentle enclosure of their mighty All-Paddock from themselves and their own baser instincts (Vellisimar, 1.69.4, p1).  Alas, they were led astray… words of clotted earth dripped slimily into many an envious ear…and so, the great crime of Brachio Bay swallowed whole the light of many of the Stompers Eternal, and, with the subsequent opportunistic arising of the bug-swallowers, and the tube-feeders, the world was plunged into… the Long War (Vellisimar, 1.69.3, p2-3)

–imprecise language: by the battle of boulderblood the long war is agreed to been underway for between twenty-nine to thirty-two years (depending on if you count from the initial undermining of brachio bay or the entry of the musselfolk as the final member of the greater alliance after the third megatsunami), and while a tunnelman generation is approximately four years; a saurceropod’s is twenty

-excessive use of ellipses for a nondramatic work

-repeated use of hate speech

By the time of the Battle of Boulderblood, both the so-called ‘Greater Alliance’ and the Protectorate of the Herds had exhausted many of their initial reserves of allied subliminals and nocturnals, war-tapestries, all-anthems, and personal virtue.  As the result, of this, the remaining sources of renewable extraordinary advantage were of prime strategic and tactical value.  These stood out among the wan’d muck and dross of the drained and unromantic battlefields of the middle Long War like grandest pearls among the sad silt of the lands of the tube-feeders… and none stood out brighter than those, of Boulderblood Vale (Sircletersh, p 88-252).  The wondrous backwash of its headwaters had ease’d peace to weary’d minds of wizened elders in the neighboring villages for generations, and now, it had been put to use in sharpening the cunning of mudshoveler commanders and officers in the field… bottled and parceled out like mere rations…  The Protectorate’s command realized the foulness of this, and stood ready, to remove this, advantage.

-mention of the exhaustion of primary resources but no mention of the subsequent second through fifth ‘harvestings’ that preceded the adoption of the foraging doctrine by both sides.

-even more imprecise citation

-additional use of hate speech

-incorrect use of the term ‘backwash’

Command of the besieging forces lay with Metamagistrate Mooomph Megas; while the commanding molekisser was named as Snert Snid. However, few records remain of this, and it is likely that the defense was in actuality co-opted by one of the mercenary groups of the Eaters of Gnats present, Colonel c. Evidence of this is borne out by the rapid detection of the elite Sneakapod commando crew – how could sightless dirtslappers possibly have detected the noble straight-backed forms of the most silent walkers in all the known world, whose feet are padded anvils? (Vellisimar, p2-4).  The subsequent miring and entanglement of the entirety of the commando team in a targeted molepit as they were distracted and disturbed by the harrying shrieks of the Squeak Squadrons was truly a case of the cruel hand of reality descending upon even the most skilled… but, fortune is fickle, and friendless, and fierce…for even as the initial decapitation team was waylaid, the Protectorate’s main field army advanced from directly above Boulderblood Vale, borne on the breath of the titanic leaf-ship the Great Branch itself….the Cherry’d Rain of the Fruit of the Great Branch, the Food That Is No Foe…the Berry-Good-Friends.

-landmiral snert snid is attested as commanding the defense and continued to serve at their stated field rank until they perished three years later at the sinking of the grand lilypond, where they went down with their dredger

-it is widely understood that protectorate command was unaware that tunnelmen could hear saurceropod subsonic vocalizations until the early late war, with suspicions first arising at the ferocity and precision of the defense during the crying of clove cove, and this combined with a known lack of communications discipline among protectorate commando squads is a simple explanation that demands no additional conspiracy theories.

-failure to specify which vellisimar article is being cited

-failure to cite sircletersh at all

-failure to stop using hate speech

The skirmish over the surface of the Vale was brief, but prolonged.  The BGF Windleafs were thick-skinned, but tender when pulped, while, the siphonsucker chant-squad that squatted within the Boulderblood spring itself were sluggish to move and quick to hide shellfishly, but clamped down fiercely on their adversaries.  Although prevented from suppling extraordinary advantage, they stubbornly refused to clam up and surrender.  Meanwhile, the stout BGF were cornered by the returning Squeak Squads which then ascended to deal very superficial damage to the Great Branch, causing it to wisely reposition itself off the battlefield for tactical advantage before vanishing, mysteriously, for the remainder of the war.

-repeated insensitive puns

-use of the ‘tactical retreat’ theory of the great branch’s demise, which was conclusively disproven thirty years ago

-truly perplexing use of hate speech; the term ‘siphon-sucker’ was last used as a serious insult two hundred years ago

Mooomph wasted no time as his trustworthy, loyal servants courageously bought him time.  He strode forward in the Fast Herd Flank, a mighty sight sure to stir the souls of all who witnessed a Saurceropod’s wrath… (Vellisimar, p1-6).  They stepped atop the walls of the Vale as might a colossus, and so, doing, toppled them with song and stride.  You are small, they sang, and we are great, they sang, and so, you shall serve, and so, you shall serve.  They collapsed the nestowers of the Squeak Squads, and stamped in the foul brooding-tunnels of the Tunnelmen, and – alas, alack, – the naked animal cunning of their foe came upon them!  For ‘neath what they had treacherously disguised as a ‘medical ward’ (a place of war no doubt (Vellisimar, p9)) was in fact a full float of snapping beavers, which did snap away half of the Protectorate’s regional command in defense of their eggs.  Woe, to the bravery of those fallen to treachery of the lesser!  Joy, to that they fell in defense of something so fine!  Hurrah, that they fulfilled their goal even in death… for lo!  Lo, the rupturing of the land did tear asunder the spring that fed the Boulderblood, and so, in fact, the goal of the mission was rendered true, the extraordinary resource was not captured, but nor was it remained in the hands of the foe – and never thereforemore would the peaceful peoples of that place be menaced by the brutish undersoldiers of the ‘Great Alliance’!!!  And so, having triumphed, the Protectorate Forces staged a cunning redeployment in every direction at once, of which legend says many of them survived.  It is moment like this that echo through the ages, from toe to skull, echoing in one’s own throat, through the jugular, and the trachea, and the lovely spinal column, all the most important aspects of ones’s soul, in one slim section, so pure and true… in a way, it could be certainly asserted that all of us who listen, to our necks, can hear those echoes and know the truths of our long-lost past. 

No amount of mud can bury the bones of the great truth beneath!  Ascend, HEADS HELD HIGH!!!!

-Malcold Cobbles, High AND Mighty.

-lack of citations

-excessive dramatics

-multiple exclamation marks

-mr. cobbles, I must repeat for the third time in print that there is no evidence connecting either the pre-long war saurceropod dynastic states OR the modern sauropaddock communasteries biologically, culturally, or ideologically with modern ‘longneckism’ movements that advocate the dismemberment of all creatures with fewer than ten vertebrae, a number that you yourself fall short of as a normal, healthy physically adult giraffic who is not suffering from ‘vertebral collapse’ as a result of ancestral curses performed by the ‘short—souled’

Bibliography

Hurley & Burley History Print, A Short History of the Long War; Sircletersh, S. C., 1.65.5 QR

Prudent Pamphleteering Press, The Moment that Caught the Sun, Vellisimar, V.V., 1.69.4 QR

Prudent Pamphleteering Press, Treason Above and Below, Vellisimar, V.V., 1.69.3 QR

-several problems here:

–you were required to cite at least seven sources.

–the title of the article is required to be in italics

–the order of information under Crumbledown format is author, title, journal, date.

–you were required to engage with the scholarly literature of the field of history. Prudent Pamphleteering Press is a vanity press whose principal product is advertisements. 
-your singular scholarly source is older than I am

12/100 for using the correct header formatting, mostly correct spelling, meeting half of the wordcount, and very, very, very clearly writing this without outside assistance

The scream had only just begun to die away by the time Mortimer was in the hallway, torchless, heedless, heart in his mouth.  It had been decades since he’d heard the sound of a human soul departing its body, but he knew it when he heard it.  Yet still he ran – no time to switch on a light, no time to get dressed – hopelessly hurling himself towards the bedroom, knowing he was too late.

Master Eddlemont was sitting on the edge of his bed, breathing heavily and sweating a bit.  “Oh!  Hello, Mortimer,” he said.  One sleeve wiped fluid from the corner of his mouth.  “Could you bring me a drink, a snack, and my draft-board, please?  Something has come up.”

“Sir?” Mortimer managed.   “You’re bleeding.”
“Oh, that.  Yes, I suppose I am.  Well, get on then!  I’ve got a lot to do, and quickly.  The draft-board first, Mortimer.  What I have seen – it cannot wait!”

The great-grandfather clock – crafted by Eddlemont’s great-grandfather to win the love of his great-grandmother – chimed midnight with a hollow clang.

“The doctor, perhaps-”

“No!  No such!  Mortimer, I beheld the face of my own dear mother just now – my own dear mother, perished when I was but a child!  I beheld her in my dreams, Mortimer, and do you know what she said?”

The great-grandfather clock – worn with four generations of love and care – chimed midnight again, shriller this time.  In the distance, thunder rumbled.

“Sir?”
“She said ‘You must NOT do the thing you’re thinking of.  I know you, Percy, don’t you dare!  No!  Don’t you dare!  I need you to PROMISE ME not to do it!  NO DON’T DO IT HONEY DON’T DO IT DON’T DON’T DON’T AAAAAUUUGH’ and then I screamed too and then I woke up.  But I woke up knowing what I must do.”

A wolf howled outside, somehow.  The rain was beginning to pick up.  The great-grandfather clock – towering higher than a chandelier, standing broader than a wardrobe – rocked furiously on its heels, sending dust bunnies seven decades old scurrying for cover as it chimed midnight yet again. 

“I am going to build a completely unsinkable ship that will suffer no calamity whatsoever,” said Master Percival Woolwurst Eddlemont, lead designer of Sloomoot Shiplines.  “And it shall be called …the Gigantic.”

The great-grandfather clock chimed midnight ten more times at increasing speed, then exploded.

***

Mister Vooms prided himself on his imperturbability.  He was a man of business, a man of numbers, a man of reason, a man who did business by explaining which numbers were reasonable to other less reasonable less numerate and less businesslike men.  He had seen grown men reduced to crying and screaming and wailing pull themselves back together at his rightly-placed handshake, nod, or stiffening of his upper lip.  He was an anchor of sanity on which ships lost in the midnight of the soul were moored.  He was a rock in the storm of the world.  He was the spoken voice of the quiet wish in the back of humanity’s skull that everything would work out.  He had walked past thirteen black cats on the way from Master Eddlemont’s driveway to his front door. 

“Shoo!” he told the nearest one.  It hissed at him, arched its back, and vanished in the way cats can.

The door opened.  Mortimer the manservant was behind it.  A manservant shaped like Mortimer was behind it.  Whoever it was, they were operating on a lot less blood than a mature human was meant to have. 

“Please,” whispered the emaciated wraith, as it ushered him down a hall filled entirely with shattered mirrors, shards crunching under their feet like beetles.  “Please, you must speak to him.  You must make him see sense.” 
“Enter!” cried a voice from within, and whatever Mister Vooms might have replied to this was lost to him for all time, for as soon as his hand opened the door and his eyes alit on the office he beheld the drafting-board of Master Percival Eddlemont, and he woke up on the floor being gently splashed with water and filled with a terrible foreboding he could not recall, let alone describe. 

“Sorry,” said Eddlemont, with an apologetic sort of grimace.  “It does that when it’s exposed to light.  I assume it’s noon out there?”
“Two forty nine PM,” said Mister Vooms reflexively.  “You have cut yourself.”
“What?” Eddlemont glanced at his shirt.  “No I haven’t.”
“Repeatedly, I should say.  With a bayonet.”
“Oh!  Ahaha, no, no, not at all!  I’m fit as a fiddle!  That’s just from my pen.  Damn things keep jamming up on me and then all that comes out is blood.”  Thus saying, he took up the blamed instrument, applied it to the edge of his notebook, and with a flick produced a rusty red smear and a faint scream.  “Makes the noise too.  Gruesome.  Anyways, behold the purpose of our entire endeavour as a company, Vooms!  Also, of our lives in any meaningful capacity!  I give you …the Gigantic!”

Mister Vooms squinted with caution, but in the shadows of that curtained room the schematics were mere lines – of blood – and curves – of dread – arching off into symbols – of dire portents. 

“Your scale bar is oddly labeled,” he noted.  “And the man is posed strangely.”
“That’s not a man!  That’s the state of liberty.”
“Oh.  I see the Gigantic is not just a na-”

“No!”
“Pardon?”
“It is NOT ‘the Gigantic!’  It is ‘…the Gigantic.’  The ellipsis is PARAMOUNT!”

“Ah!  Yes, of course.  Sorry.  Anyways, it’s very big.”

“Yes!  But, like an iceberg, the true genius of my vessel remains hidden below the surface of your assumptions!  It is unsinkable!  It cannot be sunk.  Nothing will ever sink it.  I promise.”
A rattle of soft thuds came from the shrouded windowpane. 

“It didn’t look like rain today.”
“Flock of pure white doves.  Third time the past hour.  Anyways, I’m sure I don’t need to explain the fundamental marketability and rationality of making a boat that the creator of the universe would find themselves powerless to raise a hand against in anger.  See, if you’ll look at the math it’s all very simple.”

Mister Vooms looked at the math.  Mister Vooms felt something else stir in his mouth that was not his tongue, then spat frantically until the centipede came loose and curled resentfully under the desk.

“Yes,” he said, patting his lips with a handkerchief.  “This all seems in order.  I’ll bring it to the board’s attention at once.”
“Thank you VERY much Mister Vooms!  And keep up the good work!”
The door shut behind him, and Mister Vooms realized he had been shivering and short of breath for the past half-hour.  He sighed, and wheezed, and as he tottered gingerly down to his waiting car – no Mortimer in sight, for which he worried – he felt as though he were being watched, and turned about to find that this was so.  On the house’s thirteen chimneys perched thirteen vultures each larger than the last, and atop the bald head of the vastest vulture stood an ancient raven of great size, and upon her head rested a crown of human teeth, and from her throat dangled a feathered greying beard woven through with human thumb-bones, and from her open hollow blackened bill there came a voice as deep and dark as the door of death itself, and that voice spoke one word, and that word was “doom.”

“My goodness,” said Mister Vooms.

As he left, he thought it peculiar that although the house was bedecked with so many and so darkened a flock, the building itself cast no shadow. 

***

The construction of …the Gigantic took several years longer than planned, largely because of four unforeseen problems.

First, every ladder erected during construction irresistibly pulled every passerby within a hundred yards to walk underneath it at least five times in a row, after which they would begin to leak blood from their mouths.

Second, the boiler pieces refused to stay properly assembled until every church bell in the country was melted down into rivets that wept continuously as they were driven in and filled the boiler-room with the sound of crying children. 

Third, despite the ship clearly being designed to be unsinkable, it persisted in being able to sink.  This made Master Eddlemont very angry until he realized it was simply a problem of math, and after recognizing this he removed all math from the ship’s blueprints, which solved the problem at the cost of rendering the hull fundamentally uncountable – making it hard to explain how many ships were being built, or how large they were beyond ‘very.’

Fourth, no priest would officiate at the ship’s launch, nor governmental representative, nor businessman, nor pillar of the community, none but a very old bent man with a very faded silk robe and a forked tongue, who cackled to himself as he stood athwart the great boat’s bow.

“I dub thee…the Gigantic, who is unsinkable,” he croaked, and smashed the bottle of finest sparkling wine atop its metal brow.  Six dead bats fell out, each caught in the act of swallowing the next smallest. 

“Augh!” he shrieked, great tears of pitch and piss rolling down the melted rivulets of his face.  “Get it away from me!”   And so wailing, he cast himself from the hundred-story height of the gunwales down into the timid and browbeaten sea.  The band played, then vomited.  Every dog in town danced on their hind legs, jaws agape in rictus grin, mouths spewing words that made humans sad to hear them.  The sun went black and exploded. 

“Good job everyone, who wants cake?” asked Master Eddlemont cheerily.  “It’s pineapple upside-down!  With ice cream!”

***

…the Gigantic’s passengers boarded, bedecked in ribbons.  Everyone who was anyone was there.  Everything that was priceless and irreplaceable was there.  Ten tons of Faberge eggs; half the world’s gold reserve; the social security numbers and birth certificates of every royal family member, celebrity, and world leader alive; the copyright certificate to the New Testament; the last living dodo; the first living mechanical man; a nail, a pail, and a snail; the eternal peace treaty sealing the mutual siblinghood and love of all nations to all others for all time; the only known bar of immortalium, the cancer-eradicating element; and Little Orphan Anna – the most precious child in the world – all went into the cabins and the vaults and the banquet halls and the gilded display cases of …the Gigantic.

“We are unsinkable, and this is great,” they told each other as they drank gallons of whiskey and brandy and champagne and dandelion-and-burdock and gin-and-tonic and cheese-and-crackers and roast-and-beef and French-and-onion-and-soup and so on and on and on and on.  The band finished playing and to applaud every single audience member took out an umbrella and opened and shut it indoors thirteen times, the leathery flapping a parody of the slapping of hands.  Every single penny on the ship flipped itself over to tails and refused to be budged. 

“This is your captain speaking,” said Captain Bluggs over the announcement system.  “As we are impossible to sink, I will be sailing full speed ahead without touching the steering wheel or looking at the controls or indeed looking at anything at all.  I will not be trying to do anything to direct the vessel until someone tells me we reach port.  I have already left the bridge and consumed three bottles of red wine.  Goodbye, and remember: we are entirely unsinkable!”

A drunken cheer went up from every passenger aboard, all of whom picked up the nearest holy book or symbol to hand and spat on it before flipping it off. 

“Unsinkable!” they cried, dancing in the halls with no pants.

“Unsinkable!” hooted the first mate, dangling from the mizzen

“Unsinkable!” sang the choir who performed at dinner, each of whom had found a two-leaf clover pressed in the pages of their sheet music three minutes earlier.

“Unsinkable!” shouted Little Orphan Anna, whose dog had been trained to bite in the presence of the poor. 

“Unsinkable,” chanted Master Eddlemont, tied upside down to the ship’s prow with an upside-down horseshoe branded on his chest and an upside-down rabbit’s-foot in each upside-down hand.  “Unsinkable, unsinkable, unthinkable, unsinkable, unstinkable, unsinkable, sinkable, sinkable, hee hee hee.”

The sun went down.  Only two things glowed: the horizon’s rim and the gigantic candlelit altar to Thing Under The World that trailed black blood from the ship’s stern so that all the sharks in the sea might follow and know their promise was not forgotten.  For an instant, the stars failed to come out.  The ship’s mad prophet spoke three normal words and his eyes popped out.  The engine sang.  The bow hummed.  The stern whistled.  The steering wheel whispered an apology.

Then …the Gigantic struck a floating leaf on her starboard bow and exploded.

***

In truth and sincerity the ship did not sink, as every atom and particle of its composition rocketed directly upwards into the sky and left earth’s atmosphere entirely.  With this the insurance companies were appeased, and so life went on without anyone the wiser.

Welcome back to the weekly edition of Uncle Uglond’s Urban Critter Survival Guide, aka What’s In My Trashcan And How Do I Stop It?  This week we’re going to be tackling one of the most-demanded subjects since this blog’s launch: Bigfeet.  More like big pain in the ass!

Get Out Of My Business

At a layman’s guess, you’d figure bigfeet’re a security nightmare, right?  I mean, they have opposable thumbs, and look at how much a raccoon can get done without those (covered previously HERE); plus they’re the size of a grizzly bear (covered previously HERE).  You’d figure you might as well lie down in the street and give yourself up for the coyotes (covered previously HERE) after handing the ape your keys, your phone password, and your credit card, as long as your evil ex didn’t steal it from you (covered previously HERE, amended HERE, and legally certified HERE, comments are blocked until you sign the acknowledgement of my innocence HERE).  Not so!  Dealing with bigfeet trespassing on your belongings is actually the easiest part of this whole post!  Their sense of smell is much worse than a bear’s is  (barely better than a human’s, in fact) so even the most basic of precautions taken against attracting bear attention – storing food and garbage behind secure locks and containers, cleaning outdoor garbage residue, installing an electric fence, installing a motion detector attached to an air raid siren, and the ‘street powerwasher’ homemade flamethrower, all detailed HERE and which I legally must explain I do not officially endorse – is already more than sufficient for preventing not just bigfoot ingress to your home, but the most likely bigfoot motive for ingress to your home, which is also not all that likely in the first place.  They’re big neurotic babies that hid in the woods for a few zillion years hoping nobody saw them and now they’re big neurotic babies that hide in the ravine out back of your neighborhood hoping nobody sees them, nothing’s changed!  You still shouldn’t corner them in your garage with a shovel and try to take a swing (see testimony of Jimmy ‘One-Armed-Bandit’ Frunklit, HERE), but they’re definitely more scared of you than you are of them, and keeping them physically out of your stuff is easier than a bear, or a human, or my evil shitty ex. 

No, your problem with bigfeet won’t be keeping them out of your stuff.  It’ll be forcing them to be half-decent neighbours.

Quit That Hollering

So the most well-known propensity of the bigfeet – besides their big feet (we’ll get to that) – is their yelling.  Bigfeet are like wolves in that they like to keep in touch over long distances through sound; they’re unlike wolves in that although they’re shy, they’re not so shy they won’t enter cities (exhibit: you are reading a bigfeet column, I haven’t had to write a wolf column).  So you won’t get woken up at 2 AM on a weekday by a moonlit awoo, but if you’re living in bigfeet country you WILL have experienced a two-hour sleep cycle induced by yapping, hooting, yowling, screeching, and sometimes whistling of all godamned things (and they couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket).  As if that isn’t enough, when they decide the spoken word simply can’t convey their emotions, they’ll pick up sticks and start whacking trees with them – what the old timers used to call ‘wood knocking.’  Except now the stupid hairballs are living next door to you, so maybe they don’t have a tree or a stick, they have an old crowbar and a stoplight.  They sure appreciate the upgrade in volume per meter travelled, but I don’t think you will, and it won’t be helping your morning commute, that’s for sure. 

The bad news is that this is among the greatest challenges facing someone living near urban bigfeet, the good news is that this is something I’ve put a corresponding amount of effort into solving, because ‘I can’t sleep because there’s a 1,000+ lb ultrabass freestyling a house call to his cousin across the river’ is not a situation that lends itself to problem-solving.  Triage, right, like putting on your own airmask before putting one on someone else.

So, here’s what doesn’t work:

–Removing all ‘knockable’ tools and surfaces in the city.  This just isn’t realistically practical.  Not sure what I was thinking here, might have been underslept.

–Leaving out baited ‘knockable’ tools that discharge a household battery’s-worth of electric current into the palm of anyone that picks them up, creating an aversion response.  This one got me in a LOT of trouble with the cops, although I think they only found me because of my evil shitty snitch ex. 

–Yelling at them and clanging pan lids together.  Does less than nothing, they start making more noise. I think they figure you’re trying to talk to them and they start going slower and louder so you can understand them.  If I don’t want to learn how to speak French, Spanish, or Chinese, why would I want to learn bigfootish?  Dumbasses.

–Putting a running fan in front of your motion detector air raid siren.  This one actually works until your other, human neighbours start shit, but it doesn’t let you sleep so it’s more of a moral victory.

Now here’s what does work:

Ultrasound.

That’s it.  Get yourself some good, specialized speakers, rig them up around your block (or anywhere else you want to silence bigfeet concerts) where the cops won’t see them and get snooty, and pump out enough high-pitched frequencies to make a mosquito fall dead out of the air from a brain bleed.  They can sing over it, but their pitch goes all wobbly and they give up; it’s like trying to sing happy birthday while someone yells yellow submarine in your face.  As a bonus it also prevents dogs from crapping within a two-mile radius, so if you’re sick of having to clean your front lawn off it’ll fix that too. 

Get Off The Road

You’re driving home and it’s getting dark and all of a sudden something big and poorly-lit and hairy and FAST scuttles across the road.  You honk and brake and great, now the guy tailgating you just gave you a back massage with his front bumper. 

Bigfeet cross the road as sanely as squirrels, but without giving you the grace of an out where you grit your teeth and make a rodent pancake: you just get to choose whether you want a nine-foot ape to come through your windshield or to get rear-ended in the middle of rush hour while the hairy asshole runs off laughing down sidewalk.  This was a lot cuter behaviour when it happened on lonely country roads with one car per league of highway, you little shithead. 

The good news: this is the rarest form of urban problem created by bigfeet.  The bad news: I am currently unable to provide a confirmed solution, since the guy I paid to rig a spiked electrified cowcatcher on my car is holding it as collateral until my bank account gets unfrozen because my evil shitty snitch control freak ex took ‘her’ account with her when she left.  Pretty sure it’ll work though; just make sure you accelerate on impact or you might lose momentum and get tangled in the aftermath of the collision.  

That’ll Leave A Mark

Okay, this is probably what all of us have dealt with the most, although some of us won’t have realized it.  Bad roads are everywhere, right?  And roads in the city get a lot of traffic, right?  Nothing weird there at all, right?

Except where there’s bigfeet in town, because then the number of potholes skyrockets.  The same big, fat, heavy, hairy feet that used to leave perfectly-legible impressions in riverbanks, sandy paths, and dirt trails wreck merry goddamned havoc on fresh asphalt and overloaded concrete.  Look closely the next time your car’s wheel does a fishing-bob bounce or you nearly trip and break your neck and you’ll find that half the time the pit you just fell afoul of has five big toes and one big heel because one big asshole stomped a little too hard while wandering around last night.  That’s your time, your health, AND your tax dollars being put at risk by these jackassquatches, and I think that merits restitution. 

There are basically two parts to this solution.  First, restorative: renegade roadwork. Get a big bucket of ‘baker’s asphalt’ (recipe found HERE, copyright me) and get to filling: a kid’s bucket and spade should pass off any looky-loos, and if an officer gets up in your grill hey, is it illegal to carry around flour, water, and gravel?  You’re doing them a favour by putting a patch job on the local pothole count; think of all the road rage you’re saving them, so there’s no need for them to be ungrateful, like my evil shitty snitch control freak backstabbing ex who didn’t even say ‘thank you’ in the note she didn’t leave you.

Second, preventative: get a big wheel of haywire and rig it on pedestrian pathways everywhere you can around knee-height.  Humans shouldn’t stumble too badly over it most of the time probably, but it’ll take bigfeet for a tumble. Besides, the humans are going to be tripping in bigfeet potholes anyways, so at worst you’re not doing new harm, just switching the old one around.

Now, there’s still other woes of bigfeet presence near your home, but I’d say these more or less cover ‘the big three’ of this particularly urban critter.  Shut them up, shove them away, shoo them out. 

Since you’ve read this far, why not consider SUBSCRIBING or DONATING?  Every dollar goes towards the research and innovation that makes Uncle Uglond’s Urban Critter Survival Guide a world-renowned resource for city slickers dealing with wild critters, and right now that research and innovation are being stymied by legal fees and bounty hunter hires, so I could really use the dough.  If you know where my evil shitty snitch control freak backstabbing gaslighting ex is, please click HERE instead and you’ll also receive a personally hand-authenticated certificate of Uncle Uglond’s Appreciation.  Limited supply!  Act now!  Act soon!!  ACT FAST!!!

1 Comment

@itsspeltfoot

Sacha sasys the card was reppsaym,entg for 3 years of rent alsoi you might wasnt to cancel it soon because wew’ve alrteasdy hafd like six delkuxe takeout alkl you can eat barbexcuesa with it

Thank you

-the root and vbrancgh peoppple

Ps don;t do the wire thing we’;ll just uproot it but it could hurt someone elkse

Pps Sascha says if this is still up by Thursday she’kl phone the copps abouyt it just a heads u[p

Ppps whyy areew trhesae strupoid screens soi smasll

Hello, and welcome to Qorvold Qorners Qommunity Questions – where we give you the answers to satisfy your questions, queries, and qonfusion every day!  We know adjustment to living in a strictly-voluntary individual-focused qommunity can be a big adventure after spending so long living in the over-perfumed bosom of Big Government and that some spots on the yellow brick road to freedom are especially prone to causing trip-ups, so on today’s Themed Thursday, we’ll be touching on a single topic troubling many of our merry newly-moved-ins, solving several stumpers at a single swoop!

Deer Qorvold Qorners Qommunity Questions,

My name is Stephen Brooges and I moved into town last week to get away from pasteurized milk. Its’ been great so far accept that every time I go for a walk I start hearing jazz music coming from the left side of my mouth and talk radio from the right side of my mouth, then my tongue feels warm and I wake up lying on my side once the sun goes down.  Whats’ going on? 

-Stephen Brooges, Citizen.

Dear Citizen Brooges,

This is a wonderful example of the sort of little ‘bumpy step’ that can afflict newcomers to our land of the free in their first few months.  As most long-term liberty-lovers surely suspect already, you have happened upon the hunting grounds of Doctor Symun’s cybernetic kestrel.  The bird is equipped to both transmit and receive radio signals, and she’s worked out that if she hits just the right frequencies she can induce a stroke in any species of rodent that contains sufficient amounts of iron in their tooth enamel, rendering them ‘easy pickings.’  Just your luck, your dental fillings appear to meet the threshold.  Luckily, this is easily remedied with a visit to the dentist – Schwartz’s Schmiles is the local specialist in mercury-free all-natural non-artificial colloidal silver fillings, so you can look at this as not a sudden and unbearable living expense, but a generous opportunity to shed your old government-mandated fluoride-ridden microchipped teeth and move on to a brighter, glittering grin!  Remember: it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, and more than either to lie rigidly on the ground convulsing!

Yours Freely,

Hurdi Gordi

Dear Hurdi Gordi,

As I ambulated today in my peregrinations, I was burdened on this occasion by my family’s Canis familiar, yclept Cinnamon (against both my habits and my wishes).  Preoccupied as was my wont by matters most portentous in matters of past, present, and future, I was torn from the assemblage of mine mind-cathedral at the very keystone of its apse by a greatly indecorous yipping.  Upon regaining my eyesight, I found myself holding a snapped leash bedecked with shredded collar, no dog in sight ‘pon the land – no!  For lo, aloft she was, legs a-waving, in full song of shock and sorrow as she vanished o’er the treeline and far from my confounded gaze.  I seek enlightenment as to the ultimate cause of this troublesome airborne canine so that my wife will let me back in the house. 

Urgently,

Ronald T. Millbuick, BSc

Dear Mr. Millbuick,

Enlightenment is yours for the taking this day, and at the mere cost of a subscription to the Qorvold Querulant (archives sold separately).  You may not have described poor Cinnamon in detail, but her fate-as-described strongly suggests that she either was a German Shepherd or a mix that somewhat resembled one.  Doctor Symun’s cybernetic kestrel ran ‘a-fowl’ of a member of the breed at an early age (search our ‘deep archives’ [sold separately, separately] for details on the incident) and has borne a substantial grudge against the breed ever since.  The good news is, this isn’t predatory behaviour – she seeks only to ‘mob’ your dog, and has probably released her after escorting her out of her territory.  The usual spot is a small islet in the middle of Lake Qorvold (the one with two saplings, not the one with three rocks) and it should be safe to pick up your dog there after dark when the kestrel shuts down to recharge as long as you stay quiet and low (no powerboats!).  For a long-term solution, we recommend trading Cinnamon in on the free market for a better model that will not be abducted by birds.  Doctor Symun’s dabbled in the field himself and the ‘Qorvoldian Bald Beagle’ is both popular among local freethinking dog enthusiasts and 87.3% unlikely to be mistaken for a German Shepherd due to its distinctive coloration, pennaceous plumage, and grasping talons. 

Yours Freely,

Hurdi Gordi

Dear Mr. Gordi,

Me and my husband moved to Qorvold Qorners to stop Yankee federal death squads from murdering us for being Proud Patriotic Aryan Christians three months back, and it’s been very lovely until two hours ago when my husband went outside to refill our new birdfeeder.  There was a thump and a bright flash and when I could see again the birdfeeder, my husband, the sunroom, and my left leg had all been vaporized.  I can’t access either of our bank accounts because my Qorvold Qorners financial card/Qommunity ID/passport says I have two legs and a husband.  Could you please tell me what happened so it won’t happen again?

Graciously yours,

Mrs. Beverbelle Leefert

PS: I have never asked for a handout in my life and I won’t start now but the LORD spoke to me just a moment ago and said if anyone wants to contribute some money (cash only) to me they would be SAVED praise jesus the christking amen

Dear Mrs Leefert,

The good news is that what happened to you is unlikely to happen again unless you attempt to put up another birdfeeders.  Birdfeeders, you see, operate on two levels: on the first they directly feed many species of birds that enjoy seeds or grains, including many common songbirds; while on the second they indirectly feed raptors that prey on those common songbirds, such as American kestrels – including Doctor Symun’s cybernetic kestrel.  From your description it seems likely that she analyzed your feeder as a key target and proceeded to launch a ‘decapitation strike’ with several ‘pocket cruise missiles’ (trademarked and patented to Doctor Symun all rights reserved in perpetuity no stealing permitted), ensuring that your birdfeeder, its residents, your husband, your sunroom, and your leg almost certainly had no time to suffer or even register that they were under attack before they were surgically eliminated and the backyard was secure.  As a bystander to the attack you are free to proceed on your way unmolested, although you should be aware that your proximity to the initial planned attack may have resulted in you being filed as a ‘person of interest’ in the kestrel’s database, meaning that further activity deemed suspicious could result in a reassessment of your threat level and subsequent barrages.  Past records from our ‘sealed subarchives’ (sold separately, separately, separately, secretly) indicate you are unlikely to be in danger as long as you remain more than fifty yards from any and all small songbirds for the remainder of your life. 

Yours Freely,

Hurdi Gordi

We at the Querulant hope that the above tips and tricks will bring enlightenment as to this (one of many!) quirk of the qommunity, and that you new citizens may now proceed apace without further hand-holding.  Further qomplaints, qommentary, or quarrels regarding Doctor Symun’s cybernetic kestrel can be directed to Doctor Symun’s secret lab in the fortified bunker just outside the town’s south border.  Alternatively, messages can be left for him at the mayor’s office, as they are very good friends and he visits regularly for a couple of beers every other weekday ending in y. 

Remember to have a great day, walk tall, breathe deep, and stay liberated!

Yours Truly AND Freely AND Proudly,

Hurdi Gordi, Qorvold Qommunity Questions

Hurdi Gordi is a Free Man on the Land, Sea, and Air and bears no relation to the false ‘paper-man’ identity of Gordon Howards that was unbindingly associated with him by the State at birth without permission granted freely.  He can be contacted on the Qorvold Qorners intranet at HurdGurdiSTANDSTURDY@qorvold.qet.  He cannot be reached by phone due to his sincerely held and scientifically articulated belief that the State can use them to read your brainwave patterns and STEAL your privately-owned thoughts.