Apocalypse Soon-ish: The Combined Meh-rathon Saga

12

Day 2

Dear Journal,

We awake to a blaring voice echoing across the Horrorscape. It seems to come from all directions at once. Virginia and I jump from our shortrib-induced slumbers with a start.

The man is to be put in. Get the man. Put him in.

Knowing who this “man” almost certainly is and not wanting to find out what being “put in” means, I seek the source of this strange alarm and find, to my surprise —

13

A speaker dock! Its 30-pin port augmented with some receiver. I yank at this receiver and quiet the speaker, but the announcement runs on.

The man is to be put in. Get the man. Put him in.

It blares from all directions. I realize with horror that —

14

I am surrounded by thousands of speaker docks, all receiving the same transmission. There is no hope of silencing them all, Journal. I call off Virginia, who was gnawing on a dock, and we flee toward the hazy red sun as it rises.

We run, hoping to find where the speaker docks stop. Maybe it is the exhaustion or maybe we have reached the outskirts of this “city, ” so we have stopped to rest a moment. Suddenly a figure looms before us.

I shield my eyes and gasp, for the figure before us is —

15

A primate!

Virginia hisses through her broken jaw and skulks behind me for protection – clearly afraid. The primate flails its arms and screams at us, jumping from side to side madly.

At first I take its hoots as mere nonsense, but soon begin deciphering them as a garbled form of English.

“The man!” it howls, “the man! I got the man and the man got me ha ha ha! It is a bit of wit, you see?""

I am terrified of this insane, sentient simian and have backed away slowly, averting my gaze as I had been taught in Primate Body Language 101, when I bump against something soft. I turn, thinking I have nudged Virginia, but see instead –

16

An entire horde of apes. They have captured Virginia and are dancing and screaming with insane glee.

“Unhand that possom!” I say, with more conviction than I would have thought possible given the circumstances.

The primate horde stops, cocking its collective head.

“We do not get it.” says one, who looks like a leader.

“Let go of that marsupial!” I try again.

“We get ‘let go of,’ but not the big bit.”

Now it is my turn to cock a head. What strange language are these insane simians speaking? Did they only speak with words no longer than —

17

“To the den!” the leader calls, cutting off my question. Hairy arms grab Virginia and I from all directions and bind our arms. The apes march us back from where we had fled, laughing and gibbering in their strange mongrel tongue.

We are led to a large cavern mouth ringed with strange burning totems. Screams bubble up from the cavern depths — some hysterical like the apes, some almost human-like. Virginia shrinks at the sight and sound of this dire place, dislocating her shoulder in a futile attempt to free herself.

“Peace, noble possum,” I say. “Everyone knows humans are smarter than apes. I’ll get us out of here.”

Just then the screaming from the cave stops. The fiery totems gutter out. Our captors prostrate themselves on the ground. And –

18

A chicken emerges. An enormous white chicken — twice the size of a human.

“Did I let on re: the hen I dig?” it speaks to the assembled throng.

“You did not let on,” they reply in unison.

“She had bad ova. I let her in on it. Yes, yes …” the chicken struts across the mouth of the cavern while the crowd’s excitement builds

“…It was an egg neg.”

The apes burst into fits of insane laughter, rolling on the ground and wiping tears from their eyes. This, it seems, is a good one.

“Now …“ the giant bird continues, pointing its pure white wing directly at me —

19

“Get the man in the den.""

Rough hairy hands again grab my bound arms and shove me towards the mouth of the cave. I look back at Virginia, terrified of losing my only friend in this mad post-apocalyptic setting.

“And,” the snowy chicken continues. “Nix the rat.” It pulls a wingtip across its neck in the universal symbol that made the meaning of “nix” unmistakable. The apes gibber in delight.

What happens next I’ll never forget —

20

“Not a rat!” a clear and refined voice breaks through the animal hooting, like a superior kitchen knife through semisoft cheese.

The crowd turns toward the source of this strong, confident call. Who is it? I wonder.

“I am known by many names. To the Utes I was Land Master. To the Crow and Cree, Snaketail. To the white man I am known as a Possum, and by him I am called —""

“Virginia!” I cry, flabbergasted.

“Indeed,” she says, and raises her broken bulk upright. ”My tale goes back many years, before the Blasted Days as we now call them. I shall now recount my —""

But her tale is cut short by –

21

A blow to the head from a refurbished Dyson wielded by one of her imbecile captors.

“Nooo!” I cry. I try to free myself, but I must have been bludgeoned also, for suddenly I am on the ground and overcome by an enveloping, dark sleep as I write these last words…

22

Day 3

Dear Journal,

I awake in a damp, dark room. Possibly a cell. I shake my head free of sleep and a likely concussion and try to remember the salient events that led me here.

• I was frozen in 2017 but have been prematurely thawed
• The world as I knew it has been destroyed
• I have befriended a well-spoken possum named Virginia
• We were captured by a band of apes capable of speech, albeit monosyllabic
• We were lead back to their den and encountered their seeming leader, an enormous white comedian chicken
• I have been separated from Virginia and find myself imprisoned in the den

I must learn what happened to cause this destruction and madness. Then I must try to undo it. I remember that Virginia was on the verge of describing these events when she was clobbered into unconsciousness. Maybe if I find her, I can …

Hold on, Journal. Don’t make a noise. Someone or something approaches my cell —

23

A window high above me opens, sending in a blinding shaft of light. Three objects clunk to the hard floor. The window closes again.

I blindly reach for these mysterious objects and discover that they are —

24

A bottle of fetid but welcome water
An enchilada wrapped in foil (even more welcome)
A box containing a beer koozy, three ethernet cables, a t-shirt, and what seems to be a clip-on light or lamp of some kind, and a patch or badge emblazoned with a single “V”

I contemplate this strange assortment of goods while wolfing down my enchilada. With no power supply I cannot use the light. And the other products seem absolutely … worthless.

Are they gifts from a benevolent stranger? Or some kind of strange joke courtesy of my insane primate captors?

I have little time to contemplate, for as I write this more footsteps approach. I hurry to hide my “goods” in a corner just in time before —

25

A door swings open, sending more light into my dismal cell. I see it is shaped like a large well — circular with high stone walls leading up into darkness. And somewhere up there a grated window from which my “gifts” fell.

I have little time for contemplation, however, as I am seized (for the umpteenth time) by two large primate guards and forced into the lit hallway.

We pass a row of cell doors much like mine and I strain my neck to see into the open ones, hoping to catch a sight of Virginia. But to no avail. I fear I shall never behold her sweet, mangled visage again, Journal.

At the end of the hallway I am thrust onto what seems to be a forklift and driven up and up through the subterranean den until we reach the light of the outdoors, where I am deposited like so much cargo on —

26

The banks of a river.

An especially large and brutish ape waddles over to me. It looks at me, grunts, and whips my back.

“Get up, man,” it says, and to my surprise hands me a stumpy steel knife. “Use it to get an orb.”

I can make nothing of this whatsoever, Journal. This barbaric baboon leads me to a group of apes huddled over the water. I see that they are wielding the same short knife.

Then I realize something about these apes —

27

They aren’t apes at all — they’re human! They are so ill-kempt and covered in filth I mistook them for more mad apes.

I am overjoyed at the sight of my own species. I will tell you now, Journal, that I had harbored secret fears that I was the last Homo sapien to have survived into the “Blasted Days.” I begin speaking to them in a confused way.

“My God, I thought I was alone! What are you doing? How did you get here? Tell me what happened!”

They look at me with a mixture of shock and opprobrium. A woman close to me shakes her head and tries to shush me, but it’s too late for shushing as I find when—

28

The guard’s whip cracks on my back again.

“You no say in man-way, man,” the cruel guardsman (guardsape?) says. ""Say in mad ape den way. Now —“ he kicks me into the river. “Get the orb.”

I crawl back on shore with the other humans and, terrified of further punishment, try to mimic their behavior. I see that these human workers are retrieving rocks from the river bed and jamming their short knives with them.

I begin to do same when I realize these aren’t rocks at all. They’re —

29

Oysters!

Of course — “get the orb”! They — we — are being forced to harvest freshwater pearls for our ape masters.

I try my hand at the task, stabbing my knife ineffectually into the oyster’s shell. The woman next to me — the shusher — again shakes her head at my ineptitude, inches toward me along the shore, and demonstrates. In goes the knife. A twist. A turn. Out comes the oyster with its pearl, both of which she dumps into a pail at her side.

I try again but fail.

“I don’t know how to —“ I begin, but she shushes me for a third time.

“No say the man way,” she says in a terrified whisper and retreats back to her eddy.

Do the humans speak this strange tongue as well, Journal? Have they been utterly broken by their mad ape masters? As I write this another bedraggled human hops near me and answers my question in a most extraordinary way —

30

“Purple?” he hisses through clenched teeth.

“Excuse me?” I am happy to know the English language still includes multiple syllables, but confused. He looks over his shoulder furtively and asks again.

“Purple??”

“I don’t know what you’re —“

He shakes his head in frustration and hops downriver. A third human — gender ambiguous through their matted hair and torn clothing — comes near.

“Don’t mind him,” they say, less furtively than the others. “He wants to know if you came from the resistance.”

“Resistance?”

“Shhh. Don’t you know they have Wi-Fi security cameras set up everywhere? Look down towards the water so they can’t see your mouth moving.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m — a friend.” She doesn’t trust me with her name.

“Hi, Friend. Was it you who dropped those gifts in my cell?""

“What gifts?""

“Food. Water. Some random crap in a bag — “

She looks at me, surprised. “On your first day? You got a F—“

31

Her words are cut short by an announcement that shrieks from many hidden speaker docks.

You got the orb in the tub. Now put in the big tub.

Out is forklifted a hot-tub-sized container and in we dump our oysters and pearls as we trudge back into our prison. What were these pearls for? Who on Earth could possibly want so many? The guardsape stands at the entrance to the den collecting the steel oyster shuckers. I hand mine over ruefully.

So far I had many questions and was beginning to wonder if I would ever find the answers. I’m sure you agree, Journal.

32

Day 4

Dear Journal,

I explored my cell last night in the brief time before sleep overcame my exhausted body and found no possible means of escape except by the window many feet above my head. The walls of the cell are completely sheer and impossible to climb, however.

I was glad to find my “goods” intact, still hidden, and am bringing them with me now to the Pearl River in hopes of learning more from Friend — the only human brave enough to speak with me in full English.

I am working next to Friend now and have shown her my odd wares. She (or he, I’m still not sure) opens a hidden pocket in her tattered rags and shows me her own collection — a powerbank, a small hunting knife, and a toothbrush.

All of a sudden, I have an idea —

33

“It looks like you could use a new t-shirt, Friend,” I say. “I’ll give you mine for that powerbank.”

“I guess mine has become a bit ratty. Sure.”

We surreptitiously trade our goods, sure to avoid the ever-watchful gaze of the Wi-Fi security cameras.

“And that knife. How about I give you this beer koozy?""

“Are you crazy? Who would want that?""

“Umm … How about this badge with a ‘V’ on it?” I ask, worried that my plan may fail at this last crucial moment.

“Really?? They don’t make those anymore! Done.”

We slide these across to each other. Friend holds my hand for a brief moment — the only human touch I have experienced in this blasted place.

“Thank you,” Friend says, and squeezes. We look into each other’s eyes for one brief moment, lean towards each other, and —

34

The speaker docks blare.

You got the orb in the tub. Now put in the big tub.

And off we go, dumping our oysters and pearls in the big tub and handing our shucking knives to the guardsape. Except I don’t give him my shucking knife. Instead I give him the hunting knife I purloined from Friend. Will he notice the difference in his sweaty simian palm –

35

He does not! My plan is ready to be set in motion, Journal.

I am now locked back in my cell. I plug my USB lamp into Friend’s powerbank. Now I can see the walls reaching up into darkness, and to the window that is my only hope for freedom.

I inspect the walls and see, as I suspected, that they are made of stones expertly laid together with hardly a space between them. No instrument could fit between these stones except … an oyster-shucking knife!

I wedge mine into the wall triumphantly and begin my laborious task: Pulling stones out from their fittings one by one and crafting a kind of spiral staircase up the circular cell walls.

At last I reach the grated window, dear Journal, but realize with horror that —

36

It is sealed shut. I could only hope to pull it off with tremendous force, but by doing so I would certainly hurtle down with it to my death!

A solution springs to mind. I work one of the heaviest stone “steps” fully free, tie it round with my ethernet cords, tie the other and of the cords to the window, and hurl the massive rock into the abyss.

Snap! Goes the window. Boom! Goes the rock on the cell floor. I am free!

But —

37

This echoing boom rouses the den. I hear the call of an alarm and the shuffling of many feet. I squeeze myself out of the window into a lit corridor and slink through the shadows to my best of my slinking abilities.

I come to a forking path and stop for a moment to consider. An arm reaches from the darkness and grabs me by the shoulder.

“Man!” calls a voice attached to the arm. I try to yank myself away but the hand holds firm. “No, sit! Now!”

It pushes me to the ground in a dark corner of the hall just in time, as a group of apes carrying a prisoner pass. I almost yell out loud as I see that the prisoner is none other than —

38

Virginia! My trusted roadkill companion.

But I also see, to my shock and despair, that —

39

Virginia is dead.

It is true, dear Journal, however much it grieves me to bear this lugubrious news. I would not think it possible for the undead to die, but I heard the guards speak to another group that came down the opposite hall.

“Big rat?”

“Yes. But big rat did die.""

“Yes, a bit ago, no? Or now?”

“Now. Or, a day ago. We go put big rat in the big tub for ha ha hen. Ha ha hen did yen for big rat.”

And with those foul words they drag my dear marsupial zombie into the depths of the den. I am so upset I have almost forgotten about the mysterious arm that saved me. After the apes pass I turn.

“Who are you?”

The stranger steps into the light. “A Friend.”

“Thank you, Friend!” I call, relieved to see a familiar face amid my grief.

“Seek Georgie Red,” Friend points to the upward-sloping passage. “She is the only one who can help you.” Then, grabbing my hand, this haggard human speaks words I’ll never forget —

40

“I love you.”

I am stunned.

“My heart belongs to another,” I say, looking wistfully at the passage through which Virginia was carried. “Or rather, belonged.” I break down in tears — the first outward display of emotion I have allowed in this harrowing ordeal. Friend holds me in his (or her) arms while my grief turns to anger at the loss of my beloved possum.

“I must avenge Virginia! I must kill the chicken!”

“Seek Georgia Red. She is all the remains of The Resistance.”

“Come with me!” I say, for I hear more scurrying feet and cries of alarm.

“I can’t. I must free the others.”

And with that, Friend presses something into my hand and urges me gently toward the upward passage — toward the breaking light of day — with tears streaming down her face.

41

Day 5

Dear Journal,

I run from the mouth of the den of the mad apes and into the pure, sweet dawn. I believe it is the morning of the fifth day since I awoke, but time lost nearly all meaning in those depths.

I have run far enough to risk a break, and finally look at the object Friend gave me at our parting. It is the “V” badge which I traded her! She must have wanted me to keep it as a momento.

My thoughts are cut short, however, by a voice —

42

Calling for help.

“Ehhh. Umm. Excuse me.”

I look around for the speaker but find none.

“Ah, yes. Down here, you see.""

I look down and see to my astonishment —

43

A gummi bear. A large (cat-sized) green gummi bear. It is laying on its back, looking at me with a somewhat melancholy expression.

“Ah, mmm. Hello. Yes. Quite. Hello. Err … could you … that is to say … might you … could you be so kind as to, well, ehhh —“

“Yes?” I say, a bit impatiently. I have possums to avenge and Georgia Reds to seek. Unfortunately my obvious impatience only seems to have flustered the bear further. It remained on its back, stammering.

“Quite sorry, quite sorry. Of course, ahem, I hate to, well, put you out, or … err … as who should say — trouble you — but, oh never mind it’s probably quite a chore…”

“What do you want??”

“Could you … mmm … pick me up?”

“Pick you up?""

““Yes. I seem to be stuck. On my back””

“Of course.” I reach down to pick up the stuck gummi but a thought strikes me and I stop —

44

“I’ll do it,” I say, “if you tell me where I can find Georgia Red.”

“Ah! Ohh my. No. Hmm, no. I’m afraid, well, I don’t know who that is.”

“That’s a shame. Good luck!” I say, walking away.

“Well, hmmph, if that isn’t the — well — WAIT!”

I wheel. “You know where I can find Georgia Red?”

“Yes. Well, uh, I suppose that — yes.”

I peel the chubby confection off the ground and prop it on its feet.

“Take me to her.”

45

I follow the waddling gummi bear through the scorched wastes, keeping an eye cocked for any attempts to flee. Funny how quickly the prisoner has become the captor.

We arrive at a burned-out home with a makeshift tin roof.

“Ah, yes. Well, here we are. And, now, if you please, umm, LIGHTS!”

At this a series of lightbulbs turn on.

“MUSIC!” the bear yells to seemingly nobody in particular, yet soft jazz begins to play. The gummi bear turns a shade greener at my surprise — blushing perhaps. “I was a bit of a — how to say? — smarthome, errr, junkie. Still am, when I can get the parts.”

“This is your home?” I ask, annoyed.

“Well. I suppose that you could say, in a manner of speaking — yes.”

“But you told me you were taking me to Georgia Red!”

The bear sits and crosses its front paws.

“Yes, mm, I suppose I, well, I suppose —""

And what it says next nearly topples me over.

46

“I am Georgia Red,” the gummi bear says.

“But … but … uhh —“ I stammer.

“Yes, I know.”

“You’re, umm —""

“Yes.”

“You’re green.”

“Well you see, uh, as it stands, my first name is actually ‘Not,’ and my, uhh, middle and last names are, well, ‘Georgia’ and ‘Red’. You see, my parents named me after, mm, the fact that I am not red. That’s why my name, uhh, is, as it were, Not Red.”

I reel at this unwieldy explanation but return to the matter at hand.

“Can you help me?”

“Hmm, as to that, well —

47

“No.”

“No?""

“Hmm, yes.""

“Yes?""

“Ah, sorry. Mmmm,” a pause, “no.”

After all I had been through — my body frozen in one world, thawed in its horrific mirror. Roombas met, destroyed. Undead possums befriended. Mad apes fought. Comic chicken masterminds unveiled. Mysterious packages delivered. Oysters shucked. New friends made. Escapes planned. Undead possums killed. Quests given. Quests seemingly completed. All for nought. I tell you, Journal. I am fed up with this bullshit, and I take it out on this gummi bear named Georgia Red.

I throw whatever is at hand. Smarthome lighting systems. Automatic thermometers. My own personal effects. And I storm out in a fit of rage.

“Wait!” Georgia Red calls as I reach the door.

48

I turn.

“Uhh, yes. How did you come about — that is, where did you get this?” She picks up that silly “V” badge I had apparently thrown with my other belongings.

“A Friend.”

“They don’t, well, they don’t make these anymore.”

“I’ve heard.”

“Hmm. Mmm. Yes. It seems that someone I trust has trusted you. Very well, then. Sit.”

“Why?”

“You have, it seems, much to learn. If you wish to defeat him.”

“Who?”

“Why, —“

49

“The chicken. The comic chicken, you see. The master of the mad apes. The root of evil, as it were. Hank.”

“His name is Hank?”

Georgia Red warns me not to take this menace lightly because of his folksy name. Hank the chicken has turned his gift for wit to evil purposes, growing in strength and power as he enslaves the inhabitants of the horrorscape. His power, she explains, lies in his jokes – or riddles.

“His jokes?” I ask, incredulous.

“Indeed. He, ehh, he uses them as a devious form of, as who should say, mind control.”

I scoff at this. Maybe his monosyllabic jokes worked on half-witted apes and stuttering gummi bears, but I am a human.

“Why was a pup on top of a big bit of ice?” Georgia Red says in the lingua franca of these parts.

The smirk falls from my lips as I try to parse this seeming nonsense. My brow furrows.

“Hmm you see?” she continues. ""Hank would speak these words and have you under his — one might go so far as to say — thrall. The pup was on top of the big bit of ice for he was a hot dog. Mmph. Like I, err, said: You have much to learn.”

We practice through the night, her telling Hank-like jokes, me parrying as best I can. The witticisms come faster and faster as I got sleepier and sleepier until, at some hour deep in the night, I fall into a dreamless slumber.

50

Day 6

Dear Journal,

I awake to an empty home and find a note next to my “V” badge.

Take this. Find Hank in the sky. With, well — you might say — love, -GR

I grab the badge and make my way back to Hank’s Mad Ape Den. I don’t know what the gummi bear meant by “the sky” but…

Now I understand, for in the eastern sky, silhouetted against the sun, I see an enormous flying machine. It is in the shape of a chicken, with a zeppelin-like body and many whirring motors along its feet, wings, and coxcomb.

I run, desperate to reach the contraption before it takes flight. I reach the airfield and hide behind a rock as I look for a way in. Dozens of apes are loading large tubs filled with oysters and pearls into its metal bulk.

Suddenly I hear from behind me a pair of marching primates. I scuttle behind the far side of the rock and see, with amazement, that they are —

51

Carrying Virginia. And she is … ALIVE! (In her way.)

I stifle a cry. They are marching her, bound as before, to the flying metal chicken. I watch them drag her flattened, broken body on board but can see her head lolling from side to side in a not-dead fashion. My heart swells. Of course! She wasn’t really dead — she was playing possum.

The engines of the flying machine roar to life, lifting its massive bulk. Many strong ropes tether the craft to the earth. I run forward, desperate to get on board before Virginia and Hank take to the skies. I see an ape sawing the ropes one by one and recognize him as the leader from my initial capture. He sees me.

“Man!” he yells, and charges at me wielding his saw.

We enter hand-to-hand combat — his simian strength against my human wits, the saw poised above my head, now his. We crash against the final tether, which frays and strains with the enormous effort of grounding the flying chicken contraption. The ape leader wrests the saw from my hands and backs me against the taut rope.

“Now,” he says, “you die!”

He swings the saw at my midsection and —

52

Cuts the rope as I leap over his swing. At the height of my leap I grab the tail end of the rope and soar with the flying chicken machine into the clear blue sky.

I hoist myself into the monstrosity’s metallic belly. Another guard stands among the tubs of pearls. I grab him my the scruff and throw him into the abyss.

The time for diplomacy has passed, Journal.

I climb through a labyrinthine series of bulkheads, and emerge into the cockpit — situated at the beak of the avian airship. There I see something I will never forget for the rest of my days, however many or few they number —

53

Virginia, the necrotic possum with whom I had formed such a tight bond in so short a time struggles with all her feeble might as her ape captors lash her broken limbs to the very tip of the ship’s beak. They stand on a rickety scaffold that was built, it seems, for this very purpose. Wind shrieks through this open-aired cockpit

“You monsters!” I yell, stepping forward. They bear their yellowed teeth.

“Do you not get it?” a sardonic voice behind me says about the howl of the air. I don’t need to turn. I know who it is. “The ape, he can not get it as you say it in the way you did.”

“I’ll get to you next, chicken.” I say, and crouch into an athletic martial arts pose. The apes do the same from the scaffolding. They pounce at me and —

54

Trip, falling from the beak. I look down and see that Virginia used what little energy she had left to trip the apes with her prehensile tail.

I rush to free her from her bonds but the voice stops me once again.

“Go a bit on and I nix the big rat,” Hank says.

I turn slowly and see with terror, that —

55

This giant chicken has doubled in size since last I saw him. He rests, enormous, strapped to the hollow center of the airship with a series of suspension ropes. I see only his head, which takes up nearly half the giant chicken head exoskeleton of the ship. As he speaks he pecks at a giant tub of pearls by his side.

“What the hell is happening?” I ask, finally.

“I get men.” Hank says with drawling contempt. “Men get orb for me. I eat orb. I get big. I do how a hen has had a yen to do for eon. I fly.”

My mind begins to cloud at his strange hypnotic speech. Yes, I get it. He is a hen. He is a she! Wait a second, I’m becoming like them. Thinking like them. I hear the voice of Georgia Red and see her hazy ghost-like image at my clouding vision’s periphery.

“Remember your training,” she says. ""At least, remember the part before you fell asleep.”

I shake the cobwebs from my head and try to parse what Hank said. This chicken, who is a hen, not a rooster as I assumed in my sexist assumption of villainy, has enslaved humans to gather freshwater pearls for her, which grant her some kind of power to grow larger. Now she has built a flying machine to help her achieve the dream of all chickens since time immemorial: To fly.

“What about Virginia?” I say, looking sidelong at my friend as she approaches death for the second time. “How does she fit into your mad scheme?”

“One yen of the hen is to fly. But the big yen is to — “

56

“Not die.”

Again my mind fuddles at her strange riddles. How will strapping a possum to the beak of an airship help her —“

My rumination is cut short as the airship lurches suddenly. Hank laughs maniacally.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” she cackles, with deliberate pauses between each syllable. “The big rat can not die. I get the rat to die on me, and I get to be as she was. I get to not die. I am to be Ha Ank, the god of wit and all the big wet orb.”

The ship careens and plunges into descent. I’m thrown from my feet and somersault down the cockpit, past the beak, and into the air. Virginia’s tail whips out again and I grab its tip.

I stare up, along Virginia’s tail, past her flattened abdomen, through the cockpit, and into the gleaming eye of Hank the mad comic chicken as she sacrifices my undead marsupial companion in a crazed attempt to achieve life everlasting.

“Now you die!” She yells.

I look down. The mad ape den, directly below us, hurtles closer with impossible speed. I crawl up Virginia’s thick coat to say goodbye. I hug her with all my might and feel a strange enveloping sensation as we crash into the ground —

57

I open my eyes to an impossibly bright whiteness. I blink. I make out another color — orange.

I try to sit up but I can’t move. I’m trapped, somehow. I look down and see that I am inside some kind of sleeping bag. It’s moist and strangely malodorous. This is not how I imagined heaven to be.

I push myself out of the sleeping bag and realize — I was inside Virginia! That is, I had hugged myself into her marsupial pouch. Gross.

I look around and see that the other half of the white-and-orange structure I’m in has been utterly destroyed by the crashing chicken airship. Hank’s remains burn within.

How was I spared? I look back at Virginia, who blinks her eyes awake. She’s alive! Of course — I was protected in the crash by Virginia’s immortality!

“Do you know where we are?” she asks, a smile crossing her mangled snout.

I look up at the strange building. I know this place. It’s …

Whataburger! It’s the only recognizable sign of civilization I’ve seen since awaking from my frozen sleep. But that must mean this is — or was — Texas. What happened in the Lone Star State to cause all the destruction?

Then I remembered — I was frozen shortly before Meh.com’s third birthday. Meh’s operational headquarters was in Dallas. They must have done something on that day so heinous, so destructive, that it destroyed society and the world as I knew it.

“It was Meh!” I yell.

“Well, err, yes, well, about that — “

I turn and see Georgia Red looking brighter and greener than ever.

“I thought the last who knew about, well, that, had, umm, died out long ago. But then I saw your, as who should say, VMP badge and, well —“

I hug the confection with delight.

“What about Friend?” I asked. Georgia Red shook her head solemnly.

“Oh no … she didn’t make it.”

“Err, what’s that, then? I am shaking my head because, well, I have no idea who that is.”

…

I find Friend later, with the band of humans she had led in revolt against the mad apes, who lost their pluck when their leader crashed her airship into Whataburger. We are rebuilding, now. We have grand plans for a new society without violence, without suffering, and most importantly …

Without Meh.

THANK YOU. Saved my clicky finger.

Are you working on writing the next episode of Twin Peaks too?

/giphy epic

Well, I guess I know what will pop into my head each time I see the What-A-Burger from the air as we’re coming in for a landing each time I visit Dallas, or when I see freshwater pearls (Oy, with the pearls already!).
Y’all ain’t right in the head.
Thank goodness.

TL;DR Where the fuck is my stuff!?

In this sentence, the word “I” should be “me”:

Hairy arms grab Virginia and I from all directions and bind our arms.

/giphy grammar cop

j/k, man. Great job.

My favorite part:

Carrying Virginia. And she is … ALIVE! (In her way.)

I stifle a cry. They are marching her, bound as before, to the flying metal chicken. I watch them drag her flattened, broken body on board but can see her head lolling from side to side in a not-dead fashion.
My heart swells. Of course! She wasn’t really dead — she was playing possum.

But what happened to the pretty colors the original had?

Reading this during the Meh-rathon made me miss a try at a Fuku. Fine. It was entertaining though.