Once again, Bellwether was in His museum, standing before an open door as she gazed upon the windy abyss that stood beyond its frame.
Aside from the interrupted lesson, and the comically arbitrary failure it had produced, Dawn Bellwether's day had been unimaginably boring thus far. Agamemnon was busy, and the well oiled machine that was the city of Zootopia more or less ran itself. Hell, even the process by which they appointed someone to replace Bellwether (her death having been faked shortly after her rebirth as a necromancer) was somehow uninteresting to her. All the action was elsewhere, and even her resentment at being shut out of the glorious dumpster fire that was BunnyBurrow had simmered down, yielding to idility, as in, the state of being idle.
An old fashioned red landline rang.
"This is Bellwether."
"...This is Bogo." You could hear the fear draining from his voice. God, he really was a nervous wreck!
"What have you to report?" She sighed, reaching for a clipboard.
"Aside from the usual, nothing." Bellwether ticked a few boxes.
"Now tell me-" she said, peeking at the papers. The Beast had left a few instructions for her. "-about the investigation. Is it done?"
"...Yes." Bogo still didn't like this. To call it corrupt was an understatement, and Bogo, who among other things was afflicted with a non-moderate case of undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome, absolutely loathed this...well, he didn't exactly have a word to describe the sheer dishonesty of this set up. Unlike most of his graduating class at the ZPD academy, he still took the "protect and serve" part of his oath seriously, and there was once a time when he would've killed himself in a heartbeat over breaking that promise.
It certainly didn't help that this is exactly what would happen to him if he failed to break it now. He felt like a Russian spy, an impostor, a monster hiding in a uniform.
"And what of the suspects?"
Bogo, screaming internally at the violations of due process that were as egregious as they were multitudinous, couldn't bring himself to speak.
"Bogo, you there?"
"...Yes."
"And the suspects?"
"..."
"Bogo?"
"Dead. All of them. As ordered." He spat, hanging up abruptly. Bellwether ticked a box on her form accordingly. Unless he somehow abandoned that pesky conscience of his, Bellwether not only figured he'd be dead within 2 weeks tops, but, by filling out the exam forms, was also helping to ensure his very demise.
That had been an hour ago, and now she was here again, amidst the windy cliffs and ruined doors, standing before the only other gateway in this place that still functioned. Having knocked twice, the zombified sheep stood back, in anticipation. From the other side, the door opened, allowing Bellwether to gaze upon the very basement she had left, only, different. Something that would've been a spitting image of herself greeted the apprentice necromancer, only this living corpse continued to sustain itself by biological processes, rather than the black magic that kept this particular incarnation of Dawn Bellwether ticking.
"Can I help you?"
"Yes, um, what even are you?"
"Agamemnon didn't tell you?"
"Honestly, this is all very new to me."
"I can tell."
"No really, this makes zero sense. I mean, I'm pretty sure He's taken over our city. But this, what even is this place?" She said, gesturing to the world between worlds, and the dozens of broken doors.
"You know his kind used to run their prey to death, even when they weren't hunting, he was always a wanderer, always running."
"Really?"
"You're kidding, right? Have you've seen his wall? Where do you think he scored all those kills? That man is the single most well traveled being I have ever known. Here, there, everywhere, he's been there, done that, and he's even got the tee-shirts to prove it. Do you really think he'd stick around your dimension this long unless he had to, unless he was stuck?"
"Then how on either of our two Earths is He also in yours, hmm?"
"Oh aren't you the clever one?" She said. Most rubes (even Raymond, back in the day) didn't acclimate to the multiverse nearly that quickly. "I can see why he took you under his wing."
"Uh, thanks for the flattery, but I still don't get it. Is He just, Idunno, leapfrogging from one planet to the other all the time, or what?"
"Well duh, that's what he does, he's been doing it for years."
"How?"
"It's actually quite simple when you realize that my world is right next to yours. What did you think this place was, a closet? No, this is a hyperspace conduit. A sailor trapped on one island, with some effort, can swim to a nearby sandbar, but that hardly means he can cross the ocean without a ship. Well this is what's left of the ship, the ocean is about 2 clicks below us, you're the sandbar, and my world was the island."
"Uh, why the hell do you get to be the island?"
"Because up 'till this week you were a glorified mook with a penchant for deepthroating big wigs."
Bellwether who was quite taken aback by the sheer audacity of her counterpart, dropped the facade. She was, after all, speaking to her mirror image, which for once could talk back.
"...And you're not?" She asked.
The other Bellwether paused to chuckle.
"Remember that bully asshole back in, what was it? 6th grade?"
"Yeah, he leapt out from behind a corner and cracked 3 of my ribs. What's your point?"
"In my timeline, he aimed for the head. My amygdala has never really worked since that day, and he keeps me around because none of his tricks scare me, and he finds my borderline sociopathy amusing."
"Really?
"Oh yeah. But more than anything, Aga boi gets lonely, you know, in more ways than one."
"Wait, did you just call him-"
"Fuzzy wuzzy bulgie wulgie Aga boiii? Yeah, I did. Y'all are so petrified of him that you go around capitalizing his pronouns like he's god or something. I don't."
"And He hasn't killed you for your insolence?"
"See? Bwak! Bwak! Bwak! Bwaaaaak!" The living Bellwether mimed a chicken, madly flapping its wings.
The zombie Bellwether scowled, not that her lobotomized counterpart cared.
"To answer your question, no, he hasn't. In fact, finds it hot."
"What?" To Bellwether, the thought of engaging in anything resembling sex with the rotting thing that she was currently puppeting around as her body hadn't occurred to her until now, and she was now resenting it heavily.
I mean, He's got nothing on Chief Bogo. That's our version of Bogo, by the way, not yours. But then again, even our glorious police chief can't fill both holes at the same time."
"...EW!"
"Really, Aga-boy has an entire collection of the juiciest cocks you've ever seen. He puts them on like gloves."
"EW EW EW EW EW EW!"
"But if it's kinky you want, nothing beats that hyena fella' with the mask. That man is a freak in bed."
"SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!"
"Well look, if you're just going to be another moralizing pansy, then please get lost, because I've got a stack of paperwork taller than both of us combined to complete."
"...Maybe I could help you with that?"
"Really, you've got nothing better to do?"
"Nope. 15 hours ago He went off on some errand or whatever and He left me in charge of a city that more or less runs itself, and I'm bored out of my mind."
"Then why don't you come on in, we'll push some papers, and I'll tell you about that time we recreated lemonparty."
"NO!" She said, even as she walked into her counterpart's door and shut it behind her, her subconscious mind fully intent on hearing the story in spite of her protests, as many repressed individuals are apt to do. Unbeknownst to either Bellwether, literally everything in the version of Zootopia that the apprentice necromancer had just left behind was well on its way to going to Hell in a handbasket, right at this very moment.
And for once, Jeremy Fischer wasn't responsible for most of it. He wasn't exactly helping, by any means. In fact, he was doing his best to make everything worse, but for once, the majority of the calamity wasn't his doing.
If Agamemnon had ever returned to see the devastation for himself, he almost certainly would've killed Bellwether (again) for this...
The cruiser came to an abrupt halt in the parking lot of a gas station that wasn't even close to backcountry, yet nevertheless felt quite distant from the city of Zootopia, its sole occupant frantically checking his watch for the time, for the umpteenth time, as he threw the door open and bolted for the entrance to the convenience store, fumbling about for his wallet and checking his watch while he did so. Chief Bogo wasn't exactly a celebrity, but he'd appeared in propaganda broadcasts numerous times, and the clerk, who had been half asleep until now, was quite surprised to see him here, 10 minutes past the city limit.
"What are-"
"I need to borrow your phone." He checked his watch, again, and then looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide open not like a kid who'd seen a ghost, but like a child of abusive parents who'd finally decided to run away, fleeing now from Agamemnon as Raymond the runaway had done all those years ago. In truth, this is exactly what had happened, and even with The Monster gone for the time being, it was only a matter of time before they found him, or so he thought. Not that he wasn't justified in his paranoia, for Agamemnon had a small army of moles at His command who'd infiltrated every branch of society, moles who were not afraid to make His opponents disappear if necessary. Bogo, still somehow a devout man in spite of The Ungodly Horror he had personally witnessed, sent yet another prayer like a senior dev programming a machine, barking a set of metaphysical orders as he hoped that he'd escaped against all odds. And as he was the Chief Bogo, it wouldn't be long before somebody noticed his absence, before somebody put 2 and 2 together, before someone realized what he was trying to do, to defect, before they came for him as they had come for the others, before they came for his children, before he slid down that very chute down which they had gone, into the very same gaping maw of the oven that had once roasted entire countercultures alive, their screams echoing in his ears even now as he desperately ran as fast as he could but The Hairless Sweating Beast Of Old was too fast too stubborn too persistent too tireless he couldn't run anymore he couldn't flee anymore he was tired he collapsed he fell and then He was there to pounce to swallow the very sun from the sky He and His Horrors and His masked men and Their torches and knives and spears and prods and blades and ovens and forks and bonfires and chanting and-
"The phone? Uh, sure? It's back here. You alright, man?" Even now, Agamemnon's curse was in his head, fucking with him.
Bogo held out several 20's, and was in far too much of a hurry to bother with counting them all.
"I was never here. Say nothing."
"Oh! Ok. Hey, do you know what's going on with those broadcasts?" Said the clerk, gesturing to the barenecked fox on his TV. The mammal in question sat behind a grey plastic folding table, with what looked to be a strange model of collar and a small menagerie of tools littering its surface.
The fox in his labcoat, carrying the tone of dry assurance, was speaking:
"-is a myth, but unfortunately there are some...complications...that need to be discussed-"
Bogo, who'd already seen the broadcasts, paused, clutching the handset with a metaphorically white-knuckled grip. In fact, they were exactly why he was here. Not this one, which was a PSA concerning the TAME collars. No, the one that had interested Bogo was quite a short broadcast, little more than a minute long, narrated by a gazelle in mirrorshades who sat in a chair in a blank, dark grey soundstage, the chair opposite her empty, beckoning. A telephone number was flashing onscreen. "To whom this may concern, I promise, no matter who you think is on your tail, no matter how fast they are nor how far they may go, we can get there first." As she spoke, an overlay depicting two flat grids joined by a 3rd dimensional tube faded in onscreen. It was a wormhole diagram, and a red dot was spiraling into it. "No matter how much trouble you think you may be in for defecting, I promise, our agents can take you elsewhere. You will be free there. You will be safe there. Just dial the number and have your coordinates ready. No questions asked." This, she'd said, and on her promise he was now betting his life.
"Savagery is a myth?" said the clerk, in jest. "Get a load of this crap."
"You want my opinion?" Said Bogo. "It's real. All of it. Every word."
The clerk was stunned. for lack of a better word, those announcements contained some rather disturbing information, and the rest of the ZPD were working as hard as they could to make them stop.
"That's impossible!"
Bogo, who, until a week ago, didn't believe in humans, sighed. "You don't know what that word means."
"Oh God, Bogo had prayed I just don't know anymore. He'd been an idealistic young man once, back when he'd joined the force. But this real world in all its horrors had seen fit to wear him down, to blur and confuse right and wrong until there was nothing left. Speaking with the human, to him, felt like a stab in the back, like having been tricked into signing Satan's contract, and he'd been desperate for a way out. And then, as if an answer to his prayers, came the voice on the TV. Thus, he was here, ready to throw it all away for a chance at redeeming himself. The water buffalo furiously punched a number into the keypad with his right...let's just call it a hand, shall we?...as he reached for his notepad with his left.
"Hello?" a voice said.
"Honeyitsme."
"Jesus, Bogo, you sound like you've seen a ghost." In truth, he'd seen worse. Much worse.
"Did you do it?"
"Yes. What's going on?"
"The coordinates."
"-47.15, -126.716667. Sweetie, what's going on? What's with the scary people on the TV?"
"I don't have time to explain now." He said, as he placed the notepad down and switched his phone off of airplane mode. "You and the kids are in terrible danger. Some people will be there soon, do as they say. I'll call again as soon as I can."
He jiggled the black plastic prongs, so pressed for time that he couldn't waste it actually hanging the phone up. Not even a second later, he was glancing at an index card he'd hastily shoved in his pocket, dialing yet another number.
Ring. Ring. Ri-
*Click.*
A very different sort of ring, notably granier than before, as if it were being passed through a hastily installed imprompteu relay system via jumper cables.
"Please state your-" the voice said. It was not the gazelle in the mirrorshades, but it was real all the same.
In spite of the rush, he hesitated to interrupt.
"To who am I speaking?"
"An assimilation manager."
"Suppose I wish to turn myself in."
"You've dialed the correct number, sir. State your name and-"
"Unless you can guarantee the safety of my family, I'm not saying a damn thing."
"Of course, sir. Quite understandable. Give us their coordinates and description and we'll pick them up now."
"negative four-seven point one-fiver. negative one-two-six point seven-one-six-six-six-seven. Water Buffalo, A wife and two kids, aged 5 and 7."
"Coordinates received. Names?"
"Suzanne. The wife."
"Copy that."
Silence. Brutal, hair-pulling, soul-crushing silence. Time was slipping so fast, yet each second felt like an eternity.
Suddenly, a click, his wife now on the line, her voice distorted as it journeyed on a round trip through the multiverse, from the agent's mic to the control tower, and from there to the hastily installed node in this world's telecommunications network and back to Bogo. "What the hell is this?!"
"My Lord!" Bogo rasped, relief plunging his voice by half an octave. "It's you!"
"Don't worry," another voice said "you'll all be-"
*Click.*
"Now-" said the manager. "Shall I have yours?"
Bogo looked over his shoulder, again, staring in disbelief as nobody came for him. No cops. No razorbacks. Nada.
"Hey, you still there?"
Bogo stammered. "Oh, s-sorry."
"Your coordinates, sir?"
Bogo hesitated one last time. This was really it, no turning back now. "negative four-seven point two-eight. negative one-two-six point oh-one-nine. Water buffalo, male. Zootopia Precinct One Cheif Bogo."
"...Wow, police cheif...Coordinates recieved. Our representatives will be there shortly."
And then the manager hung up.
Bogo's mind raced. He'd really done it now. Now they were coming, now they had his exact location. Now they had his wife, his children. Oh what a fool he'd been, to think he could escape. To trust that gazelle on the TV, to dial into that phone. Now they knew. Now they were coming. They'd be here "shortly". Didn't some rambling old fool who fancied himself a comedian have something to say about words like that? In times like now, they could really be among the most horrible words in the language.
Bogo threw the doors open, running from the convenience store in his panic.
"Woah shit!" said some rando. "Ya' think that's our guy?"
Bogo turned, already reaching for his gun.
"Woa there, hey, no need to get violent here." Someone else said.
A grey fox and a hedgehog stood behind him, only a few feet from the door. The latter was armed, the former operating an edgy black thing that was covered in buttons, toggleswitches, and gauges. Both were dressed in black trenchcoats and grey tee-shirts, the shirts both bearing the inverted gradient triangle that served as their logo.
"Chief Bogo, right?" The fox was wearing a burgundy scarf.
Bogo didn't know what to say. Years of police training told him to arrest them both. Years of experience, however, told him that the cops could be decidedly immoral at times, and meanwhile, his obligation to what was right adamantly refused to be silenced, again. His meeting with Agamemnon told him that the state was rotten to its core, and the Consortium broadcasts had politely informed him that there was a way out.
"You want out or not?" Said the fox, as he wheeled his M-drive drew closer.
"And where's the getaway vehicle?! The cops, the other ones, they're everywhere!"
"Right here." The fox chuckled, gesturing to the machine with left hand. "Shall we adjourn,'cuz I'm ready to go whenever you are, pal."
"You can't be serious."
"Oh, but I am!" Said the fox, gripping Bogo's thigh with one hand as he pressed a big glowing red button marked "RETURN" with his other.
A flash of light.
A loud BANG! and a buzzing sawtooth screech. All was quiet, if only for a moment.
A cacophony of distant sirens, a revving engine, and the squealing of brakes. Not even 25 seconds later the cops were, as described, everywhere, and bewildered too, for Bogo was nowhere to be seen.
"I don't get it!" Said a Officer Clawseau. "We had a fix on his phone moments ago!"
Suddenly there was a ruckus, as the blade of a pickaxe violently emerged from the pavement. Moments later, a brown creature wearing a yellow hardhat (one of Agamemnon's moles) burst through the asphalt, his eyes bloodshot in fury (also from the dust, which was inevitably produced when one dug covert tunnels like this).
"ALRIGHT YOU SHITHEAD! PUT YER' HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE 'EM!" The creature waved his pickaxe around in a surprisingly menacing way.
Nobody moved. Nobody said anything.
"HUH? WHERE IS HE?"
"Uh, the NSA said he'd be right here."
"HE DAMN WELL BETTER BE HERE OR I SWEAR ON IWATA'S GRAVE I'LL-"
"You know, you don't need to yell all the time." Clawseau, who was standing right next to this guy, had found himself reflexively covering his ears the moment this guy opened his mouth. It was as if he had an air raid siren for a mouth.
"I WILL SPEAK IN ALLCAPS ALL I DAMN WELL PLEASE, SONNY."
"It's just that I'm standing right next to you, ya' know?"
"YA' KNOW? WHAT DO I KNOW? TELL ME PLEASE, WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE BASTARD CHILD OF THE MAYOR AND ISABELLE DO I FUCKING KNOW?!"
An officer emerged from the store.
"Sorry fellas. He ain't here."
"WELL AIN'T THAT JUST FAN-TUCKING-FASTIC! I WAS MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS, EATING SOME LUNCH, WHEN THAT DAMN ALARM GOES OFF, AND NOW I'VE DUG ALL THE WAY HERE, ONLY TO BE TOLD THAT THE PERP IS GONE! AM I A JOKE TO YOU PEOPLE! HUH?! IS THAT IT? IS MY ONLY PURPOSE HERE TO PROVIDE AMUSEMENT TO YOU SICK BASTARDS BEHIND THE SCREEN? IS THAT IT?!"
"Um, what?" Said Clawseau, as one of Agamemnon's many [literal] moles climbed back into his hole, still talking to himself as he crawled away:
"GOD-DAMN RESETTIN' PIECE OF SHIT! WHY'D THE MAYOR EVEN BOTHER WITH THIS CRAP IF I NEVER GET TO CHEW THOSE ASSHATS OUT? BASTARD MUST THINK I'M A JOKE. GOD I AM GOING TO SHIT A BRICK AND A HALF WHEN I GET BACK TO THE STATION. YEAH, A SHIT AND A WANK, THAT'S WHAT I FUCKIN NEED."
"Uh, hey!" Said Clawseau, who'd stooped down to shout into the hole. "We can still hear you."
An enraged "NGAAAAA!" could be heard as Mr. Resetti re-emerged from his hole, violently smashing Clawseau's skull in with his pickaxe as an aneurysm finally burst in his head. He'd spend the next 20 seconds brutally murdering everyone he could find, crushing them to death beneath the might of a pickaxe swung like the golden hammer from Smash Bros (complete with the Wrecking Crew music), before he himself collapsed from exhaustion and died from a combination of cardiac arrest, internal bleeding, liver failure, and mesothelioma. Quite a shame, really, he was entitled to financial compensation for that last one.
V-[REDACTED], somewhen in the year [DATA EXPUNGED]
Somewhere deep within the bowels of Site 19, a handful of the most powerful beings in the multiverse were busy making smalltalk. Hell, even MULTIVAC was here, to the extent that it was possible for a stadium sized 60 year old supercomputer to be in any one place, at any rate. Seated next to MULTIVAC's terminal was an android body being puppeted by a man who had technically been dead for decades, the two in conversation with a little old lady on the subject of the latter's new watering can. Elsewhere at the comically long table, an old man with a prominent beard and another not-so-old man with a tweed suit and a hat were both taking their seats. They were discussing budgets, as were a shapeshifting eldritch being who was currently pretending to be a Panda, and one of Nicholas Randall Puxatony Derek "Funtime" Wilde's puppet corpses ("Corpse" being synonymous with "body" here).
"Funtime, you can't possibly be serious."
"Why not?" He sounded indignant, almost defensive.
"Give me one good reason why I should vote for your ridiculous proposal."
"For starters, 1543-J's left bearing is squealing badly, and I find its current state of disrepair alarming."
"Yeah, so do half of Site 19's bathroom stall doors. What's your point?"
"You never know when you might need to launch something into the-"
The pseudo hivemind was interrupted by SCP-343, who suddenly appeared within the conference room. "As an omniscient being who is and has been forced to listen to every last one of the 329 squealing bathroom hinges located within this facility alone, I can assure you, the sound is quite unpleasant."
Funtime sighed as he pressed the button summoning MTF-1, the resulting klaxon disturbing many thousands of personnel, including a scientist who happened be to loading a sample of the green fluid contained within scp-2383-j into a centrifuge. He fumbled the test tube, spilling the now red fluid all over himself. This incident would prove fatal several hours later, when the researcher in question spontaneously exploded whilst masturbating in a foundation lavatory. Holy shit, am I dying? he might have though in the moments before the researcher detonated, but in truth, he really couldn't tell if he was coming or going.
Obligatory reference aside, Funtime was furious at SCP-343 for interrupting the meeting:
"What the hell 343? Did you really have to barge in here like that?"
"You were going to lose the argument without my input."
"And you thought your unsubstantiated opinion on the sonic aesthetics of bathroom doors would help me?"
"I work in mysterious ways."
"Oh go fuck yourself!" Said the now thoroughly pissed Hivemind reynard, who at this very moment was dropping this body's pants in accords with MTF cleanup procedure 09-Ra, grunting in bureaucratic discomfort as the [DATA EXPUNGED] was very deliberately inserted into his [REDACTED]. Of course, he and the other O5's had convened here for a reason, and whether or not they were all having thaumiel-class anomalies shoved up their orifices, they still had work to do and a budget to finalize.
"Now to answer your question-" Funtime said, turning back to the now rather disgruntled mammal on the decontamination gurney "-my point is that the strategic role of 1543-J will be compromised if-" Funtime paused, uttering a shocked "Gah!" as one of the MTF people inserted the probe into his rectal cavity in order to test for the invisible KETER class SCP's that sometimes appeared there whenever SCP-343 teleported like this. "-if the bearing fails."
"Well if you ask me, that thing is a waste of money, especially considering- NGHAA!"
The other O5 grunted in shock as the endoscope was inserted.
"For fuck's sake, you're supposed to pre-heat the damn thing first!" He shouted. "Screw up like that again and I'll have you sorry ass terminated!" Turning back to Funtime, the now thoroughly disgruntled O5 resumed his conversation.
"-As I was saying, that thing is a waste of money that doesn't even work half of the time. Believe it or not, launching 682 into the sun doesn't kill it, and I for one, was removing its feathers from my eye sockets for days after that last test."
"Worth it." Funtime quipped.
"NO IT WAS-" The endoscope was removed with an abrupt YANK!, once again in violation of MTF cleanup procedure 09-Ra.
"OK, THAT'S IT!" He said, reaching for his gun...moments later, he'd pulled the trigger, the BFG pocket edition (but was it really a BFG if it could fit in your pocket?) releasing a glowing spherical projectile that enshrouded the poor fucker in a puke-green plasmatic veil that peacefully rested atop his skin for exactly one shake of Dusk Bellwether's tail before it ripped his corpse to shreds, sending gibs flying all over the room.
Blood was now everywhere, the scarlet fluid drooling down the walls and dripping from the table's edge.
Sometime in the year 1897, somewhen in the dead of winter.
The eldritch bird from chapter 19 was perched atop a rock. The rock would later describe this predicament as "profoundly unpleasant", but at the moment, it said nothing. Suddenly, the bird was quite rudely perturbed as a watermelon appeared in the air, miraculously and without warning, 2 meters above it. The unwitting watermelon, doing as watermelons tend to do whenever a watermelon appears in such a spontaneous fashion, fell, hitting the bird with a hard thunk! and settling nearby on the petrified souls of the damned atop which the rock itself had been placed, the damned souls themselves having been turned to grass.
By who? (lol subtle eldritch horror amirite)
Needless to say, the watermelon's rolling, and the subsequent landing of the bird (a raven), surely caused the grass incalculable pain (Not that anyone else cared.). The raven's beak unhinged like a snake, as a xenomorph-esque second mouth emerged from its maw, its yellow needleteeth sinking into the rind of the watermelon as the reddish juice emerged from its magenta flesh.
Then, as quickly as it came, the watermelon vanished without a trace. Unfazed, the raven continued to consumptionate the part of the melon that it had already bitten off, before returning to its perch atop the rock.
Robin, who had just walked his wife, the much esteemed Maid Marian, back to their home, was now sprinting through the woods as fast as his 60 year old legs could carry him. As the other consortium informant in the town of Nottingham, he and Gideon had been paid to, among other things, keep an eye out for exactly this sort of thing. And what a thing it had been: A literal showstopping demon rabbit.
Shit! Shit! SHIT! SHIT!
The image of her rage, scarlet blood and iridescent flame pouring from her eyes, was still burned into his skull, and for the first time in a very long time, he felt genuinely terrified in these woods that he could no longer completely trust. Who had possessed the rabbit to do such a thing? Were there others? Was it here, behind a tree? Judging by the clothes, she had to have been an offworlder, and many agents had not only gotten involved, but had blown their cover while doing so! Whatever it was, it was a big fucking deal.
And so he ran for Gideon's forge.
To his horror, it seemed he was not the only one. Drawing closer, Robin became aware that there were others in the woods. Many others, in fact, for Father Greg and a very angry looking mob were marching down the path ahead, beelining for Gideon's forge.
Father Greg and an angry mob?
Up until now, There had been exactly one man in the town who knew of the blacksmith's secret. Not his continued participation in an obscure form of body modification, no, the other secret.
SHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT
Grinding to a halt, he dashed behind the nearest tree, praying that he hadn't been spotted. His walkie talkie was out in an instant, and he hoped to god, God, (that is to say, the generic god, and the brand name Biggie-G of the O.G. O.T.) or even Satan that his warning would make it in time...
Come on, answer it!
*Click.*
The blacksmith's voice greeted him from the speaker.
"Gideon, the mob's coming!" He said, panic staining his voice.
"..."
"It's that damned priest. I don't know how, but he knows. You have got to get out of there, now!"
"..."
"About your...you know!"
The greymuzzled reynard was running out of breath, but he pressed on through the shadows that had enveloped these woods, hoping against all hope that he'd catch up before they got to the door. Anything to slow the mob down.
He heard a very, very loud bang, and rounded the corner seconds later, fearing the worst.
To his astonishment, the blacksmith's forge was surrounded by what appeared to be statues, and a little boy, his torch still burning, ran past Robin, back into the woods. His screams were muffled by his head, which had already been turned to stone. His hips followed suit, his legs solidifying in an instant as he toppled with a heavy thud, the boy's agony frozen on his granite face, which was currently pressed into the dirt.
Robin, whose mind had temporarily ignored this sight simply because of how strange it was, had turned back towards Gideon's forge, only to discover that the entire lynch mob had met a similar fate, the very same look of pure terror adorning the statues that clustered 'round the now shattered door of the forge. Standing among them was a wolf, his arms crossed and his eyes glowing like a pair of sunsets as he scowled at the 'statues'.
"Maybe I'll unfreeze them." He sighed, the fire in his eyes subsiding.
"Maybe."
Gideon's front door, which had evidently been torn to pieces by a battering ram, suddenly reassembled itself and leapt back up into the doorframe. Having stepped back inside, the human in wolf's clothing promptly shut the door.
Once the forest leaves were red.
But as they turned, so they fell.
Now the forests below looked dead.
And dead the trees would remain-
'till summer came 'round again.
Necromancers, all of them!
Truly dead, they never are.
The trees have eyes, everywhere!
Through them She always watches.
Not that there were many here.
Trees, I mean. Few this far up.
This is a mountain, you know.
Neither trees nor people here.
As far as the eye can see.
As for those wretched humans:
Their slaughter had yet to come.
Not that it wasn't coming.
Their extermination. Soon.
"Another vague word is 'soon'."
As George Carlin used to say.
What an emotional word!:
Great potential for sadness:
Longing, boxed up and packaged:
Staining the so-called "white lie":
"When's daddy coming back?" "Soon."
So George Carlin used to say.
"Soon", in all its many forms,
"Soon", such a wonderful word.
The end of humanity?:
Much Sooner than you would think.
No escape from death for them.
(No matter who they might be.)
There are two types of stories:
Those that end in death for all,
And those tales of death, abridged.
And thus the end of people:
Sooner than you think indeed.
No escape, except, for Him.
And just what was He doing?
Agamemnon, the hunter:
Clinging to the mountain's side.
Rarified air, much too thin.
Stay too long and he would die.
So the hunter climbed onwards.
And just what, up here, drew Him?:
It was one hell of a bird:
The θiˈɑfɪlʌs ˈθɪsəl:
The sifter of thistles who
did sift three thousand thistles
right through the thick of his thumb!
And so he screamed then, like now,
as 'neath his tail it opened:
A portal to hell itself!
Thus, his wretched shit did spill,
through the hellhole in his ass.
This hell in which man would go.
Not literally, of course.
(OwO pls vore me daddy)
As for the many humans:
A failed experiment, damned.
All the bloody lot of 'em.
No mercy, except, for Him.
He who stood downwind and gagged.
He who stood with knife in hand,
his other pinching his nose.
Most creative of humans,
For this, He alone survived:
Agamemnon, god-killer.
And what of the deity?
Distracted, the gryphon was,
as he purged the filth within.
And so the hunter closed in.
At this moment, she appeared,
and the mountain glimpsed her there:
Newborn, rosy-fingered Dawn.
While elsewhere, upon a cube,
before a bewildered fox,
the first of them to be named,
an incandescent seam spread.
Agamemnon, having climbed,
atop the mountain He stood.
Gripping the hilt of His blade,
machete held tight, He leapt.
For all starts are also stops,
and each end, a beginning.
For Man to rise, God must die.
Just like the humans below.
Damned, every last one of them.
So too did the hunter leap.
And on that great rocky peak,
atop the highest mountain,
cold steel cleaved a spine in two.
A beginning, and an end.
Red blood seeing red dawn's light.
Spurred to action in a single moment, embarking upon a quest on a whim, Fall had come and Fall had gone, and the solstace had passed the day before his return. Yet his easel and artbox were there all the same, his canvases undisturbed in his hut.
"Why do you sit out there, fiddling with that ink?" They said.
But they did not know, no, they did not hear the calling to ascend. For although he'd killed a god on a whim, this had hardly been the first time such a thought had crossed his mind. And now that the corpse was back in his studio, Agamemnon knew just what to do. For still beating within The Deathless One's corpse was the seat of a power far greater than any he had yet to lay eyes upon.
"There is a god" he said, "and he sits here before his canvas, working away with every tool in his box."
And now he was ready to take a step (although it was merely a step) towards making that statement literal.
Clutching the hilt of his machete in both hands, he was on his knees now, blade held high over his head as he gazed once more upon the exposed chest of old Theo the Asshole. Bringing his arms down in unison, the blade slipped between the scales and plunged through the demigod's chest with a sound like that of a locomotive wheel squealing momentarily as the flange contacts the rail during a turn, as blood so red it was practically black oozed out, as if it were a river.
The body writhed. Theo, you see, was a deathless god, and such, he couldn't truly be killed. But, much like f(x)=(1/x), or any function such that lim(x→∞) f(x) = 0, you could get as arbitrarily close to 0 (that is to say, killing him) as you wanted.
You could sever the spine, paralyzing the corpse.
You could drag it all the way back to your studio, rip open the chest, and extract the still beating heart.
You could behead the bastard and leave him face-down in a pile of turds.
Agamemnon had done, or was currently doing, all three of these things. Truly he was a walking contradiction, a steadfast, stubborn statue of a man who was undaunted by even the mightiest hurricane, as all godslayers were. Yet he was also capricious, his will drifting on a whim like a leaf in a gentle breeze, and thus he was petty to such an extent that, like any self respecting primate, he had literally smeared The gryphon's face with his own feces, before placing it on top of and then shoving it deep into a pile of fresh, hot, steaming shit he'd found in a nearby pigpen.
Having finished that disgusting catharsis, he'd cleaned himself thoroughly, only to render himself filthy again in an instant as he reached into the demigod's chest cavity. With a great heave and a grunt, the bloodsoaked biped lifted the heart of the once magnificent θiˈɑfɪlʌs ˈθɪsəl ðə səkˈsɛsfəl ˈθɪsəl ˈsɪftər (or, to mortals: Theophilius Thistle The Successful Thistle Sifter) up to chest level, and placed it atop a trapezoidal granite altar. He then briefly stepped into his hut, and emerged moments later, carrying a strange looking device that was shaped like the roundified endcap of a PVC pipe, only it was some sort of greyish matte metal, and it had several cylindrical things and a nixie tube coming out of the curved part, alongside a circular pressure gauge with a label plastered on it that read: "Über". The other side, meanwhile, was flat, and merely had three identical electrode-spikes sticking out of it.
"Now-" he said, as he violently stabbed the heart with the machine. "-most hearts could not vithstand zis voltage." He fumbled about for a bit and grabbed an alligator clip that was as large as it was thick, the clip itself functioning as the end of a jumper cable that was connected to a car battery full of every sort of ungodly [DATA EXPUNGED] imaginable.
Agamemnon fastened the alligator clips around one of the many metal cylinders that protruded from the machine.
"But I'm fairly certain this one-"
The heart of Theophilus Thistle promptly exploded.
Some of it had even gotten into his mouth.
Agamemnon, of course, had made bigger mistakes, and he was pretty sure he could fix this one. Still, piecing together the exploded the heart of a demigod wasn't going to easy, quick, or fun.
Sometime later, he was seated in front of a new canvas on a new easel, once again painting, just as he had been before he'd embarked on his epic quest to kill a god. Suddenly, a shift of ginger caught his eye. It was that fox!
"Well well well, long time no see." Said the human, with a hint of apprehension. "What brings you here this time, Mr. Red?" Putting his palette down, he turned to get a better look at the sneaky motherfucker who'd stolen his paint, noting almost immediately that something was different about him.
He'd seen it several times during his journey, the animals. He'd lived through some wierd shit already, but in the back of his mind he registered that they were beginning to change. It wasn't, or rather, hadn't been anything conscious, anything at all that he could name, but somehow (maybe it was the look in their eyes) he knew something was changing. And now that he no longer had a demigod to kill, he turned the full attention of his mind to it.
The fox slowly sulked away, staring at the ground as it did so. Agamemnon, his mind still in a slump from the destruction of his previous work, was loathe to begin anew so soon, and abandoned his painting, following the orange canine. As he did so, he became all too aware of the sorry state of this fox: Fluffy as his fur was, even Agamemnon could see that it was little more than a walking skeleton now, skin clinging to starving bones. As he followed, deeper into the woods, his attention was practically stolen by a set of six grey squares, haphazardly strewn across the ground as if they were part of a floating box that had since exploded. Agamemnon stopped to examine them, finding that they were each lighter than a feather, and utterly thin, more like a 2-dimensional razor sharp sliver of graphene than an object that one would usually find in a forest. Yet they were impossibly strong, for as hard as he tried, he couldn't even so much as bend the squares, let alone break any one of them.
Having been reminded of why he'd come here by a gust of wind past his ear, he searched for the fox, dismayed by the fact that he had seemed to disappear. The great hunter sighed, having let this one get away, only to notice that the wood had fallen completely silent.
Silent except, perhaps, for a whimper. Agamemnon followed it, past uprooted trees and across creeks that seemed almost frozen, as the color faded from the world in a display of mourning. the human followed a trail 'round a bend and came upon a clearing in which the fox stood, chocking back tears and a gag at the same time. By now, the world was entirely grey, with the exception of the rivulets of deep crimson lifeblood that oozed from the mauled corpse of a rabbit, its head twisted at an impossible angle.
The fox stared at the corpse, unwilling to leave, yet unable to bring himself closer, as a painful new dissonance crossed his mind for the very first time. Seated on his haunches, he stared at his paws, not only as a murderer gazes upon their weapon, but as a child who has finally become irreversibly aware of their own inescapable demise. Just as there had been no mercy for this rabbit, so too would there be none whatsoever left for him, her dying screams still ringing in his ears as he collapsed in grief.
Something, a branch maybe, crackled behind him. Agamemnon spun to see what it was. The last thing he saw was a contorted vision of rage, and beneath that, regret, yet beneath it all, a lone spark of hope. The last thing he heard was a truly guttural roar-scream, like nothing he had ever heard before or since.
He woke up in his hut, startled, not quite feeling himself. Opening the door, he was quite alarmed to discover that he had an audience, chief among them a oak sapling, roughly 2 years old, that he would've sworn hadn't been there the day before. Sure, Agamemnon was no stranger to mind altering substances, and yeah, he'd need at least 2 hands to count the times he'd gotten higher than a kite, but even if he were stoned as all hell, he was pretty sure he would've noticed a tree growing not even 30 feet in front of his front door.
And up until now, he hadn't. Yet it was here all the same, amidst a small army of every sort of mammal known to this man.
Hanging from one of its branches was a mask, staring right at him. Their faces were sullen now, lines of worry crisscrossing many of them. Theirs were the eyes of a soldier returning from war, of a once innocent boy who had witnessed the rage of Her balrogs firsthand, of a poor soul who had marched into the pits of hell itself, only to leave a part of himself there. Standing in front of them all was a fox, the very first murderer of his kind, who had placed a tube of crimson paint at his feet.
"Why?"
Spring, 1985. Somewhere in V-293.
"Let's. all. walk. to. the. lobby. to. get. ourselves. a. Snack."
No running, of course. That was forbidden. In a way, many societies can be said to be defined by what they fear. Some fear "them". Some fear "bombs". Some fear "allah". Even The Consortium was quite literally defined by its fear of V-027 "N".
This world, meanwhile, going all the way back to prehistory, had been made to fear "savages".
The earliest cave paintings, which were superseded by folklore and mythologies of military conquest, told of land wars that were as bitter as they were brutal. Guided onwards by a lust for power and The Fear Of Death, great empires rose and fell, all while hatred ate away at their brains like fleas of the mind. The great explorers of old had gone out, directed by A Hollow Man to search for a keyhole, and they came back, not with treasure or tall tales, but in tears, seething with rage at what they had found.
"Cannibals! Savages! That land is crawling with them! Nothing good could ever come from there. Some of them do not even fear our gods!"
"How dare they?"
It is hardly a surprise that both the gods and The Stomach ordered them to venture out once again, this time with reinforcements.
Many reinforcements.
By a chain of events that could each be considered a small miracle, this world began to approach a state that resembled modernity, much like how Birdemic: Shock and Terror vaguely resembles a good movie, despite being nothing of the sort. This is to say that aside from flashier tech and a minor cosmetic upgrade, it was the same old barbarism, hatred, and fear, all over again.
Yet as history advanced, an irony that was as cruel as it was peculiar began to emerge, for the very same predators that had once been slaughtered, marginalized, decimated, defeated, or otherwise enslaved were now suddenly feared as if they were ticking time bombs: Barely repressed balls of unstoppable bloodlust that had to be suppressed (by force if necessary), lest they annihilate civilization itself. And to this end the TAME collars were just the beginning, for this very same fear had trickled through and permeated every branch of society: Nowhere on their television networks could you find anything funnier than Leave it to Beaver, especially since an onscreen amber collar earned a film a PG-13 rating, and was prohibited outright from broadcast television. Never mind Carlin's dirty words, there were entire categories of facial expressions that were blacklisted from the air, the very heart of drama itself systematically plucked apart, slowed down, softened, edited, lobotomized, circumcised, pacified, or otherwise diluted to the point of erasure! Newspaper editors were trained to watch for "excessive" adjectives, and schoolchildren were thrown in detention if they dared to use more than 1 exclamation point in a piece of written work!
And don't even get me started on what they did to music! Even the classic "let's all go the lobby!" wasn't tame enough for these brain-dead robots. "Treat", of course, was far too visceral, too invocative of hunger, consumption, and satisfaction, the trifecta of savage predation. And so what little food they did feed to pred kids at school was always the same kibble: Never enough of it to truly fill a stomach, and never any good on the tongue. And of course, they had to remind people to walk to the lobby, because running was "uncivilized", and if we dared to let little pred kids run, why, why they'd start chasing, and hunting, and eating people! And to top it all of, they not only ran the music through multiple filters to reduce its dynamic range, but played it at 80% speed, because anything too fast, too loud, or too "aggravating" was banned.
Never mind EDM, Dubstep, Hip Hop, Grunge, Nu-Metal, or even that good old kind of Rock'n'Roll: if it in any way soothed the soul, raised the roof, or was otherwise more emotionally titillating than the Thomas The Tank Engine theme, it was too much for these pansies!
And now imagine that you were a teenaged fox trying to take your girlfriend out on a date. For one thing, she was little more than a literal girl friend, and the movie you'd taken her to see was as childish and pandering as the crap they'd showed you in preschool.
"...excessive passion should so be treated that these scenes do not stimulate the lower and baser element." So said the code.
"That makes me feel angry." Thus said the on-screen badger, his monotone voice as steady as the green light on his collar, not even betraying a hint of emotion. Correct standards of life indeed.
The audience gasped, and an indignant moral guardian type was quite literally leaving the theater over this scandalous display, the product of a viscous cycle a half-century in the making. Predators had to feign emotionlessness just to get by, causing everyone else to assume they were really murderous sociopaths who were good at hiding their true motives. These lemmings would then march off to their nearest elected representative and demand that they increase collar sensitivity, starting the whole process over again. Indeed, like all of The Beast's well ordered systems, it iterated, like clockwork, every 13 months, as it had since the TAME collar had first been introduced in 1937.
Johnathan Wilde, then 16 years old, dared to hold his girlfriend's hand. Somebody else noticed, and they had been forced to leave the theater that very minute, passing by a canine with an inch-thick stack of papers as they did so. The wolf in question was attempting to purchase a ticket to an R-rated movie, and, as per the law, he had produced the results of a thorough psychological screening which he had completed 2 months prior.
"Close call-" said the teller "-your testing expires next week."
So they had been kicked out of the theater. Now Johnathan Wilde was here, checking over his shoulder one last time, just to be sure. Hearing a distant police siren, he ducked through the door and gently shut it behind him as he did so. He motioned with his flashlight, leading his date deeper within the abandoned happytown storefront.
His grandfather had stumbled off the boat right into the arms of a high school sweetheart, having just got back from the war in '41. Back in those days, only ex-cons had to wear collars, and it was therefore possible for a seaman fresh out of the navy to pursue something resembling romance. 29 years later, Johnathan's father, a good for nothing Uncle Tom if ever there was one (who also just so happened to be named "Thomas"), had more or less repeated history.
But times had changed, and now Jonathan Wilde was standing amidst the dust choked mothballs of a store his family had once owned, as he contemplated whether or not to swallow a pill that had cost him two whole paychecks.
Not that he hadn't tried it without, but after 40 minutes of sexual stalemate, his limp dick hanging in defeat, she'd finally called it off. So long as they were stuck in these collars, anything vigorous enough to actually maintain an erection would also get you shocked.
And so they'd saved, and planned. Sure, the movie hadn't worked out, but that just left more time for the very lethargic fucking they were about to attempt. And according to rumor, he'd need every second he could get.
"There's always the doc and his funnel, if it's kids ya' want." the dealer had said.
"Butchya' don' want that, dooya'? Nah, iss' consummation ya' looking for. Yeah, I been there, dun that. Why 'ell I even bought m'self da tee-shirt. An' I ain't gonna' lie to ya' John, we're fucked, you an' me both, man. Fucked. Those bastards ain't cut yer' balls off, but 'dey might as well have, 'cuz them fukkin' collars... Iss' a waitin' game, you hear me? It ain't easy, an' it sure as hell ain't quick, but if you jus' keep goin', it does come. Butchya' already figured that bit out, didn't'cha? An' try as you might you jus' can't keep it going that slow fo' that long, can you? Ay, no shame, we all been there. An' tha's what this right here is for."
If this doesn't work, Jeremy, I swear to fucking god... John's collar went amber.
"Oh yeh, iss' real, hundred per-cent."
"Well?" She said, dragging his recollections back to the present. "Are we doing this or not?"
She had a point. Even now, he was unsure. On one hand, he couldn't say no, yet the risk was so great. Consequences in mind, he reached his hand down, although whether he was undoing his fly or subconsciously covering his crotch was anyone's guess.
If he loved her, he wouldn't risk it all. Not like this. Yet if he really loved her, he would all the same, stopping at nothing to bring the tiniest bit of please to her in this hellhole.
"John?"
Gazing upon the little blue pill one last time, he abruptly shoved it into his mouth and forced himself to swallow, much like he hoped it would force his flesh to rise.
"Well then."
They gazed into each other's eyes for what seemed an eternity, slowly drawing closer, the light of a passing police cruiser spilling in beneath the door and illuminating the lovers in a red that was as dull and subdued as it was brilliant to their nocturnal eyes. In the not too distant future, he'd look back on this moment as the happiest of his life. Years later, the resulting accident missing and the lovers sterilized, this assessment would not change, nor was it likely to.
As for the accident, Nicholas Raymond Wilde was elsewhere now, and he had far bigger worries.
The little fox couldn't help but gawk. This was his first day here, and he'd never seen a bathroom this posh. The marbled countertops, blackberry scented foaming hand soap, polished brass faucets, heated floors, soft shower curtains, and shelves of pulp novellas stood in a stark contrast to the cold, hard, grey concrete box where he'd done most of his 'business' until now.
Speaking of which, Nick was here for a reason, and as much as he would've otherwise investigated every minute detail in the room, his bowels had other ideas. He was, however, utterly unprepared for what greeted him as he lifted the toilet lid with his bandaged fingers.
A not at all faint "What the heck is this?" made itself heard to Mr. Piberius.
The older fox found his protégé, a boy coming up upon childhood's end, simultaneously innocent and jaded at the same time, staring into the toilet bowl, and chuckled.
"I'll admit, it's not as impressive as it seems. The first space elevator was built in the early 80s, you see. Come to think of it, that was probably right around the time you were born, actually. Anyway, once the metals started coming in from the asteroid mines, I had my toilet bowl gilded."
It was at this time that Nick noticed something in the bowl. Mr. Piberius hadn't stopped at merely gold plating it, no. "Who's that?" He said, pointing to a small, metal portrait roughly halfway down the bowl, on the side closer to the cistern. The water level in the toilet came just short of its forehead, as if the man were drowning. It was a coin, heated up a bit and welded to the toilet.
"Why that there used to be an authentic Spanish doubloon, minted in the early 18th century."
"No way!"
"Oh yes it is! Really, some divers in the 70's found a pirate's chest in a shipwreck full of the things, and then some idiot blew their life savings on that gold. Not even a decade later, its price had literally been decimated and then some, and I bought it off the guy for less than I would've paid for copper."
Nick was speechless, his jaw hanging open in awe. He had never seen this much gold in his life. And yet it was somehow cheap? It wasn't possible! None of it was! Yet it was real all the same, whether he believed it or not.
"I mean, it's not worthless, but now the value of gold is now much more in line with its industrial applications and inherent chemical properties, rather than the entirely contrived scarcity that used to plague our economy."
"OK" said the little fox, who didn't really understand the economic effects of the space elevator. "But why?"
Mr. Piberius took a deep breath.
"Here's the thing about life, Nick: you see that shiny yellow shit in the toilet bowl? People fought and died for that gold, and I defecate on it whenever it strikes my fancy!"
"Def, defe-" Nick had never heard the word before.
"It's a fancy way of saying 'poop'."
"Defecate" the kid chuckled, as most 12 year olds did at this sort of thing.
"Well yeah, and on that coin is the face of a king, you know. Old Phillip the 5th of Spain was once the most powerful man on earth, and now I poop all over his face every morning after my coffee."
Nick was laughing even harder now, but he was beginning to settle down.
"Well that's time for you, kid, it don't take no for an answer. Governments collapse, empires fall, gods die, it's all the same. If any of it were real, maybe it'd stick around, but it never does. You asked about that 'big picture' thing they keep talking about, well there it is, right in the shitter: Here now, gone tomorrow. King of yesteryear, adorning a man's toilet today. The big picture doesn't care. The big picture never cared. It doesn't owe you any favors, and it ain't out to get you. It just is, and so are we, for a little while."
"So we're all going to be in toilets one day?"
"No, it's more than that. This guy, Phillip, he was a king, and look how far he's fallen now. In my experience, when you really look at it, I've yet to find a "purpose" to life that isn't every bit as shallow and petty and narcissistic as gold plating my toilet, because that's all it is, it's people projecting their narrow fictions onto a wider world, hoping against hope that they're anything but the clever, evolved animals that they are. They think that conquering the world, hoarding all the money, or building the biggest pyramid will exempt them from death, from eternity. Well it fucking doesn't. Nick, I put that there as a reminder to have some perspective, lest I start thinking too highly of myself." As he concluded his spiel. Mr. Piberius noted that the boy was doing the potty dance.
"Pee all over him if that's what you want to do. Just leave your mess in the bowl, and be sure to wash your hands afterwards. Anyway, I'll leave you to it." he said, leaving the room.
See? I told you it'd come together. A pirate died so that, 19 thousand words later, an author-insert can make a point.
Thanks for reading, reviews would be appreciated.
See you next time!