Disclaimer: I do not own Labyrinth, the song Wanderlust King by Gogol Bordello, the band Gogol Bordello, the Sly Fox, or the Lion's Head Tavern. I am constantly relieved that I do not own the Trailer Park Boys as it sounds like a lot of work, and frankly, I'm a bit of a slacker. Any resemblances to living people are purely coincidental, etc. I am re-posting this very rough draft version for now, and will be editing further in the near future. My sincere apologies for any historical inaccuracy or callous handling of the horrors of war. Hoggle is an ignorant asshole in the flashbacks, as is Jareth.
Hours drifted by in a merry, ethanol induced fog as Sarah and Ricky got better acquainted with their new friend, the Wanderlust King. At various times, Sarah poutingly noted that her best friends were deeply involved in their own private conversation, which she did not appear to be invited to join. Whenever her eyes darted toward the round table (which now seemed slightly further away, despite not having moved) their gregarious host would recapture her attention, gesturing unrestrainedly with his hands as he suddenly remembered a new tale he simply had to share.
Ricky was paying more attention to the yarns being spun that evening then perhaps anything else he'd ever encountered… certainly more attention than he'd ever payed in Grade 6, which he'd failed three times due to being consistently drunk. At various points in the evening, he and the Wanderlust King would agree that it made no sense that this was stuff you had to learn on your own, considering people make you go to school for learning anyway. "But," the Wanderlust King would add after one of these moments, looking wistfully away to the side, "some things you just have to figure out on your own." At this, he'd wave his hand and shrug nonchalantly, before launching into another story.
At some point, Ludo fell asleep where he sat, and snored gently against the wall next to him. Sarah was surprised to find that he was the lightweight… meanwhile, Sir Didymus had her absolutely flummoxed with his ability to put away every sort of alcohol in quantities that seemed to defy the laws of physics. She supposed it had something to do with being a magical creature from the Underground, but still. She'd always expected Hoggle to be the drinker of the group, yet he seemed content putting away ale at a slow and steady pace. As a 21-year-old American, she was still trying to figure out exactly how drinking culture worked.
Finally, she narrowed her eyes at Hoggle, who caught her look of drunken anger and tapped Sir Didymus on the paw with a meaningful glance. Sir Didymus jumped a few inches in the air, turned to look at her, and began babbling his typical obsequious prattle.
"My Lady! Why, we've hardly had the chance to chat at all - all evening! Come, come, sit by us, let us share a toast to our friendship!" Sarah rolled her eyes with a shake of her head and a begrudging smile as she extricated herself from her cross-legged position. Her legs, she discovered, were pins and needles. Normally this was a feeling she despised, but now it merely seemed to remind her that she still had legs. If she were honest with herself, she might admit she'd completely forgotten about the lower half of her body.
She settled in next to Ludo's gently dreaming form, leaning against him and relishing the feeling of his warm rough fur against her cheek. He smelled lovely, like wet dog and ancient crumbling ziggurats, with a hint of wildflower. She sighed happily, feeling more content now that she was being included.
"All right," she said, ready to teach her friends a toast of her own. She'd been wondering if they drank, but she hadn't asked as she didn't want to encourage them to try something they weren't meant to have. Perhaps, she'd questioned to herself, drinking was for Abovegrounders. A way to feel a little more magical, if just for a few hours. "I'll teach you how to say 'cheers' in Gaelic. According to my Meemaw, that's where we're from, and she says Linda's side of the family was Irish too."
Sir Didymus pricked his ears forward, almost too eager to learn the new phrase from Sarah, while Hoggle gave her the same deadpan look she was beginning to suspect meant that he thought she was kind of an idiot. Furrowing her brows, she shook her head to clear the thought—why would he think less of her for teaching them a new way to say cheers? Illogical. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that Hoggle was silently laughing at her. The object of her consternation nodded at her and waved his hands as if to say 'get on with it' and so she did.
"Sláinte! Like, 'slawwn-chee'. It means…" at this, Sarah trailed off, not recalling exactly what it meant. She had not learned it from Meemaw after all, who would have insisted on her knowing the meaning. Meemaw had always taken very seriously the power of language.
No, Sarah had learned to say sláinte from a drunk Irish boy she'd met at a houseparty, before she'd transferred to NYU. She'd run into him repeatedly that last semester in New England, in seemingly more unusual circumstances every time, yet she still didn't know his name. They referred to each other affectionately as "that drunk girl" and "that drunk boy". She had repeatedly insisted to him that she rarely drank at all, she just happened to meet him every time she did.
It was one of the main things he teased her about, and he had teased her about nearly everything. Her accent, her dress sense, how much her shoes cost, the fact that she'd never even worked a part-time job, her distaste for cigarettes and smokers, and more. The only thing he never teased her about was her habit of magical thinking—ironic, because that was the main problem everyone else seemed to have with her.
Lost in her thoughts, trying to piece together carefree nights from over a year ago, she jolted back to the present moment when Hoggle finished her sentence after losing patience. "Health, child, it means health. As in, 'to your health'. Yeah, I know a little Gaelic too, you know. Little humans up-top think they invented everything, don't even remember the first thing about nothin'." At this, he lightly pounded his ale against the table, and raised his glass in toast. Sarah realized she'd forgotten the clinking and drinking part of the ritual, and hurried to catch up.
"Sláinte," they said at the same time, locking eyes with a nod of accord. Their cups met with a tinny plonk and Sarah finished her fourth beverage of the evening.
"FUCK THAT ROOSTER FUCKING COCKSUCKER FUCK FUCK! Who's got a gun around here? I'm gonna go make some Kentucky Fried Chicken out of that little shit!"
These are perhaps not the most charming words to be awakened by, but they were the first things Sarah heard the next morning as she awoke in the same place she'd settled in the previous night. Her mouth and her head were full of cotton, and there was a small dried trail of drool on the right side of her mouth. She suspected there may also have been drool on Ludo, but she knew he wouldn't mind. He was still snoozing peacefully, though he had shifted slightly when Ricky's still-drunken tirade woke his companion.
Hoggle was gone, though that didn't bother her as he often wandered off to do his own thing when they hung out, even in the Above. In a corner by the bar, opposite where everyone else had been grouped the night before, were the passed out forms of Sir Didymus and the Wanderlust King. The small table by them was covered in shot glasses, and Sarah tried to tally them—more to see if the gears in her head were ready to start turning than any vested interest in the outcome.
Obviously, the proprietor of the Sly Fox had won the drinking contest, but she was surprised by how well Didymus had held his own. He was only about 7 shots behind, if she was correct in guessing who's glasses were whose. Just as she was pondering this, Ricky stormed in from outside, entirely forgetting to wipe his shoes. He marched behind the bar and started rummaging through the shelves underneath it. After several more hurled invectives, he triumphantly held a metal lockbox aloft which looked as mundane to Sarah as anything she'd seen Above.
"What are you doing?!" she cried, starting to put two and two together... good thing she'd started the morning with a simple math problem. "Put that down! Put it back! It's not yours and you can't even open it and you'll just break things if you try! Stop being such a pill!" Her reaction might have been categorized as hysteria, though if Bubbles had said the same thing it would have just been good advice.
Ricky was used to being shrieked at by harpies who didn't understand that sometimes, men just have to be men, and do man things, like shooting cockadoodle-doo cocksuckers that want to scream about daylight at the top of their stupid little soon-to-be-deep-fried lungs. However, the last thing she said was insulting to him in a way he was unfamiliar with. First of all, what kind of pill? Did she have pills, and were they the good shit? Why did it sound so… extra fucked up? He couldn't place it, but it had something to do with her being from Connecticut and him being from Sunnyvale.
Regardless, he set the box back down on the shiny, darkly lacquered counter. He didn't want to deal with any more screaming, and women could yell way louder than birds. Plus, she was probably right about it not being his to use, even though he knew he was only going to borrow it. Sometimes he got in trouble with the borrowing things without asking thing. Plus, half the time he ended up deciding not to return them, which the local police seemed to categorize as burglary.
The Wanderlust King seemed to agree, as he sleepily mumbled from the floor with one eye peeled open: "Yes, yes, listen to fancy lady and do not steal my gun. It is funny kind of thing, you cannot use. 'You'll put your eye out, kid'" With this, he attempted to raise his right arm for another dramatic flourish, but only got it about a foot off the ground before he gave up and dropped the dead weight heavily.
Ricky's eyes lit up at a reference he actually understood. "The Christmas Thing! I love that movie, me and my pops rented it years ago from the Blockbuster. Anyway, now I can't borrow movies from there. But fuck 'em, that movie is worth all their dumb new stuff combined." His enthusiasm was met with the faintest grunt of approval, as the Wanderlust King resumed his slumber—if you could call it that.
"By the way," asked Sarah, looking to change the subject, "have you seen Hoggle?"
Ricky nodded mechanically. "Yeah, he's just off takin' a… having a…" the young man interrupted himself, realizing half-way into his answer that it might be slightly crude. "Uh, he's fine. He'll be around soon," he hedged, oddly proud of himself for salvaging his response.
Sarah raised both her eyebrows in an unattractive manner, and barked a laugh. "Ha. Okay then," she replied, her voice pitched an octave lower than usual. Ricky wondered how she went from being such a hot babe to one of the boys in a millisecond, but before he could test his theory by saying something truly crass, she was once again exuding feminine mystique.
"Say, I wonder if there's something to eat around here…" the young woman seemed to wonder aloud, though Ricky knew from experience that this was an early warning sign to feed the beauty before she became the beast. Lucy was exactly the same way after a night of heavy drinking, and not half as subtle about it. Always demanding specific stuff when it would be easier if she'd just let him rustle up what was available.
Well, there was never a question that Sarah Williams was more polite than Lucy LaFlamme. After all, Sarah'd been raised right. Ricky didn't know exactly how he and his friends had been raised wrong, but everyone always told him it wasn't right so he figured: if it wasn't wrong and it wasn't right, it must be left. Of course, left is exactly how Bubs' parents raised him, and Ricky and Julian's moms too. Ricky at least knew who his dad was, Julian had only had his Grandma, and she got old and died two years ago.
As Ricky was pondering if that might have anything to do with Julian's current entanglement with Sarah's mom, Hoggle waddled back into the Sly Fox, looking refreshed and less hungover than everyone else. "Right, we should make a start," he stated to the patrons who were still conscious. "Not yet, but better start thinking abut it." The dwarf seemed matter of fact, as if he were used to being the one in charge after a night out. "Can't believe that damned fox got tricked into another drinking contest with him, I don't know why he keeps doing it. Something about wanting to 'outfox the Sly Fox' he says," grumbled Hoggle as he searched the room for any lost belongings. "Before he falls flat on his face," he finished his train of thought with a barbed look at Didymus.
In fact, at one point, Sir Didymus considered himself sober. He had abstained from alcohol for over 90 years when he first met Hoggle, Sarah, and Ludo. The reason he had abstained from alcohol for over 90 years was because every time he started drinking, no matter what pub he was in, he'd end up at the Sly Fox trying to best the Wanderlust King. If every time you went for a pint with mates, you ended up drinking two dozen shots of high-grade moonshine, you too might decide that drinking just wasn't for you.
In fact, Sir Didymus' previous post in the Bog of Eternal Stench was the result of a lost drinking game. The Wanderlust King had made an enemy of Jareth several hundred years before that—something about cheating the Goblin King of a bride, though the Wanderlust King assured everyone that for a wedding, two parties must consent… which is probably the real reason he'd been sent to the Bog.
At any rate, the owner of the Sly Fox was not so easy to pin down, and as such, the Bog of Eternal Stench kept moving around. One day, it would be by the Fireys, but by the next morning Jareth would wake to find the aroma of fetid magical sewage drifting in through his window, surrounding the Castle like a shitmoat. Just when he'd finally acclimated to the smell, it would vanish, and he'd prance around in high spirits, singing and dancing with the few goblins that could tolerate his odorous company.
Then, just when he'd finally stopped worrying where and when the Bog would return, the Wanderlust King would reappear—or rather, his Kingdom would, as he was nowhere to be found and neither was the Sly Fox. Jareth knew this for a fact because he had spent every waking hour spying, interrogating, haranguing and berating his subjects for their lack of knowledge as to the location of the gypsy punk's whereabouts. He had even deigned to fly Above, though he'd found the whole experience nauseating. The humans had been doing something with black smoke which made it nearly impossible to see anything—he'd even entertained a brief moment of paranoia that they might be planning some kind of attack on His realm. After that, he put a dwarf in charge of reading their newspapers, as they kept arriving at breakneck speed and he couldn't be bothered with the petty day-to-day details.
"Just let me know if anything BIG is happening, Higgle," Jareth had insisted, after being pestered for the third time that day about some minor territorial scuffles. They seemed very obsessed with squiggly lines they drew on their maps, which were supposed to tell everyone where they could and could not go.
Jareth found the whole thing tritely amusing. The borders of his Kingdom were the borders of his Kingdom… he didn't know where they were, or what shape they were in, or anything else of that nature. He knew they were there, and that they worked. Why mess with a good thing? Who would want to know where every little lake and hill was? It would ruin the mystery. Besides, things tended to move around in his realm. Of course they had maps, you needed to be able to get where you were going, but the maps changed to reflect the territory every 13 hours. Sometimes that meant they were inaccurate for a period, but everyone knows that the map is not the territory.
"But it IS big, Jareth. They're calling it The Great War. They've invented new weapons, great metal carts that fire cannonballs, and high-speed projectiles. They dig large ditches to attack one another," Hoggle adjusted his wire rim spectacles as he tried to explain to his monarch that what was happening Above might actually effect them in some way. Jareth's arched eyebrow and disdainful expression made it clear that he wasn't putting together the full picture. As did the fact that his only reply was a bored 'So?'
"So, Jareth, Your Majesty, King of the Goblins… if everyone is sending off their children to fight this Great War," Hoggle began, his voice dripping with sticky contempt and sarcasm at the absurdity of his Monarch's refusal to acknowledge the temerity of humankind to find new ways of killing each other. "If everyone's sending their babies to the trenches, doesn't sound like they'll be needing you to take any off their hands, now does it?"
Jareth's brows knit together as he actually considered the problem. Actually considering a problem wasn't a thing he'd done in centuries, other than his battle with the Wanderlust King, which was more to just keep his hand in than anything serious. Sometimes, immortals need a silly little bloodfeud to spice things up. Helps to pass the time, really. Otherwise it just stops and that's not even boring, it's beyond being bored. Jareth had spent enough centuries beyond being bored, if you wanted to count them by how much time passed Above. Ever since that sainted asshole came along, blowing up everyone's spot, Jareth found that both realms had lost their sparkle for him.
"Wait…" he considered rustily, "They're sending babies to fight in wars? Now this I have to see!" With a flurry of glitter, fine cloth and feathers, he was replaced by the form of an owl quickly winging its way out of the Castle beyond the Labyrinth. Hoggle groaned, and held his head in his hands.
"Why me?" he queried aloud to no one, or perhaps to the Castle herself. There was only a thrum of anger from the stones, and he kicked at the floor roughly, stubbing his toes for his trouble. "Damn Castle. Damn Goblin King. And damn me too!" He stalked off, flinging his half-moon shaped glasses to the ground as he did so. The Lion's Head Tavern would be doing a decent lunch spread right now if he hurried, his mind more on what to wash his meal down with than the food its self.
"Fuck! FUCK! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" This time, the string of mindless invective were Jareth's own, and all the more meaningful for it. The Seelie Court has always respected the power of language, and to utter a curse among them is punishable by a blood duel.
But frankly, they weren't here right now (that he knew of, he hadn't spoken to them since that thing with the so-called snakes) and if they were, they would be cursing too. Frankly, that would have made him feel safer. As it was, he was winging his way through an artillery field, narrowly dodging bullets. He had expected to see some pussies with bows and arrows, a few real warriors with broadswords or scimitars, maybe some shield maidens if he was lucky. Plus, where were the babies? He had been promised babies, he was certain of it. Instead, everyone was shooting off these metal fire arrow things with no stick. How did it maintain trajectory without feathers? They were brutal, too. The field below (he had finally reached a safe cruising altitude) was slick with crimson, covered in the bodies of young men riddled with holes.
'Like Swiss cheese,' he found himself thinking abstractly, 'or little meaty sponges.' At this, the wind shifted and he found himself abruptly tumbling down from the thermal he'd been riding, perilously close to these tiny little whizzing projectiles of some kind of metal… His curiosity got the better of him as he eyed the… the bullets as they were apparently called.
"No… couldn't be…" he muttered to himself in shock, his owl face even more owlish than usual. Of course, if anyone on the field had been able to hear him over the gunfire, they would have only heard owl-noises. A courier pigeon in a nearby tree, however, was having a quiet chortle to himself. His was a bit of a shit gig, but at least he knew what was up, unlike this yokel who kept veering closer to the field of fire.
It was hard to tell what was going on, there was so much commotion. It was loud in every sense of the word, and Jareth was out of practice when it came to the basics of existing. The last time he'd listened to his intuition, he'd ended up glorified babysitter in some long-forgotten principality, while the rest of the world moved on without him. So while his intuition was telling him that these newfangled weapons might actually be able to injure him, he ignored that line of reasoning. Surely, he thought, that's simple paranoia—just like how he'd worried that all the smog from their factories was some kind of dastardly plot.
It was just as he assured himself that he'd been frightened over nothing (and that Higgle would be sent to the Bog for lying about babies on the battlefield) that a so-called bullet clipped his right wing.
"FUCK!" he cried aloud, the squawk loud and clear enough that three boys on the field below actually heard it and correctly interpreted that a snowy white owl had just cried a word their mothers' would have washed their mouths out with soap for uttering. With a mad flapping of wings, some quick spellwork, and a few hasty prayers to Gods and Goddesses he'd refused to talk with since The Incident, he managed to fly clear of the field and wing his way over a particularly treacherous-looking woods.
Finally, he reached the other side and was relieved to see ploughed fields. Anything that might try to eat him in his current state would steer clear of the humans, more or less. That's how it always had been, except for a few notable exceptions. The last time he'd been above, they were setting all the cats on fire and they seemed pretty intent on finishing the job, so surely by now it was just lapdogs and cattle.
Of course, he had thought he was being paranoid about the high velocity lead projectiles, too. His strength gave out as the wind dragged him near the farmhouse. In a fenced area next to the barn, a nonplussed looking pig paused his eating only for a moment before continuing.
After the humans dropped a bomb a mile away, nothing really phased the pig anymore. It had made him consider his mortality, and what he realized did not inspire confidence in his future. It was ironic, that he was stress eating now. Maybe he just wanted to get it over with already. The pig sighed. Might as well be friendly, it was the end of the world after all.
"Hullo there, owl. You made one hell of an entrance just there. Gotta stay away from them red fields, mate. Course, you won't remember anyway since you're as good as dead. But maybe you will, if you really focus on it as you're goin' out. Maybe you'll remember that you want no part of their wars."
The owl coughed and sputtered, it's body having decided that this was the perfect moment to expel a pellet from a mouse he'd eaten 300 years ago. Jareth let the owl mind take over as he meditated through this latest injustice. A moment later, the pellet was free and Jareth could once again breathe and speak.
"I'll have you know you are speaking to Royalty and you will speak with deference in the future, pig. I am no mere owl, I am the King of the Goblins, Master of the Labyrinth, Ruler of the Underground—" at this, something was clearly muffled. Jareth could not lie, but he did not have to state the full truth either.
Unfortunately for him, that was one smart pig. "Oh, King Shit is it? Well, Your Majesty," the pig began sarcastically, bowing for effect, "fat lot of good that does you on a farm, now does it? I don't know if you've noticed, but you look like an owl to me, and a bloody one at that. Only reason the cat hasn't eaten you yet is because she knows you're not going anywhere and the sun is just right for a nap."
At the mention of felines, Jareth made the effort of sitting up as best he could. He'd been trying to shift forms since he hit the ground, and nothing was working. Iron bullets. What were they up to? They lived short lives and had even shorter memories, but surely they remembered what iron truly was. Didn't they?
"Well I hate to break it to you, pig, but I think we're in a similar predicament," groused Jareth as he wobbled on his spindly owl legs. "Or haven't they ever fed you table scraps after a slaughter?"
At this, the pig had the decency to flush a slightly pinker shade. He'd forgotten about that—when his friend, his true and only friend on the whole farm, had been murdered. Cooked, the smell wafting around the entire farm, tantalizing the cat and the two blue heelers who followed the male human around. They'd fought about the table scraps, actually. The woman one, she didn't want to do it, to feed him their leavings. Not that time.
She'd said it was sick, but the man screamed louder than she could and slammed his fist on the table. A warning: Next time, woman, it will be you. Do as you are told. You're being hysterical. It's wasteful. The pig doesn't know, it's just a dumb pig. Do you really think it can feel things? If so, you must be the bigger monster than I am. You were always making a pet of it. Was that what it was, your friend? I'm not friends with them, I'm their farmer. I don't eat my friends.
She'd run out of the house stone white and silent as the grave, but water continued to pour from her eyes as she pushed her unfinished ham into the trough. He'd looked her square in the eyes as she'd done it. "You're just a dumb animal," she told him, hysteria rising in her voice. "You're just a dumb animal. It's the best way to be. It's the only way to be in a world like ours." Something snapped in them both in that moment, some connection the three of them had once had, the human woman and her two porcine companions.
'Okay,' the pig had thought at her, the last thing he'd think at her for a long time, 'I'm just a dumb animal.'
The pig had gone silent after Jareth's retort about table scraps, and that suited the Goblin King just fine. He didn't want to spend what looked increasingly like his final moments having it lorded over him by Sunday roast, thank you. He'd been dealt enough shit—literal shit, it still boggled his mind sometimes—to deserve a good death at the very least. So he'd stand up, and face the cat like a man. Like a bird man. Like a… stupid bird?
God, why did he have to go for owl? As the pain increased, he felt his higher consciousness slipping, the bird mind taking over. Owls are impressive looking, and he never figured on needing their survival instincts. Fuck, he could have gone for raven. Hell, even dove would have been better. That stool pigeon seemed to be having a nice snark at his expense, and it was actually just a bird.
At least, he thought defensively, I'm still pretty. That was a Seelie thought, more or less. Something true, something about him, something an owl doesn't sit around contemplating.
At least I'm still pretty. At least I'm still pretty. I always did like crimson and white together, though I was never one for red myself. Like blood on snow… oh, it is blood. Why is there so much of it? Why does my arm hurt? Oh, I'm an owl. I'm a stupid bird dying on a farm, about to be dinner for a cat who probably won't even finish me off. I'm a stupid sexy bird man.
For some reason, this final thought seemed to stick—probably the change of phrase from 'pretty' to 'sexy' which had more loaded connotations for a former member of the Seelie Court—and suddenly brought to mind all the sex he hadn't been having for uncountable eons. Now that was joie de vivre! There was a feminine presence nearby too, he'd felt the pig thinking painful pot roast thoughts about her. Rudely, he delved into the pigs memories, and saw the last moment woman and pig had shared a true connection.
She was capable of true connection?!
The humans really had changed, he supposed. Or maybe he'd just never been a pig to a woman like that. And more to her favor, she was aesthetically pleasing, even though she'd been doing that horrid thing females do where they express their emotions with saltwater.
Suddenly, Jareth had a new plan, and he was going to need some assistance. He might try to reach her himself, but they'd never interacted before so it would be dubious at best. But the pig? The pig had loved her once, and she him. If she were the sort of human woman to leak that much fluid over her dietary choices, she probably still loved the pig… which actually, Jareth realized, might be worse. If she were blocking him out unconsciously, she'd never hear either of them, because the Goblin King only knew of her through the pig's memories.
It was at that moment that Jareth noticed a feeling of being watched intently. He turned his head 180°, and gazed up at the second floor of the farmhouse, where the only glass window stood between him and an orange tabby who was licking her prominent fangs in apparent delight.
"Well," Jareth thought to the pig, "It's been nice knowing you."
The pig vocalized a grunt of reply and buried his face deeper in the feed trough. He didn't want to know.
The thing about cats is that they're perfectly predictable in their unpredictability. Every now and then they even go by the book, just to throw everyone else off-kilter. They know they always land on their feet, and they really wish everyone else would figure it out too. Well, except some of those tasty morsels of failure-to-fly syndrome, they're welcome to fall into a feline's gaping maw from time to time. Just a little, as a treat. Besides, the other little chickadees need to see that it can be failed as easily as passed, the test of flight. After all, the whole trick to flying is simple: throw yourself at the ground, and miss. So what's that gaping maw really but just a little friendly encouragement from the Universe?
The cat, who had a name but was called Ginger by the human woman, viewed herself as an agent of karma. Typically, any fae thing stupid enough to fly into a hail of lead bullets and then insult the first intelligent individual he met after crash landing would be only too tasty. Imagine how sleek her fur would look after feasting on a creature chockablock with glamor magic! She could picture it now… they'd come and make daguerreotypes of her, they'd put her glorious image on the metal prison which the good food used to arrive in.
These days, there was only "fend for yourself!" and a kick in the rear from the man. The woman apologized for it, she knew, she knew what the cat really wanted when the cat licked her chomps meaningfully. The woman said there was a meat shortage because of a thing called war which was loud and like a fight that seemed to never end. The cat was beyond sick of this shit. A month ago, some horrible explosion went off nearby, something called a 'bomb' that terrified everyone on the farm, especially the humans. None of the animals had ever seen the humans scared before, and now there was a constant undercurrent of fear. It made the mice taste dreadful.
Obviously you want your dinner to die with a thrill of adrenaline, a rush of terror… but when they've been steeped in despair for months, they don't even care to fight back. Horrible flavor and can't even get the metal-prison food? War, the cat knew, was one of those human stupidities that just might do everyone else in as it wiped out the two-leggers.
The cat huffed a sigh. Mostly the cat did not care for any two-leggers it had met, and that absolutely included geese, but the cat was fond of it's human pet. Lately, the other human had been taking too many liberties. The cat knew that the bigger, stronger ones weren't as clever as the smaller, prettier ones, but this was all a step too far. First off, kicking your Mistress? Clearly the human man really believed he was actually in charge here, and worse, the human woman was starting to believe that too. Already she'd neglected brushing and massaging the cat, and the cat was tired of having to remove its own burrs. That's what those silly opposable thumbs are for, woman! That, and the tin-prison meats.
Where, the cat wondered, had all the good help gone?
While she pondered this, she felt something new radiating off her prey. It was… in heat? What a strange little creature, to think of sex at a time like this. But then, she supposed most of her prey thought about sex as they perished, at least in an abstract 'life and death' sense. Not, to be fair, the way the creature in the barnyard was thinking about sex. The cat didn't know whether to be appalled or impressed, and for a cat, that is impressive. Cats are some of nature's most notorious fornicators, up there only with rabbits for being down to screw in every imaginable position—and cats are more flexible.
The cat known to some as Ginger began cleaning her front claws carefully with her tongue as she considered what her next move might be. Yes, she could kill him and consume his magic, and that would be fun for a few minutes, but frankly unsporting considering his condition. Besides, she didn't care for the taste of owl generally. She preferred sparrow. Now those two idiots who give all four-loggers a bad name, those two idiots would eat anything.
Suddenly, her mind was made. Content that she was always right, the cat hopped into the windowsill to tease her new prey. In his mind, he had imagined women licking their lips seductively. She gave it a try, and was only more amused that his reaction was terror. Well, wasn't that the sort of thing he was into anyway?
Downstairs, the cat found the woman in her usual haunt, the kitchen. She was wearing shoes, which always drove the cat nuts. Right, thought the cat, I'm just going to have to be obvious.
She stood on her hind legs, placing her front paws against the woman's leg. "Mreow," said the cat, which roughly translated to 'hey you idiot, I have something important to tell you'. This is in fact what every meow means, more or less.
The dumb human looked at the cat with tired, sad and dumb eyes. "What now?" asked the human, already rejecting any sort of connection her familiar friend might be seeking. "Can't you see I'm mopping and cooking dinner right now? Can't you bother me after the dishes are put away? I have time for you then, if you sneak in before he finishes his rounds." The human woman knew that the male (her husband, as she thought of him) disapproved of their relationship. She knew that was illogical, because every farm needed at least one mouser, and he appreciated animals who worked for him.
Yet, she knew that the cat would be the next to go, somehow. Something had changed between husband and wife the night she'd… the night she'd fed scraps to the pig. They had been in love, so in love, like a radio play or a romance novel. Sure, things had gotten rockier since the war began, but they were still them.
Not anymore. He was like a stranger to her in every way, and it terrified her. She felt like the old dappled mare they'd once had, sold for dogmeat at the beginning of war. She'd been so broken down by the end, barely moved at a trot if you really dug your heels in… but that day, when they took her away to sell her flesh for canines to feast upon, she'd practically skipped down the road away from the farm.
'Is it better,' wondered the woman, 'to finally die, to be free from all this thankless servitude?'
"Mrow!" repeated the cat, getting impatient. The dogs knew she was cooking up a plan, and were heading home. The man had sense enough to listen to them, something the cat frankly wished her own pet would manage right now. But no, the human was now contemplating herself in the reflection of her carving knife. Of course the cat would typically encourage the human to take more interest in her appearance, but now was not the time for vanity. 'Wake up!' the cat insisted with another loud meow, this time allowing her claws to pierce the woman's thick shirts and draw blood from her leg.
"Ow!" the woman jumped, startled out of her daydreams of an easy escape. "Damn you, cat!" she glared, and the cat realized she had made a miscalculation somewhere, because the human woman only called her 'cat' before bodily throwing her outside.
"No no no no no, I can explain, I can explain, there's a man outside and he needs your help," the cat screamed, making its best attempts at emulating the clumsy human tongue. Can't even purr and they expect everyone else to speak their barbaric language just for a seat at the table? Absurd, but to protect that bird the cat would do it. For clearly altruistic reasons, of course.
The human woman, who also had a name, and also was called something else, didn't catch that last part. But she understood 'no no no no no' well enough, having heard nothing else for most of her life excluding a few short years where someone had listened, and said yes. Years in the past, when she was in love. In the time before la guerre.
"Non? Qu'est-ce que c'est que, mon petit chou?" she asked the cat, holding it aloft near the open doorway. It was funny, but she could swear Ginger was trying to tell her something. It certainly seemed that way, because the cat was now mrow-row-rowing at full volume, and she noticed that the dogs were heading back into the yard. The cat didn't care for the dogs but she wasn't bothered by them either—she made it very obvious that they were simply beneath her. On very rare occasions, she did this by launching herself onto their backs with claws deeply sunk in, riding them like terrified ponies until the man threw a boot. This she saved for when her pet needed cheering up, since obviously it isn't as funny if it keeps happening. The cat was not one to beat a dead horse, unlike the author.
Suddenly, in a flash of insight, the sweaty young woman noticed a bright white and red pile of… something, near the pigpen. No wonder she hadn't noticed it before… she found her gaze always slid right over the pigpen, as though it weren't really there. The cat leapt down and raced for the white and red thing, and the human woman followed, slipping slightly on the wooden stairs of the porch but catching herself before she tumbled. It had been close, almost as though she slipped and fell just then, but also didn't.
The cat turned back to give her a golden-eyed stare, which she met with shock that she attributed to having almost taken a tumble. Suddenly, she remembered what she was doing, and realized that the white and red thing was a bird of some sort. Oh! Was it one of the neighbors ducks? They'd be furious if the cat had made off with one… she knew pickings had been slim for Ginger lately, but she didn't think it had gotten so bad as poaching.
To her relief, as she got nearer the bird revealed its self to be an owl. The pig was staring at him, as though deep in thought, and she flashed back to that moment when she had fed him her friend, his friend, their friend. Was he thinking about that? Was he thinking about death? How could a man look at this situation and not see the fraternité? It was their word anyway!
In the blink of an eye, she scooped the injured avian up gently in her apron smock, and with a glance behind her to make sure the man was not yet in view, darted away into the forest. 'I'll save him,' she thought to her old friend, no longer believing in fairytales but good enough at patching up bloody flesh.
Note: I chose to give Lucy the last name of LaFlamme because many of the characters in the Trailer Park Boys universe share names with their actors, which means that when people occasionally write TPB fic, they end up referring to Lucy by her actor's real name.
I will be editing as I do more research, this is a very rough draft. When I began writing In a Realm of Madness, I was doing so as a free-flowing, mindless exercise in something inconsequential after a decade of writer's block. Before I knew it, the work had transformed into my subconscious spewing a variety of cretinous bullshit online for all to see. Also, it stopped being one extended dick joke.
I am humbled by the kind people who pointed out what an uncultured dipshit I was being, and am sincerely grateful for their guidance. Thanks for refusing to tolerate my ignorance or hand-wave it away due to a lack of education on my part.