links to past episodes 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
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tonight: episode 6
you freeze in your tracks. a growling pile of logs! you think. if only! in this dimension, whatever-it-is likely has teeth. at least logs wouldn't...
paws patter through leaves. you're crouching on the ground, arms over your head, before you realise the paws are pattering away.
from afar, the drone of a chainsaw starting. gingerly you straighten, creep up to the fence, and peer over the vertical slats painted dull reddish brown and bound together with wire. piles of logs, piles of wood chips, brown and white, dead flesh of trees everywhere, speckled with...
day-glo --
beyond the brown white piles, in the distance: thrumming day-glo orange, black-light green. your heart thumps.
the droning saw chokes, stutters; some of the colours waver, fall with a crash.
you're over the rickety fence, zigzagging low from woodpile to woodpile towards the day-glo trees, unable to stop despite the fear of the growling thing, whatever it was. but the forest... this might be the only way to get back. and if they're cutting it down, it's Garbage Den and Pointy Street and Rick forever, world without end, amen and hallelujah and fuck fuck fuck no thanks.
oooh, the growling again. you duck behind a woodpile, close enough to the woods to spot workers in coveralls, chainsaws in hand, moving zombielike among the trees; and a bulldog trotting around them, growling and snapping. the workers don't look scared, but bored. resigned, like the dog is lecturing them.
mean toothy underbite: ruh ruh ruh! at one of the coverall people. a girl!
she nods impatiently at the dog and starts her chainsaw, shambling towards a magnificent magenta electric-blue shock-green tree whose branches ripple orange and sun-yellow leaves.
'don't!' the word bursts out of your mouth, your hand clapping over it a second too late. oh shit! you melt into the earth behind the woodpile. peer out.
patter and pant, grunt and growl, the dog charges your woodpile.
you make a break for the tree, almost tripping over the dog. surprised, it snaps at your ankle, ripping your trousers. you shriek. running stumbling heart hammering past the chainsaw girl's shocked face, guttural noises behind you garish rainbow in front and you whirl, slamming your back into the tree, hands protecting your face -- dog springing rrrrrrrrr yellow teeth bared snap snap
and --
you're shinnying up the electric-blue magenta trunk past shock-green patches up into orange and yellow leaves, panting hard, scrambling to a high Y in the branches, legs hugging tight trembling looking down at the dog bouncing up at you like a mad futile yelping basketball.
it can't get at you.
you, clamped to your tree trunk, still panting: h...h... heehee oh shit heeheehee, further infuriating the dog. ruh ruh ruh ruh!
it stops leaping and elbows its way to the girl, barking non-stop. she looks up at you and wide-eyed, shakes her head, muddy red strands of hair flopping. mayim?!
the dog dances up and down in noisy fury. she throws the chainsaw down, folds her arms, and stares at the dog until it quiets and bolts off past her.
oh thank Odd, thank you mayim, thank you... you relax your grip on the tree, dangle a shaky foot down.
"no!" mayim shouts. "stay there! he's coming back!"
and he is, along with another coveralled worker. you pull your foot back up, hug the tree trunk. ruh ruh ruh and
the worker stoops for mayim's chainsaw and
starts it with a flourish.
"stop!" mayim yells. the other worker just grins, brandishes it at her. she flinches.
the dog finally sits down and shuts up, happy pink tongue lolling out of its mouth.
the worker's feet crunch through painted leaves, saw buzzing.
he wouldn't, would he? "hey!" you call, heart pounding in your throat. "i'm up here!" he won't look at you.
the blade swings toward the trunk. the tree vibrates uneasily.
"stop!" you shout. mayim runs toward the worker. the dog runs interference, tripping her.
grrrraaaoooowww and the blade eats away at the tree, mayim shouting, dog barking, with you still clinging to your shaking foundation, squeezing your eyes shut, praying to Odd something stops him before...
a noise like a giant door creaking shut, wood cracking. a sudden sense of unwanted freedom.
your eyes fly open to a screaming twirling rush of coloured branches and chaos, leaf-strewn wall of ground racing toward your face hello gravity and
thud
ow
breath departing in one heavy whoosh
world crackling around you scratching piling pressing you down down
and then,
burst of painful light
and you are set free
roaming expanded and weightless through silent violet skies
swimming through giant rose windows built of fragrant geometry
past walls of skin where secret alphabets write themselves into being and dissolve again
and into inside-out spaces revolving and morphing into fountains of ancient laughter
i was real i was flesh i was...
was?
dizziness. weight. gravity holds you again, pulling you into blackness
pain and suffocation
reality folds in on itself
and out of this nothing, you feel a cool hand on your forehead and the pain fades. you can't open your eyes. your breath comes shallow.
'he's the only way we know this dimension isn't just a hallucination.' mayim's voice.
'it is, though,' a vaguely familiar voice answers. 'it's a collective hallucination. a really pleasant one, especially compared to the one we blew off. and we can shape this one. that's what the group isn't harnessing. we have the opportunity to think this dimension into anything we like. reality is elastic here.'
pause. mayim: 'i don't think it's that easy.'
the other voice splutters: 'okay, you know? let me be up front. i think... i think you're what's easy, mayim. you know crane is married and has two kids, right? but that's not enough. here's your next conquest: a fucking hallucination.'
ruh ruh ruh! you think, picturing the bulldog from the other dimension.
amazed, raucous laughter. mayim, simultaneously amused and pissed off: 'yeah, i'm a real slut! why don't you just say so? you think you're so evolved. but you're really just another conservative shitbag in a dashiki who mistakes plain old human kindness for a come-on...'
your eyes finally float open. fez towers over you and mayim, arms crossed. his lip curls. he flees.
'does every dimension have to have a total asshole?' you ask mayim.
she stares down at you. breaks into one of her solar smiles. leans back and laughs, but something's different about her laughter. you push up from her lap, look at her. tears are running down her face. she looks at the ground. 'no, no. i'm okay.'
you reach out to touch her face, catch a tear on your fingertip, put it in your mouth. hm, tiny salt. mayim laughs again, but this time in genuine amusement. you offer her your sleeve, which only makes her laugh harder.
'seriously,' you say, 'don't listen to that guy. he's a jackass. and he might not know it, but he's cutting down the forest.'
'you can talk!' mayim says. 'of course, fez would say that's "because i'm giving you space to become real."'
'mayim,' you say, 'i am real. listen, this is important.' she's listening to you, for the first time. you tell her about the vision with the bulldog and the chainsaw people.
'i don't know.' her voice is small. 'how do you know the bulldog is fez?'
'not sure,' you tell her. 'but who else would it be? i'm not trying to be a smart-ass, you just know the robb -- uh, your people better than i do. fez just said you could shape this dimension. he really wants me to be a hallucination. but i'm not. even rick knows i'm not. he tried to -- '
'rick?'
'the polar bear -- man in the white coat from your dimension.'
realisation dawns. 'oh. OH. that asshole?' mayim's nose wrinkles. 'oh man.'
'he's the one who took daphne. and he tried to get me, too. i looked for her in the other dimension -- "
'wait, what?' mayim yelps. 'rick can get into this dimension? oh, that's not cool. not cool at all.'
/tune in turn on etc. next week.
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Monday Night Weirdness! Episode 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
- William Blake, Proverbs of Hell from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
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