What it Tastes Like to Be Sane
By
Sean Ahern
Copyright 2011 © by Sean M. Ahern
All rights reserved
Published online by the author at Lulu.com
ISBN: 978-1-257-83094-7
Chapter I
…and the clown disappeared in a cloud of lettuce. Epispastic was the word of the day. Baritone Juicebox, who had so recently been full to the brim with quixotic ideals, now desired so badly naught but the construction of an oceanic sarcophagus, of which he would become a permanent resident. Why he got to this point and what occurred afterwards is encompassed by a gallimaufry of tales of joy and despair, of elation and woe, of euphoria and not having access to tacos at the moment you most desire them, and other contrasting adjectives, the first of which is a positive and the second of which is a negative.
See, at this point, for our dear Baritone, the Earth’s oceans were bereft of their usual vastness. Where one could normally, on a good day, see a double, maybe triple digit quantity of miles or kilometers to the horizon, Baritone (or Bari, as will often be referred to hereafter) could see every ocean, sea, and body of water on the side of Earth that was facing him that was large enough to be seen from the moon. The Earth, as a whole, seemed extremely pastoral from this viewpoint, for everything was quiet. Naught could be seen stirring from here, though the contrary was actually true, as all the usual stirrings were occurring on his home planet. Still, from his perspective, he could easily ignore the conflicts and the multitude of strife, and the mundane regards of all the lives and deaths going on below him. Indeed, what he saw was a postcard image, one that he would be proud to send to his dearest relation or to his closest friend in order to incite jealousy of him and the wondrous places he had visited. Bari, however, had only purchased one t-shirt to prove he had been to the moon, and he wouldn’t be mailing it to anybody. He wanted to wear it to his grave, in order to provide proof of his lunar escapades to whoever found his body, should it be found before his new oceanic companions devoured him, if ever. Otherwise he would content himself with floating about, unconscious of what was happening around him, or perhaps becoming useful by becoming food for one of the throng which would cohabitate the ocean with him.
Oftentimes though, it is at the last and most crucial moment when we remember what we have forgotten, after contemplating for hours or sometimes days. In Bari’s case it was that he had never learned to swim. This of course seemed to be much more of a major issue than one realizing as they leave their house for vacation that they had forgotten toothpaste, as toothpaste could be easily acquired en route to the location of the aforementioned vacation. This was a very important detail. Now, you might that think that since his aim was to drown himself, whether or not he could swim didn’t actually matter. In fact, it almost might seem to be a better alternative, but he wanted to die in the ocean of his home planet. To drown on the way, while he was still in space, just wouldn’t do. No, he needed to die as a meteor would if it were alive in the first place: perhaps breaking up in the atmosphere, but eventually reaching the surface if it was big enough in the first place, which he hoped he was, and having the impact kill him. Mostly he just wanted to make his abode with the sharks and the whales and the rays and the sea cucumbers and the angler fish and the shrimp and the tuna and the rest of that list which could go on for much longer than the average attention span. He didn’t even desire the memory of himself that would be left were he to leave a crater, but just to plunge into the anonymity of the water, which would go on about its business, without him leaving a mark upon it. This determination, of course, must count for a good amount of points, or so he thought, but it still bothered him that he had never learned such a basic skill before he died. He had tried it once, but that attempt didn’t work out so well.
Baritone Juicebox, once upon a time, had three faces, which he would show to the world in rotation according to his current state of mind. It was an interesting ability, but one that most people have and do not realize they possess. One day, he had taken a ferry down to visit a friend of his that had taken up residence in an undersea volcano. It turned out that due to the United States Postal Sandwich’s delay in sending mail, he had not received the notification that his friend had moved until he arrived at the volcano and met its new inhabitant, a hermit crab with a most unpleasant temperament. By the time this had occurred, Bari, who had intended on staying the night, had missed the last ferry back home, and couldn’t bear the thought of taking up residence, however ephemeral, with the aforementioned crab. He acted accordingly, and shot himself out of the volcano, which conveniently happened to be erupting within ten minutes of his decision that he would not share quarters for the evening with this particular crab. Before he reached the surface, he began to lose momentum, first slowly and then much more rapidly as he grew increasingly weary, and it was at this point that he realized that he had never learned to swim. Though maybe not gifted in the swimming abilities department, our beloved protagonist was certainly no dullard, and thinking as quickly as the electrical connections in his brain would allow, decided to try, with most valiant effort, to imitate the sharks he had seen so much from watching Shark Week annually. He was, however, lacking certain components which would have allowed him to do so in a complete and accurate fashion, and it was, in the end, only by the grace of a passing armada of giant squid that he eventually reached the surface. As you certainly recall, Bari had at this point three faces in his possession, and due to the trauma of the experience, one face instantly defected and joined the first passer-by it saw when it returned to land. The other one that Bari would eventually lose was so disheartened that it was stuck, alone, with the face that it least liked (on the basis that it found the other face too ugly, not knowing that they were identical except for a minute discrepancy in nostril size.) that it, despite a complete lack of education on the subject, gave itself surgery to sever itself and hoped that, through the process of autotomy, and not autonomy, as this typing program suggests, it would regenerate a new body. Seventeen days later that new body was fully grown and well on its way to starting a successful ensaladaball league for underprivileged children in New Cow City. Bari, however, was down two faces and so traumatized that he could not bear either the thought of losing that third face or once more attempting an attempt at swimming education.
Now, being seemingly stranded on the moon, and with the desire to reach his new Benthic home growing ever more powerful, Bari began to regret the lack of swimming education in his life. For better or for worse, Bari also didn’t know how to quit. He was confident, though. He sincerely believed that, despite a complete lack of training, that if he strove, through an effort of will, he would reach the desired destination. Not a stop sign stood in his way to tell him to stop. He was confident that nothing could make him do so. He was set. He would only need to hold his breath for long enough for Earth’s gravitational pull to kick in and bring him to the sweet release of death in the desired location. He bent down, exhaled, inhaled and held that breath in, and with a mighty push jumped, defying gravity by simply telling it that it was wrong.
Some people would say that to strap oneself to a rocket and launch it into space is pure lunacy, and perhaps idiocy. It might in fact be stupidity, or other synonyms for that word, combined with others of the aforementioned. Some might claim it to be simply a ludicrous idea, one that could never work.
In the same timespan that it would take, on average, for a person to dodge a falling bucket of water after a gardyloo has been issued by the person dropping said bucket, Bari was out of the realm of the moon’s new wheat/sulfur atmosphere sandwich which had recently been acquired from a nearby moon that no longer wanted an atmosphere and in the vastness which constitutes space. He now had four years more experience watching Shark Week and that paid off tremendously in this case which we are now discussing. Space wasn’t as exciting as he had thought. As a child he imagined himself an astronaut, and fancied that one day he might become a famous explorer in this extraterrestrial frontier. Now he was there, and maybe it was because he was so focused on propelling himself back to earth, but he thought that it was a pretty bland place. Of course, it was because he was so focused on his goal that he missed out on all the exciting parts of space, such as the mathematical equations which randomly floated about and the various debris which had come into his region from all the infinite corners of the universe.
When Bari first arrived on the moon, he was treated kindly, but with a certain natural curiosity by most of its inhabitants. He did, after all, arrive strapped to a rocket. Most moon dwellers at least had the common sense to strap a rocket to them, as opposed to strapping themselves to rockets. Stranger things have happened everywhere though, especially on the moon, as best exemplified by their traditional Thursday night…
Doubt is often a very powerful and divisive force. And thus, when once again it was only by the grace of a passing armada of giant squid that Bari was going to be able to reach his goal, and the shadow of doubt began to creep up on Bari, followed by the body which created that shadow, reality, or the reality which applies specifically to Baritone Juicebox, split into three parts. The following scenarios will be discussed at varying lengths.
One: Bari survived. However, as extreme situations often cause a gallimaufry of extreme changes, Bari became a basketball and fell to Earth, scoring the winning point for the home team that day. This is Darwinism at its best. Not everyone is so lucky. Many times Charles Darwin, being the prankster he is, causes things to evolve in silly, often useless ways. In this case, Baritone Juicebox must consider himself to be the luckiest person to be graced by the concept of evolution, and this is not something to be taken lightly, for we must treat the gift of evolution with caution, so that it is not one day revoked because of our abuse.
Two: Bari died. What happened is this: With the aid of some passing giant squid, he made it into orbit. Being that he wasn’t flammable, he didn’t burn in the atmosphere, and thusly he achieved his original goal of plunging into the ocean and subsequently reaching a state of not being alive that is generally known as death.
Three: Bari survived. The Earth, sensing his indecisiveness, rejected him and bounced him back into space, towards the infamous grilled cheese nebula, which is the home of the famed four sided triangles.
…festivities.
Situated halfway between the American and Eurasian landmasses, there is a landmass, muy pequeño, where there to this day reside the last stalwarts who desperately cling to an ancient, barbaric religion that had once nearly conquered the world. It happened like this: the religion demanded of its followers that once a week they imbibe the body and the blood of their God. Now imagine yourself as this God. You’ve spent thousands of years exercising your wrath to instill fear in your subjects and alternately telling everyone that you loved them unconditionally to add a little bit of extra confusion, and suddenly you become relegated to a once a week snack that just happens to be worshipped as well. Add to that that you’ve convinced them that you were infinite, when that is most certainly not the case, and you do possess a massive, though finite amount of resources that constitute your body, and maybe they could be regenerated, but certainly not at the rate they’re being consumed. Add on top of this that those people are going around killing some people so that even more people will engage in this practice, which is a pretty intimidating way to make people believe what you do. I believe that anyone in this particular predicament would be endowed with the right to feel at least a little bit irritated over time. So, this God took out an ad in the New York Times to declare himself dead (though it had been done in literature before, that was regarded by many as fiction), and it had the desired effect. Less people believed in him, and so his flesh began to regenerate faster than it was being consumed. He retired to a distant corner of the galaxy with the hopes of spending the rest of his days in the seclusion of a high class resort.
The problem of the island we were just discussing still remained. They staunchly stood by their faith, no matter how foolish, in this God, and so every weekend while lying on the beach, he would have to endure the minor inconvenience of losing a small amount of flesh and blood. This was especially irritating when he was trying to show off his magic tricks to the other inhabitants of the resort. Eventually, he grew so frustrated that at these given times he would refuse to come out of his room until they were done snacking. This eventually grew more and more frustrating, as he was stuck hiding inside, writhing in the pain of being eaten when the much more appealing games of Frisbee or surfing were going on outside. It should come as no surprise then that one day they were punished by a sequence of body parts washing up on their shore.
Baritone, as an impulse purchase, once bought a temporary trial version of immortality, though he wasn’t informed as to the whereabouts on the calendar of the expiration date. He also wasn’t informed as to whether any sort of extenuating circumstances existed which would lead to a termination before that unspecified date. In fact, the whole thing was really a scam, like those people in the kiosks in the middle of shopping malls that are selling the latest as seen on TV product that’s bound to break in a week, but they grab the helpless people filtering by and harass them into purchasing said useless product. Only in this case he had walked into the church attempting to find some sort of spiritual guidance, and this had been the result. In these days, this was the product being peddled in such situations. In the middle ages, it had been admission into heaven, which was eventually revealed as being a scam. As such, sales dropped greatly, but those, along with other products, are still available in every church gift shop. On occasion, he pondered this purchase, and in a moment of clarity two years after the event realized that he’d been fooled into buying what everyone is given at birth, that being an indefinite amount of time to be spent alive. Only the phrase immortality seemed to cancel out the word temporary in his mind, and he conveniently ignored the oxymoronic nature of the phrase temporary immortality for a while. When he came to, he realized the comedic fallacy of the situation he had put himself in, and wished that there had been a reasonable return policy. But he was stuck with his purchase. “That’s the last time I do business with them”, he thought.
One morning, a severed human head, with his eyes frozen in the final terror they had beheld, which was to him no terror, but with a smile that revealed that he had thought of something extremely funny in that instant before the shark had begun to tear his body asunder washed up on shore. What a relief it had been to be eaten by a shark, that creature which he had so admired for years. Now if only that joke he had thought of could be known, for it is well known that the best jokes originate in the minds of those taking their last breaths, and much money could be made from compiling a joke book which contained these jokes. This island where he washed up was a perfect circle for most of its existence, but a while after the events in this narrative, a peninsula, fed up with its old abode, implored of its godfather, Plate Tectonics, to move it somewhere else. Naturally then, each half of the Island was a perfect semicircle. All water touching one side was heavily shark infested, while the other half was heavily Shaq(uille O’Neil) infested. It should come as no surprise then that human body parts would wash up on shore from time to time, but the truth is that on either side it was much more common for burritos to wash up.
Now, this head was soon followed by other body parts, such as arms, legs, and a torso. Lastly the viscera washed up: a plethora, a cornucopia of organs, vital and not so vital, that washed up on the beach in a random array, as if part of a package deal, an economy pack of dismembered human body parts that had been rendered useless by their separation from the body. And in the appendix, the organ whose proud function had been shattered so long ago by the process of evolution, there was frozen a vague shape. Something that had been contained within him and had been invisible throughout the course of his natural life, but had attempted to show its visage now that the appendix was available for the world to see. Something that had once meant something to him that could only be expressed in the nomenclature of shapes. It manifested itself as the symbol for pi, but who knows what that meant. It was simply there.
At some point in the future, the Earth, burned by the ever-warming scorching rays of the sun, would begin to crack. It would beseech of the sun, to no avail, to de-intensify its burning. And the sun would not listen, because it had never known anything but what it was now doing. Its nature could not be changed, even if it had been moved by the pleas of one of its dearest satellites. Because of the warming of the sun, the surface of our beloved planet would eventually dry up, crack, and shatter, and that planet would unburden itself of its own viscera. Trees, mountains, and oceans. The ground, and all the graves below that. All of these and more would begin the slow pilgrimage through space, with gravitational forces dictating the buddy system. But find a destination they never would, for nothing could replace the Earth as home for its components.
It had come to pass that the islanders possessed, at the very least, a working knowledge of the human digestive system. Perhaps due to this basic knowledge of human anatomy, the following thought process was thus logical in their minds:
When we eat, we defecate
We’ve been throwing our refuse into the shark/Shaq infested waters for a time long enough to qualify as ages
Every weekend, we eat our God
Thusly, going back to step one, we defecate our God
Going back to step 2, we throw our God into the water
Due to all of this information, the mass opinion was that only one explanation was available for the occurrence of the parts of a body washing up on shore. The washed up remains, which, if you haven’t figured out yet, belonged to our protagonist, Baritone Juicebox, were in their minds the remnants of their God that had assembled themselves in the middle of the ocean. They had avoided being eaten by the sharks and the shaqs and finally washed up on shore before they could fully assemble themselves into a body and return to the faithful followers, most likely with some form of salvation, or at the very least, veggie burgers.
The planets, stars, black holes, and antimatter, plus the respective residents of those cosmic bodies and entities, were not so naïve, foolish, or deficient in any of their intellectual faculties to the point where they could logically entertain an idea so garish to the bastions of logic, but in this place, anything was possible. The whole part of anything being possible is generally wonderful, but oftentimes, and this is such a case, that anything goes astray and becomes a doltish idea which implants itself in the minds of masses of normally sentient beings. Not a bit of all this seemed confounding to them, for they truly had the explanation to everything. What a blessed people! Oh, that such a fate could befall us all! The only event of the day that confused them also came in the form of another object washing up on shore later in the evening, and that was a piece of toast. Alas, for that no explanation was available. Oh well.
One time in Bari’s youth he had become possessed by a newly discovered form of neurosis that stripped his mind of control over the great majority of actions his body would perform. In fact, the only control that was retained was the desire to eat what he wanted to, and subsequently eat that food. Thus, he found himself standing upon the venerated Milkshake Hills above the hemorrhaged waters of Lake Spatula. An alligator with silverware plunged into its scales lay, lifeless, though maybe it never lived, suspended above the ground by poles thrust through its body. If one looked past it, past the gaping jaws, past the body, and for Bari, past his past, what could be seen was a mangled cityscape. It was a cityscape he longed to experience, but only ever did so from afar. It was from this vantage point that Bari would often view the scenes of what had passed in his past within the safe confines of retrospect. From here it was safe to call to mind what ifs, what might have beens, and the opinion pieces known as what should have beens. And what a gallimaufry passed through his mind’s eye each time, but it always came back to the first time he saw that alligator. Yesteryears they were at this point, though with the present as it was, they were what he desired to substitute for reality. For at one point this alligator had been located on the roof of a museum, and he had viewed it, and not because of that, but because of the current circumstance, he had been happy. Now he saw it with a sort of jaded bitterness, the sort that seems to inevitably come with age, though he would try harder than most to shake it off. To look into the gaping jaws of this mutated form of some creature of the family Crocodylidae was to behold something far different from a cityscape of this world. This was something special, though this encapsulates two things, neither of which is edible: one being the truth and the other being the future.
And while there was no specific reason the neurosis had led him to this spot, other than to enjoy the view of the water, and the alligator with the silverware in it, and the thought that the walk up to this spot would be very divertido, he appreciated the coincidence. He appreciated that some disease that temporarily took hold of his body would have a similar taste in the destinations it desired to visit as him, as he probably would have gone to this very spot of his volition in the near future anyway. In fact, he resolved then and there to make a point of going back as soon as time and resources once again allowed. It was such a kind neurosis that Bari was genuinely disappointed when it left all so suddenly. He had been hoping because of the chosen location for the walk that he would have someone finally to voice his concerns to, someone that might understand the history that this location had, though the whereabouts of the alligator were in fact ever-changing. But those who appreciated it always had a way of finding it and that was mysterious in the way that turtles always find their way back to the beach where they were born. This was important, because Bari was the sort that could attach sentimental value to anything, so long as it had the least bit merit, and had occurred in the past and had no chance of ever occurring again. But if we are to focus on the present and not on the past, at least for the present, we will find that Bari was about to say something.
“Oh well, I’m sure he’ll be back.”
This was, of course, a reference to the neurosis. You see, our poor protagonist, in these days, only ever found himself in the company of those creatures that saw fit to possess him, and usually did so to attain their own selfish goals. Because of this, he always looked forward to being possessed because it at least meant he would have someone to talk to, and maybe even entertain his musings. But now, the poor soul, he was left alone, and looking down from the Milkshake hills, which were named because the first settlers thought that the local cows were saying milkshake when they in fact said moo, and errantly believing, just as the settlers had their own errant beliefs, that the best current course of action would be to leap from the cliff upon which he stood into the lake. And whilst he pondered this, he began to pick at a scab that was itching, and had been so for a while. But as they say, to do that is just to reopen old wounds, and open this particular wound did. At first, the scab had been shaped like a grizzly bear, and so blood began to drop in that shape. At first it entertained him, for there was a bear shaped pool of blood on the ground beside him, and due to the quantity of chocolate milk which he had imbibed in his life, the blood looked an awful lot like that beverage. Therefore, he had a bear shaped pool of chocolate syrup lying beside him, but it eventually lost that charm and became formless. The first drops embedded themselves into the ground, with each subsequent drop being fuel for those seeds, which rapidly grew into formidably-sized carnivorous plants, and ate him.
“Poor soul”, said the neurosis from afar, glad that he had diverted his possession from this creature and unto a blade of grass, and upon witnessing this, quickly diverted his attention to a passing…
Las plantas de la sangre de Bari, as they had just engaged in auto-cannibalism, now could be viewed as his authentic persona. Thus, they continuously cut themselves apart, and used themselves as a source for food for growth. Eventually they reached into the atmosphere and spread their branches across the sky so that they might obtain a better view of all that there was to see. As their flowers opened to take in the sight below them, they in turn blotted out the sun.
“How selfish”, you might think.
That would seem like a reasonable thought process. He was taking all the sunlight for himself. A most self-serving form of photosynthesis, possibly the most selfish example that had yet existed. A most photosynthesis form of serving selves, I would dare say, and I dare not say much. Hark! The sun now hadn’t the ability to set its rays to the surface of the Earth. What lived on Earth withered, as its food could no longer be replenished. The sun, because of all these happenings, though due in absolutely no part to its own failings, began to feel like a failure, and gave up sending out light. The entire solar system wilted. The other stars, which had tried to console the sun, used up their last bits of energy trying to dissuade it from suicide, and exhausted, died. Antimatter was all that was left alive.
“Good riddance”, was the collective statement they issued when asked about that matter, and one that was easily agreed upon amongst their sorts. They were rather sick of the travails of all those silly beings, creatures, and other synonyms for living things made of matter. .
“Illogical!!” screamed one part of my brain.
“Balderdash!” was what one other part of that brain cried.
“You cannot insert such selratatious
bits of information into your writing.”
All these concerns were voiced to the part of my brain that told my left hand to move the pencil across the paper. This was their verdict!
Necesitamos decir the verdad to your audience. Cosmic bodies do not naturally possess thought processes. Plants do not grow into the sky. Furthermore, the part of my brain known as conscience told me that I needed to be kinder to my characters, for all which transpires in their lives is up to me, and thus far I have been extremely cruel to them. I imagine that I have. So be it. Perhaps suffering really is a learning experience, and thus they will profit from this and become the billionaires of learning experiences. Parts of me indeed scream cruelty, for what benevolent creature would put beings whose fates are in his control into these predicaments. Well, I guess I would. But the others continued screaming.
I was overwhelmed
POINT!
I
Had no choice but
To
Heed their words, and take
Back at least what had transpired regarding the end
Of the
World and solar system and universe
And being anew, at least
Regarding those events
Because innocent bystanders could have
Been harmed by the cruelties I have inflicted
Upon my characters, and I don’t want the innocent
To suffer at the hands of my
Sadistic words. Because though they might just be symbols
Upon pieces of
Paper, they
Stand for actions
Which may or may not have an impact
On the lives of those
Who inhabit this world and universe.
I apologize.
Chapter II
Ah! Kanada! To speak of this! A moose! A cow! A kow! Listen to me, and heed what words are to come, oh ye, ye who would pick the pockets of the earth and consume what ye have found and call it your own. I will begin with a container which has a volume which will contain one half gallon of liquid and which presently holds one half gallon chocolate soy milk, and as I drain it, I will spin a yarn for ye. This chapter is a timed chapter. When the milk is gone, I intend the chapter to end. Go!
It all begins with a woman stepping into her shower with the dual purpose of engaging in hygienic rituals and of delivering a message to the dolphins which reside in that vicinity. Trust me, these adventures are worth a diversion from our main character, and the twain will eventually converge, this I promise to you. This was the discourse our secondary protagonist had with the dolphins:
“Sean says hi”, is what she said.
This was, in fact, the full extent of their conversation. You see, English and Echolocation are languages of rather disparate natures, and the vast majority of speakers of one do not speak the other. So, when someone says “Sean says hi” in English, it is understandable enough that one who is primarily proficient in Echolocation would interpret that as “Ocean’s mine”.
Imagine you are a dolphin, and you hear a human assert that the ocean is in fact theirs. Humans are always asserting such things, and it can become quite irritating, both for the humans who occupy the areas that other humans desire to conquer and rule and for the animals (such as dolphins) whose habitats most humans would love to rule. But this woman certainly meant no affront to the dolphins. See, she had uttered the line “Sean says hi”, because she knew a fellow named Sean who wanted to greet the dolphins, and inquire about some information that only they knew. In short, he wanted to know about the whereabouts of Don Henley, for it was rumoured that he was to be found in the shower of this woman. And certainly if Don Henley was not present there himself, surely the dolphins, who were known to keep watch over all the Earth, would know of his present whereabouts. Let’s give our newly introduced character a name now. She’s a major character, and certainly deserves one. So, henceforth she shall be known has Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen. Perhaps it’s a bit much, but that’s her name, and we shouldn’t denounce her on that basis. All we can do is attempt to learn to pronounce it, if we have the time.
Now, let’s make it clear that where Don Henley is and what he’s doing isn’t so important, because that is his own business, but it was just out of concern that this “Sean” character wanted Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen to ask the dolphins in the shower about his whereabouts. It had been rumoured that he had been frequenting the vicinity, and this “Sean” guy cared about Don Henley. The man had been an important part of his development as a teenager. To hear that he was with dolphins was an unexpected surprise, though a good one, for I, at least, regard the company of dolphins as amongst the best company any creature on this planet could offer. In fact, in elementary school, they made us read a book about a girl who was royalty, or maybe she wasn’t. But I think she was. Anyway, pirates attacked her boat or maybe a storm made it sink. I think it was pirates, but everyone died except for this young child, who ended up being raised by dolphins. Eventually she was “rescued” by humans and returned to “civilized” life and was raised to be “normal”. But, the truth is she seemed happier with the dolphins. So I won’t make much ado about the subject if that is where Don Henley is spending his time, it’s just a sort of a shock that a major pop star would be consistently found in such company. But, Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen, so sorrowful for the grief she had caused these poor dolphins, went to the edge of the sea and became your choice of the following three cetaceans:
Sperm whale (physeter macrocephalus)
Long-beaked common dolphin (delphinus capensis)
Dall’s Porpoise (Phocoenoides Dalli)
Upon having completed the aforementioned transformation, she set out to sea to remedy the current schism she had so inadvertently created between the human race and the dolphins. After several months of campaigning and Echolocation as a second language classes, all was well, the miscommunication was corrected, and with a clean conscience, she took to the air to join her cantallifibrious cousins, the cloud porpoises.
Before we continue any further in our plot, I feel that it is essential to enlighten you as to the history and nature, the society, and the everlasting plight of the cloud porpoises, the most amiable, sentient, cetaceans to ever grace the skies of the planet Earth. In deciding how to inform as regards these creatures, I came across a conflagration in my own nature. Should I attempt to describe them myself, or sacrifice originality in order to provide you with higher quality information. For while I’ve always had an interest in them, I am by no means a scholar as regards the cloud porpoises. In the end I believe that when it comes to nonfiction, accuracy and detail are the most important components, and as such I will refer to a recognized expert. What follows are excerpts from Face Tennis’s celebrated volume, “A Brief History of Cloud Porpoises.”
“In the time before Charles Darwin invented evolution, and the Earth was still in a neonatal stage, and the seas were raging with a newborn’s vivacity, there was a day where a flock of clouds descended to the surface of the ocean, curious to see up-close what exactly what it was that was making the great racket they could hear down below. The sea, conversely, was fascinated by the shapes they saw descending upon it, and with the wide-eyed wonder of the whippersnappers to whose category it belonged, rose up to meet the clouds as they descended. Swimming through the section of sea that was rising at the time was a group of porpoises, otherwise known as a pod, herd, or school. At the point in time when the water and the condensed water vapor intersected, the aforementioned porpoises found themselves stranded upon a cloud as it was rising up with its curiosity fully satisfied. This, of course, separated the porpoises from their homes, but the clouds were more than happy to give them shelter, a new home, sweater vests, and fertile cloudsoil from which a variety of delicious, edible crops could be grown. Thus was born the race of cloud porpoises.”
“So it passed that evolution eventually reached the sky, and in the course of the one hundred and fifty years or so that had passed between the advent of evolution and the time in which our story takes place, the society of cloud porpoises changed in some very astounding ways. At first cloud porpoises were provided with sweater vests by the clouds. This became such a staple of their form of garments that newborns, they found, were often born with them already on. Over time, this became more and more common, and in fact, eventually it was the standard. Of course, nothing in life is static, and as time wore on, those sweater vests developed into full-blown sweaters. Only a few were born on average per year with underdeveloped sweater vests, though there were more in some years and in the fortunate ones, there were none, but the standard fare in the clouds was that in most cases the sweater vests would grow into sweaters by the time the porpoises hit adolescence. Being that the cloud porpoises were and remain to be a peaceful and benevolent society, with a continued track record of tolerance towards diversity, those cloud porpoises who went through life adorned with sweater vests were merely treated as objects of curiosity. The common philosophy was “oh well, they can just put on sweaters made of clouds if it gets too cold.”
For the time being this will be all the quoting of Face’s work that I engage in. I hope those scant details will interest the reader in perhaps picking up that particular volume, and further their studies on these cetaceans. At the same time, I hoped that adherence to the “kill two birds with one stone” philosophy might prove to be of some avail, and while you are hopefully interested in cloud porpoises more than you were at the beginning of the above paragraphs, hopefully you’ll also understand more the plot of our story as it continues below.
When a sweaterless cetacean ascended to the clouds, it was a surprise, but not a shock to those who had lived there long enough to be referred to as indigenous. This is the backstory on that:
The object of a previous discourse we were having regarded a woman named Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzenand how she had a conflict with the dolphins in her shower over some misinterpreted words. Therefore, she walked to the nearest beach and became an oceanic mammal herself, and set about remedying these problems. It took a while, but eventually she came across a coral reef and there enrolled in an Echolocation as a Second Language course taught by a hard-nosed bottlenose dolphin, who had heard all about our heroine’s escapades. Thusly, he was initially inclined to fail her before class had even begun. Such are often the failings of education systems, where teachers might alter grades based on their opinions of the students. But our student earnestly voiced her contrition and insisted that whatever strife had been created was a result of some misunderstanding. Perhaps he could just tell she was honest, and perhaps it was because dolphins have always been known to be forgiving creatures given the chance, and perhaps he was just an honest educator, but whatever the reason, class began with a lack of grief on either side.
In the end, Echolocation proved to be fairly easy to learn. Sonically, of course, it sounds nothing like Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen’s native language of English, which also happens to be mine, which is why , as you can tell, I use mostly what the Spanish refer to as Inglés and the Germans as Englisch, and the English as English, and the Canadians and Americans as English as well. Now, though Echolocation sounds nothing like the language which I shall hereafter call English, there are certain similarities between humans and dolphins that make the Dolphinian Echolocation easier for any human to speak than the dialect spoken by the flying mammals known as bats (mostly, of course, the variety of bats known as microbats). Both species have similar sized brains and are known to fornicate for pleasure, as opposed to reproduction. In addition, there is an ancient Greek legend that states that the first dolphins were actually humans that jumped overboard from a boat to escape the wrath of the god Dionysus. Hence, there has always been a sort of friendship and a generally positive working relationship between the two species. Not so much can be said for the state of the relationship between humans and bats. Not that it’s a strained one, though wars have occurred, but not since the far distant past. It’s just not so congenial. Aside from the relative ease with which a human might pick up Dolphinian Echolocation, there are some problems, namely with the words themselves. See; take a word like “watermelon”. In English that combination of syllables when spoken forms a word that stands for a delicious type of fruit. In Echolocation that same word translates into an entire phrase that being “get pregnant and die.” However, it is the relative ease of learning this strain of Echolocation, combined with the occasional hurdles, that makes it so fun for people to attempt education in this area. Besides, the payoff is usually great, as dolphins have always made for great friends, but are even better when conversation can be held.
And speaking of hurdles, our heroine leapt into action, bounding over many of them, both proverbial and physical, and swam at full speed through whatever language barriers she encountered, and passed the course with the proverbial flying colours, colours which also taught her to fly.
Upon receiving the certificate of completion and a bag of party favours, she threw a party in order to have a use for the favours, which included various balloons, candy, and those cone-shaped hats that have strings that you tie under your chin. But alas, party time had to end eventually, as it always does. In this case it was roughly three hours after the beginning of the party, for so eager was Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen to repair what she had so inadvertently broken. Tirelessly, meaning she did not become weary nor did she carry any tires with her, she swam about, apologizing to every dolphin she came across, and asking them to spread the word of her contrition on the part of herself, but also for any affront any human might have done to the dolphins, such as ensnaring them in the nets they used to catch tuna. See, the dolphins too loved to consume tuna, but they could grab it right from the sea and eat it fresh.
“Oh, would that we had such capabilities,” she lamented. “We would drown in that sort of process, and by no means do we intend on bringing any dolphins up with the tuna.” She hoped that last part was true anyway. But being the forgiving beings they are, the dolphins forgave her, and after this, human-cetacean relations were at an all-time high, and many collaborative efforts were undertaken. This led to cleaner oceans and ones that were generally better places to find oneself at any given time. Another consequence of the reduction of strain on this interspecies relationship was that dolphins became willing to share some of their recipes with people, and some great cuisine came out of this. Now, it came to pass that in these travels, word of the existence of the cloud porpoises came to the ears of Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen. What an intriguing world it seemed! Full of wonder and delight and the prospect of adventure it seemed for sure. For at this point there seemed to her three options. First, she could return whence she came, to her human home, and once more become human in a manner just as unexplained as her transformation to cetacean. Second, there was the option of remaining oceanic and exploring the underwater realm for a while. Surely many fascinating escapades were to be had here. But the third option was the one that really caught her attention. For here was a world that she had not heard of until this day, which she had the prospect of visiting. They would not miss her at home, as her house had been visited by a squad earlier in the day, who had deemed it a suitable location for a rave, which showed no prospect of ending in the near future. It was presumed that she had turned into a cake anyway, and no human has ever shown sympathy for a cake. In fact, it was in the midst of a famine in which a French Queen who was told that her peasants were starving was said to say “let them eat cake.” We could lament the fate of cake eternally, but that would not be conducive to the continuation of our chronicle. Needless to say, she chose to visit the cloud porpoises because the humans assumed she was cake and were preoccupied with a rave and the sky seemed like a more fitting adventure for the time being, and there seemed to be a greater prospect of accomplishing her original goal of finding Don Henley, as the dolphins would surely have told her he was amongst them if he indeed was. She could always visit the sea again and see her friends. For now she yearned for the open air, but to still remain in her current form. As she left the sea for the sky, she waved to her newfound friends and hoped that the human race would be so willing to maintain positive relations as the dolphins were.
Empty my container of chocolate milk
now is. Others shall soon come.
Chapter III
Now, Don Henley himself does not play a very major role in the advancement of the plot of our story, but for some reason our characters feel compelled to search for him, as in the case of Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen. Baritone Juicebox, in fact, also had a history of interaction with Don. Not so much in a personal sense, but oftentimes he would sit around and listen to “The Boys of Summer” repeatedly. The two had never met, and if they did meet in the future, it was in the future that was beyond the scope of our narrative here. Now, Bari was sitting on a couch, racking his mind. Maybe because he liked to imagine that he had met Don Henley, it seemed likely that he had indeed done so. If he had, that memory had gone on vacation, for he’d been searching for it for three days now. He just wanted some sort of proof. Had he met Don, or did he just imagine that he had because he had listened to his songs so much. If anything, he hoped that the memory and the proof that it would bring would at least be back by next Tuesday. As he searched through the myriad of memories in his mind, memories which encompassed the entire gamut of his experiences returned to him.
There was the time that his parents had taken him to an execution. It was the month of July, which is of course named after Julius Caesar, who was himself executed. There were several heretics to be killed that day. The first had been brainwashed into believing that he was playing a game of baseball. Conveniently, the execution was taking place in a baseball stadium, which lent a degree of credibility to the illusion. So, the man stepped up to the plate, in full uniform and helmet, and was met with a bullet in his heart, fired from one of the ten men holding rifles on the pitcher’s mound. He died instantly, but was fortunate enough to realize that those were gunmen on the mound, not pitchers, and thus died a heretic. Good for him! It was a traumatic experience for him. His parents bought his sister a t-shirt. He went home and feverishly resumed his attempts to travel through time so that he might live with dinosaurs.
And so it was that memory followed memory, in a procession that included reminisces of just about everything his memory held, but no Don Henley! Alas, would that that remembrance just return early from vacation, as many people do when they’re called into work though given time off. Nothing eluded him but that. He remembered his first pizza. It was plain cheese, but with several varieties of that dairy product used. Mozzarella! Cheddar! Parmesan! Colby! Swiss! Monterey Jack! And below that lay a delicious tomato based sauce, and it was all put on top of a freshly baked crust! If only that feeling could once more be recaptured, and sustained over a length of time. Happy must be the person who might achieve such a position. But Bari was not that person. There was, however, one moment of sustained happiness worth mentioning, and that was a similar situation to the one just described. A buffet it was called, and so he remained for one week straight. And just as suddenly as all this began, the parade of remembrances came to a grinding halt with one thought: He had never made a sports team that required trying out for. What woe is this, this continual rejection when all he sought was to join the other children in their recreational competitions. The thought of this jolted him back to reality.
“Father!” he screamed. “I need to put an end to this. I beseech of you, please let me join the others in their nocturnal recreation!”
The neighbourhood children, full of a carpe diem mentality, had recently formed an astral projection basketball league so that whilst their bodies rested, that intangible part of them left and shot hoops in the local park. At first they felt they had to sneak around, that their parents would never approve. But one by one, as all children sneaking out of the house are, they were caught. Surprisingly, there were no repercussions for this activity. Sure, it was subversive to disobey curfews and go out at night, but the parents at least thought they were being creative, and hey, if this took off, they could probably make some decent money. And isn’t that what every parent desires? A child that is successful in some form of professional athletics? I believe so. And so it was that the parents, glad that their children sought spiritual as well as physical exercise, fully condoned this league and allowed it to continue. Bari was, however, always to be found on the opposite end of that rope. Several times he had tried to sneak out, but he was inevitably caught without fail. Not once did he get to join in the games. And this trickled down, much like Ronald Reagan’s economics were supposed to. Because he was never seen at the courts, his peers ostracized him. Who was he to not partake? Did he consider himself above these games? If only they knew the truth! And he tried to explain, but as always in such situations it was to no avail. And why was it that he was always caught? The poor boy and his family happened to cohabitate with a myriad of ghosts, ghouls, apparitions, and other non-material beings, who, every time, would howl with rage at being woken up as Bari tried to leave. Sneaky though he was, they were quite sensitive and it was likely that any sound rising above complete silence would wake them up. If he wanted to play, the only choice available was to implore of his father to be allowed to go out. He needed to appeal to the part of his father that understood the escapist longings of the fourteen year old mind. Alas, to no avail this was, as his father’s childhood memories and sympathies had undertaken a joint trip, and were absent without leave, and he was forced to remain in bed with these memories which haunted him. The memories themselves meant no harm, being that they existed in unchanging form. It was his fault for letting them torment him, and he knew it, but a small comfort that was. Outside he could hear the dribbling of the astral basketballs and the sweet sound of a ball entering a net. Such joy he would never experience, at least not in this context, with his peers around him, taking part in friendly competition.
Years later, when he went to study at University, hundreds of miles from home, he would recall those days. He would often think of how, four years later, he managed succeed in astral projection, and escape ephemerally the confines of his padre y habitacion y casa. All but two ghosts had moved out by then, and he had somewhere he wanted to go. He hadn’t attempted the projection since his father’s penultimate rejection of his asking, but it seemed it had been long enough and he knew about the relative absence of ghosts when compared to previous years. No basketball games were to be played, though he had somewhere to go. The other kids were long gone from the park, and not even the ghosts of their ghosts remained. The league had collapsed when a corporation seized upon the idea and formed their own league, inviting the best players from amongst Bari’s peers to join them. The rest had their hopes dashed, and gave up the game out of hopelessness, eventually all taking up either drug habits, lives of crime, or extremely mundane office jobs. Even in his young age, Bari had seen a great number of romantic comedies, most of them written by a fellow named John Hughes. In fact, he had always hoped that Mr. Hughes was the one writing, producing, and directing his life. For a while, it seemed like that might be the case, and things were going his way. So when he took to the deserted streets, he walked to the house which he sought, and stood beneath the windows which he intended on throwing rocks at. Not a single violent intention was in his mind. Not as a protestor or a criminal would seek to break the glass of their enemy or the store in which they wanted to steal from. All he wanted was to have a pebble lightly hit the window and fall back down. That accomplished, the person residing in the room to which the window led would come rushing down the stairs and sneak out of their own house. From there, some form of adventure would ensue, most likely ending up with them having to run from the police or some comparable form of teenage shenanigans. It worked without fail in the romantic comedies, so why shouldn’t it work for him? No reason. There was none at all, and so with full confidence he threw the pebble upwards. It then struck its target, and aroused the attention of the person residing therein. Unfortunately she disregarded it as a random noise, having no idea of what was going on below her. Later on, when she found out, she too, was disappointed in not having fulfilled the plot of a Hughes film. But, in this moment, the rock fell down, and grew large with disappointment, and crushed our poor protagonist. Today was not a romantic comedy. And worse yet was that it started raining as he pulled himself free of the burden which lay upon the wretched soul.
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