Chapter 3
Brave or Stupid
The first reaction Courage felt in his body was to run away. To scream with eyes bugging out from his head and run away as far as he could from the tentacle.
But that was the Courage of the past. Now he just stood there, shivering in fear but not running away, allowing his legs to become paralysed, chained to the gravel of the alleyways. The tentacle waved almost absently before it tried grasping the rim of the crater again, seeming to try and pull its owner up from the ground. It seemed to slowly succeed, with no strenuous sounds coming from the creature, as it slowly appeared before Courage.
It was a small squid. A navy blue squid with sweet effeminate baby eyes and long eyelashes, with long arrowed smooth body and at least four or five tentacles of a lighter blue like the petals of bluebells.
What made Courage gasp in the next moment was not the appearance of a squid hitting down from the sky like a comet. But it was his memory. He knew this creature. he remembered a familiar creature like the squid.
Ummm...hello? asked Courage at first, testing the newcomer's response. The small squid looked up at him with wonder. The same wonder that a child feels if they had met Santa Claus. The squid crept closer to the dog with a sense of amazement and joy, even being capable on land with no problems breathing the polluted air of the city and the Earth's atmosphere.
As Courage waited for the creature to arrive at his feet, he felt something in his thoughts. He felt...no...heard? Did he hear or feel something? Or was it rather both? It was something he was receiving. he didn't feel it exactly and he knew it wasn't coming through his ears. He looked down at the squid as he began imagining words, words he wasn't thinking of.
I am so glad to have finally found you!
Found me? Courage pondered on that phrase before more thoughts flowed without his will.
I have come here to tell you something. I know that it was you who saved us before.
He knew that. He remembered that day. The Starmaker. A squid that was from space. Not from another planet as far as he knew, but from space itself, the infinite darkness between stars and planets. They were a mysterious race that created the stars themselves. Yet another thing he learnt that completely shot science from the water. If he heard that, he wouldn't believe it.
But he knew. Because he was the one who brought the Starmakers back. Even though the mother had died on Earth and turned into a garden of flowers on the Bagg farm (he never understood how that happened), and the father was gone forever somewhere, the children of the Starmakers lived on.
And here he had one of them. It was a welcoming sight, despite the test it gave him on his sanity, but he calmed down and let the squid explain her mission.
You remember my duty to give birth to the stars, to carry on the work of my mother and father and keep the Universe alive with the stars. I must tell you that something has gone wrong.
Wrong? murmured Courage, as the thoughts flowed with increasing panic into his mind.
There are creatures out there, who want to rule the Universe. They want to stop the stars from being born, from being created by us. They want to control existence itself, even to try and capture or kill me and my race. And they managed to capture my family.
Who captured your family? asked the dog, his mind calming down.
Chickens. Chickens from Space.
That set his panic meter up once more. Courage remembered the chickens very well. he did not know how many of them were evil (as he had met three of them that were quite friendly after he stopped them from manipulating Muriel and Eustace for a mission), but he remembered one particularly evil chicken.
The first one he ever met. The first one to come to Nowhere. The red eyed chicken.
You know of them?
Mmhmm...I met them long ago...Are they trying to control everything?
Their leader is a maniacal creature. He is obsessed with power. He wants to prove to everyone, even other races, that he can rule them all. And sadly, he can, if he captures all the Starmakers.
How many does he have? You're here, did any others escape?
I do not know. I can barely remember. I think one of my brothers got away as well, but we got separated. The chickens never saw him escape and-OH NO!
What? Courage was surprised by the sudden exclamation of fear in his mind.
They knew I escaped. They were chasing me. I almost forgot. They're coming to this planet. They're going to capture me...and kill you.
Courage stood up a little and felt fear creeping into his throat as the Starmaker continued.
They know you're a powerful enemy of theirs and they won't stop or hesitate to kill anyone, especially not you, Courage. They know about you, and they want you, the leader especially for revenge.
I...I see...wait, how do you know my name?
They talked about you a lot. They mention the troublesome purple canine that thwarted their attempts of taking over this planet Earth. You've been the only one they could never defeat.
But...why do they want this planet?
It's important to their plans. I am unsure of what they are but this planet is very important for their conquest. You must not let them take over the world, Courage. You have to save your home once again.
Courage sighed with a weary set of lungs. He wished for once that someone else saved the world, like the heroes on TV. Superman, Spiderman or even the Powerpuff Girls would do. But not him. Why did it have to be him? He thought these questions and forgot that the Starmaker was telepathic.
You don't want to save your home?
No...I...I've just done it so many times that...I don't even know if it's worth it. Listen...I've done a lot of bad things lately. I...I have no home anymore.
No home? But...what of the farm and the human called Muriel?
She's...she's gone. She can't look after me anymore.
But you can take care of yourself, can you not? You've saved your planet many times, you can handle things alone well.
But that's not what I meant. I...I need her if I want to save someone. She's my support.
But then why can't you find her and get her back?
BECAUSE SHE'S DEAD! Courage shouted at the squid, who trembled in some fear, feeling the spittle of anger from the dog's throat, seeing the bad teeth and the one with the hole in it opened wide in fury as he began to lose patience.
She's DEAD! She died, all because of me, all because I couldn't hold myself back any longer with that stupid farmer! He never liked me, he hated me from day one and he beat me, scared me to death every day, mocked me for being a "Stupid dog"! Well...he got what he had coming...but...Muriel...ohh God Muriel... he had flown from anger to remorse in one felled swoop, as his head sunk onto his chest, sitting down on the cold alley ground as he allowed the squid to read his memories, which he brought into thought for her.
It would've happened one day or another, he told himself. He kept repeating the words over and over again in his tortured mind.
"Stupid dog! Stupid dog! STUPID DOG!" He knew that pathetic excuse of a farmer in what was literally known as the middle of Nowhere, USA, would die one day. But he kept wishing it wasn't by his own paws.
What harmed him the most was not how he killed the man, or the fact he killed him. Not even the resulting fire of burning down the house and destroying everything he ever knew was what wounded him the deepest.
It was Muriel. It was Muriel's memory that made him grieve deep enough. His heart felt sore everytime he imagined her. That sweet plump face and yellow bell-shaped dress with white petticoat apron. Her bifocals that had a warming glow like her own smile, along with the soft voice with an Irish lilt.
She knew he wasn't a stupid dog. Only her. And the dog knew this as well. He wasn't stupid.
Just insane.
Yes...he was insane all right. He never knew how long he had been insane, but it was definitely beyond the first incident. Maybe it was even from birth, but he could not remember that...remember...birth...
He felt something in his mind slowly emerge. It crept into his thoughts like a strange beast slowly arising from murky water, leering at him with knowing eyes of accusation.
Was it accusation or was it sharing knowledge, inside information?
he felt his head pounding and he had more flashbacks flicker through his eyes, the broken projector of his past trying to play the film of his life again but it was just too broken to do anything.
He clutched his head in his paws again and groaned under his breath, which got louder as he felt the memories try to reassert themselves.
The alleyway changed before his eyes, it felt more larger, it began to stretch beyond his vision into a distorted place that rose to the heights of the heavens. The trashcans crowded around him like metallic columns and he felt his breathing become tighter.
He felt cold...so cold...the cold just sank into his bones from the air heavily with the weight of a waterfall unto his fur, seeping into his flesh and making ice crystals in his blood.
He felt his arms tightened around him. He tried moving but nothing worked, his arms refused to do so, or couldn't be able to. As they tried to move, he felt a tight material tug at his body and restrict his arms.
He looked down and saw the straitjacket.
His eye twitched. He saw blood on them. Blood...but whose blood? He hoped that wasn't Muriel.
No, she didn't bleed. He knew that only too well. Eustace bled though, he bled sweetly, the dripping...ohh the dripping was the most wondrous music to his ears.
No...no it wasn't. The sweetest sound he ever heard in his life was Muriel's singing.
That became his eternal lullaby. He tried remembering, but it wouldn't come to him. He could picture the scene, asleep on the bed with Muriel singing a song he never recognised anywhere else. That soft Irish voice...but it never came, it was like watching a silent movie.
It was torturous to him, he couldn't hear her sing. Why could he not hear Muriel sing?
All he heard was her screaming...her screaming...the same voice that made the most beautiful sounds he ever heard also made the most horrendous and most heart-breaking sounds to him.
He felt such betrayal. Betrayal that her voice also broke his heart, and betrayal also at what he had done.
He never intended to hurt Muriel. No way did that thought ever occur to him.
And yet it did...He felt like a scar of poison on the face of the Earth.
Before any more psychology could be investigated, a huge explosion came from the main street.