2. The picnic runs awry.
Space and time become one and the other, and are dispelled. The pores of the earth open-up and the negative view shows the crevices burning with inverted shadow. Sliding across the face of eternity, passing two millimetres and a million miles, the whispers at the corners of reality. There are moments when certainty and doubt create gaps in the fabric of perception, and vacuous Charibdys or snatching Scylla writhe forth and clasp at the freshets of dispersed individual. She no longer screams. She has no mouth, no mind capable of comprehending fear. She is she, slipping and sliding through a labyrinth of chance, variables, and heartbeats of indecision. There is only the realisation of control lost, as a gate closes shut behind her, seams reseal themselves seamless, and the anti-actuality spewed-forth a coalescing entity to land steaming, streaming effluvia of unreal onto the floor of a new world.
Alex fell to the ground, heaving. Her heart pounded like a bass drum. The blood in her ears was roaring. The world was covered in a veil of insubstantial crimson gauze.
"That wasn't right," she thought. "What the hell was that? Still, what does one expect when she drinks an unmarked bottle of clearly-magical fluid?"
She was half-way between a sprawl and a crouch, and atop a floor of dusty flagstones. She looked up, and saw a road, and realised that she was on a footpath. This footpath was in the middle of a forest, with no signs of habitation, but Alex discounted this and focused more on the concrete fact of the carriageway.
She got up and, pondering to herself, decided to follow along the way to her left. After some time in this direction she paused, because she had come-up behind what appeared to be a rat. It was slightly-less than five feet tall, a deep-brown in colour, and was walking along on three of its legs aided by a cane. It was also balding.
"Hello," said Alex, not entirely certain of how to approach a giant rat. The animal's head snapped about, and its eyes shone glassily. It grinned, exposing several worn and rotted incisors, one broken-off at the root.
"Hello," it said, wheezing.
"What brings you through these parts?" asked Alex. "Would you like some help? I mean, with your leg and all."
"I'm fine with my leg!" barked the rat. "Don't touch it. Don't touch me."
Alex was both surprised and slightly offended by this. She digressed, however.
"Have you been travelling long?" she asked.
"No."
"Oh, well how long then? I've only been at it for a little while myself, but I've founded it very interesting so far."
The rat glared at her and grinned again. She could smell the whisky.
"A few moments," it said. "I was living away back in the shanty town, but then the Cataclysm destroyed it. Had to flee. Lost the leg. Just vanished away with a whiff of red smoke."
"How peculiar." Alex did not think it would be wise to admit her part in it all.
"Others, too," continued the rat. "Birds, men, lizards, crustaceans. Some escaped, but others were washed along by the Cataclysm."
"Dreadful."
"And you?" said the rat, its scabbed head levelling on her. "What brings you along the road?"
Alex baulked. She raided her mind.
"Oh, just for a lark," she said.
"A lark?" replied the rat. "You have peculiar conceptions of a lark."
After some time walking along, a number of other animals drew level with them. Some were quite large, and some quite small. There were larks, finches, parrots, cats, ferrets, lions, and amidst them things of a darker persuasion, with uncertain limbs and teeth that shone silvery in the light. Eventually the road became quite crowded with refugees, and everyone began to sit and rest. They were all fairly tired from the walking.
"I'm exhausted," said a finch. "I haven't walked so in years. My legs are burning."
"Why not fly?" suggested Alex, and immediately wished she hadn't. The finch, which had been facing the other way, turned to reveal hideous burns and bulbous, gourd-like growths. Half of its face had evidently been burnt away, and the left wing was only a chard nub.
"I'm very sorry," said Alex. "I had no idea..."
"It's well you didn't," said the finch, "or I might take some pleasure in showing you how to be more respectful of the misfortune of others!" It pounced at her with a half-hearted snap of its beaks. Alex stumbled off to find a calmer seat amongst the bivouacked.
As she sat there, Alex grew hungry.
"I don't suppose that anyone here might have any food to eat," she thought glumly to herself. Several animals around seemed to understand the dark look that was spread across her face. Many were wearing the same look themselves. It was a marvel that it didn't wear-out from over-use.
"Unlike butter, a feeling is more pronounced when spread," Alex reflected.
Finally, a cassowary with a scorched abdomen rose and voiced the opinion of the majority of beast, namely, that they were hungry, and was there anywhere from which some food might be had.
"Perhaps some nuts and berries," called the finch. It had regained its composure after the faux-pas.
"Are there any?" said the rat. It had been the first to stop for a rest, and as a result somehow come into the role of impromptu chieftain. "Look around. Who are least damaged? You go look. Do it, I say." The commanded animals did not budge. "DO IT!" screamed the rat. The animals slinked off into the trees, muttering.
Perhaps ten minutes later they reappeared, and announced a copse of apple-trees several hundred meters away.
"And?" said the rat.
"And what?" relied one of the animals, a gazelle.
"And why the hell haven't you brought any back, idiot!" yelled the rat. The foragers turned tail and ran at the sharp looks of the gathering.
"He's rather an authoritarian isn't he?" remarked Alex to a butcher bird.
"Aye," said the bird, "but yi'll nay tell me they'd've risponded t'any udder?"
"Alex, wisely, did not tell him that. Instead she remained quiet and slightly ashamed of herself, and reflected upon how lucky it was that the rat hadn't ordered her off to find food.
After a few minutes the chain of supplies began to arrive. The uninjured animals, huffing under their loads and cursing their lack of thumbs, dropped the apples onto the trampled grass and the animals began to eat their fil.
"This was a fine idea," said the finch. "Whose was it?"
"The rat's, I believe," said the cassowary. The rat remained silent, for he was a most agreeable animal, and more than happy to allow the two instigators their misperception, Alex ate an apple and enjoyed it thoroughly. She was of the mind that if the finch was so stupid as to forget suggesting something, it certainly wasn't the animal to start putting on pedestals. Or was it? She wasn't entirely sure.
A lion, basking, growled.
"This is all well and good," it said, "but as to us carnivores, how do we eat?"
"Perhaps you should hunt something," said a roebuck. The lion baulked.
"Hunt?" it said. "Why, I never hunt! I am the king of beasts. It is for my harem to procure the meat!"
This harem was decidedly lacking, and the roebuck was quick to point this out.
"True," said the lion, "which is why the procurement of meat is such a pressing issue at this time."
"I would have to agree with His Majesty the lion on this," said one of the sharp-toothed, shadowy things. As it spoke, its eyes glittered and its jaws clicked and spewed-forth drool like an opened tap.
"Most definitely," said a dragon, its stomach rumbling. The other carnivores joined in with their assent.
"Well, then go off and hunt for the lion," said a gibbon. "You won't get very far complaining."
"Hunt, eh?" said the lion. "Too true, too true. And what does the rat think of all this?"
Every animal looked to the rat expectantly. Alex craned her neck to see through the forest of haunches and dewlaps. The rat, beckoning for a space to be cleared around him, sat with the air of a Buddha and looked around imself, seeming very wise. Alex coiuld not help feeling impressed.
"It seems," said the rat, "that the carnivores must hunt, and, I myself being of the omnivorous persuasion-," There was much ooing and ahing at this surprise revelation. "-, the plight of the poor beast is far too clear to me. I myself hanker after hot red flesh, and would more than happily hunt for it, too. Except-,"
Ears pricked.
"Except that my leg is gone, and as a hunter I am now useless. And observe the lion, in similar straits, his left paw clearly bruised."
"It is very tender to walk on," said the lion. "I can barely do so without wincing."
"And the dragon!" continued the rat. "Oh the poor dragon!"
"The poor dragon, poor, poor dragon!" (This from the dragon itself).
"The noble dragon is clearly suffering from a case of asthma!" The dragon's cries suddenly became interspersed with harsh coughing and wheezing. The assembled animals sighed. "And the things, and creatures, they cannot hunt, for if they were to do so then who would care for the poor lion and dragon?"
"Who indeed?" asked the animals. Alex leant forward.
"And so we see that you must hunt for us," said the rat, "to ensure that these horrible ailments do not drag our fine comrade the dragon, and His Majestic Highness the lion, down to the grave."
The animals murmured amongst themselves.
"But we can't hunt," said a possum. "We're herbivores, or insectivores at best!"
The animals joined in with cries of "oh yes" and "totally inept at it".
"Well then," said the rat, in a sad, tremulous voice, "there is only one thing for it. Our friend, and our king, shall die, and the carnivores who tend them shall waste away from hunger, weeping over the corpses of the noble fallen." The carnivores nodded and looked very sad. One jackal actually burst into tears, which greatly moved the herbivores and was a decider for popular opinion. None of them seemed to realise that the jackal had stubbed it's toe.
"Please, is there nothing we can do?" begged the animals, weeping for their doomed compatriots.
"Nothing," said the rat. "Except."
"Except?"
"Except perhaps, one thing. My friends, my companions, my brothers and sisters in calamity, if by chance only some of you might make a small sacrifice, that others could go on living."
"A sacrifice?" thought Alex. "This doesn't sound promising." She began to creep away slowly through the expanse of wildlife.
"If by chance you might suffer, that the greater good might succeed!" the animals cheered. "If by any chance you were willing to lay down everything for the good of the race, and not the individual!" There were roars of support. "If by any chance you kght give your lives, that those more worthy might live!" The roars were thunderous. The cries rolled across the forest like a cannonade.
Alex, a shrewd if oppurtunistic girl, fled. She paused only once, to snatch-up a mother fieldmouse and her babies and slip them into her trouser pocket. She ran through the woods, the protesting matriarch nipping at her thigh, and when she was at what she judged to be a safe distance she looked back. She saw the crimson, the washes of it, the feasting lion and dragon and thing and creatures, the jackal tearing at the bones and being batted aside, and through it all the rat, dancing and laughing and nipping hunks of carrion from the deceased. The finch and the lark lay dead, the cassowary was dragged-down a few meters from the glade. The few birds who could fly took wing, and those too small to be noticed crept away. Alex, blanching, turned into the trees and fled. As she did, she dropped the fieldmice to the ground and left them, looking back at the glade, mixtures of fervour and horror coiling across their faces.