NOTICE: The following story is not canon. I mean, good God, this is not canon!
…
Tale #27: "Ereh Gnorw Gnihtemos S'ereht"
It had been rare for Sello to set foot on the weather deck, usually because the crew felt the need to restrain him from accidentally pitching over the bulwark and waving goodbye. Today was one of those moments where Sello simply felt like not drinking. No reason in particular, although he had to admit that it was nice to smell air not permeated by his favorite chemical concoction. The breeze was cool and fresh, and he had to admit that there were some interesting sounds drifting in from the port. He could not tell which port the ship was stopped at; being an engineer, he never bothered asking about the ship's course. It was all kind of vague to him, anyway, just faint impressions fighting their way through his dulled senses.
"An tuna gets the milk of a thousand volcanoes!"
Sello blinked in confusion at the sound of an incoherent voice shouting behind him. He turned to find one of the dark-skinned deckhands addressing him. Pigtails and a mole under her left eye… Sello was not quite sure, but he thought her name was Tally. Or Turntable; he was sure those two words always came up whenever she was around.
She was not alone. Another of the dark-skinned deckhands stood with her, a woman with short hair. He glanced down to see a large scar on her left forearm. He thought he heard her name as Lamb. "To one, the cinnamon comes," she said in a gravelly voice as she looked Sello up and down.
"Uh…" Sello droned in response. "Can I… help you two?"
"Spare tank!" Tally snapped, causing Sello to start. "I wolf the two doorknobs!"
"I live in a poker bean!" Lamb declared.
"Three bolts found the caterpillar and turned it into chicken soup!" Tally shouted at Lamb.
"Why are you shouting like that?" Sello asked them, perplexed by their "argument" of gibberish.
"Weasels," Lamb murmured.
"Weasels?" Sello asked.
"Spank the bloody chicken!" Tally yelled.
Lamb sounded irate as she turned and told Tally, "You eat the mewling block, and an uncle for the second turnip jams the whole pulsar."
Sello blinked at her. "Pulsar?" he asked her. "What pulsar? How do you know what a pulsar is?" Then he rethought his statement and added, "Or do you even know what a pulsar is?"
Tally looked at him and said, "Paper corn."
Lamb gave her a disgusted look. "In a tooth peel. Do you know where the know of the know is?"
Sello could only offer a stumped expression and a shrug. "I… don't know?" he replied, although Lamb did not seem to be addressing him.
"Ask for a yak," Tally told Lamb.
"On the top of a corny egg, I told the three-butted cloud where to find the onion spoon," Lamb replied in a hard tone.
"Line?" Sello turned to find the brown-haired boy walking toward them, his attention only partially focused on a clipboard in his arm.
Sello heaved a sigh and gave him a grin as he said, "Okay, now I can talk to someone."
The brown-haired boy (Sello wanted to say his name was "Cake") paused in front of him for a moment. Then he said, "Put all the pastries in my pants and eat the cream with one eye."
The next sigh out of Sello's mouth was one of irritation. "So much for that…"
Tally grunted and told Lamb, "I am a frizzy elephant, drink of the beans."
"Pull my ferret, amazing bread," Lamb replied in a flat voice.
"Queen," Tally said.
"Cheese the nipple and make a pants for the two walls," Lamb told her in a hostile tone.
"Strawlemons?"
Sello jumped and leaned away once he realized that Cake was talking in his ear. "Hey, man, not so close," Sello told him. "Your voice is bad enough as it is."
"Nutty ceiling powers?" Cake asked, still using a loud voice.
"I'm standing right here," Sello replied, his tone level and confused.
"The syrup has ten goats on a string," Tally whispered behind Sello, causing him to turn again.
"Eye on the walrus," Lamb whispered back. Sello found that, while they were blocking sight of their mouths with their hands, they were not leaning close enough to hear each other. If anything, Sello was standing closer to them than they were to each other.
They fell silent, prompting Sello to say, "I don't know why you're whispering, but it still doesn't make any sense. Are you two all right?"
"Rash potatoes," Tally whispered back. "I am a lawyer."
"Turn the couch," Lamb said.
"I'll beef the turbine." Tally whispered.
"Pickles."
"I pig until tomorrow eats a leather ukulele," Cake spoke up.
"Iron tubs?" Tally said in a panic.
"Onion," Lamb said at almost the same time.
Sello then found himself sidestepping out of Lamb's way as she reached a hand forward. He first thought that she was going to grab his shoulder, but she was instead moving toward Cake. He watched her outstretched arm grab Cake's shoulder. Cake released what sounded like a squeak of pain, and then he slammed hard onto the deck like he was made of solid iron.
Lamb then turned back and asked, "I did it on the cow walk so two beans fly to the angry column?"
"Turtle," Tally said.
Sello stepped around Lamb and crouched so he could get a better look at Cake. "How'd he make that noise?" he asked himself. He glanced over his shoulder, but he realized that both women had disappeared. "Whu… where'd they go?"
Ultimately, he was not concerned with the women. He picked up Cake's arm and let it fall to the deck. However, rather than the loud thump, the arm hardly made a sound. He gave Cake's shoulder a shake. When Cake did not reply, he pinched Cake's nose shut. There was a heavy click from nearby, and Sello noticed something pop underneath Cake's shirt. He rolled Cake onto his back and pulled up on the shirt to reveal a flesh-colored panel had lifted away from Cake's belly. Sello pulled the panel out of the way to reveal an interior section composed of metal plating and a tangled ball of wire. Sello wiggled one of the wires. Then he tried slipping his hand inside to locate anything vital, moving his fingers around the side of the ball of wire to keep from getting tangled in it. His fingertips kept touching buttons and switches. Every few seconds, Cake's left eye would open and shut with a mechanical click. When his right eye did it, Sello decided to just yank the bundle of wires out and toss them over his shoulder in frustration. This made it easy to see the buttons in Cake's stomach cavity, but most of them were labeled with grease pencil that had been smeared, leaving them unreadable. The only one that was legible said "Tulip", so he pushed it. The response was a single, thick flatus, causing Sello to glance downward with a confused grunt.
Footsteps caused Sello to look up. He recognized Lawrence and said, "I think he's broken."
"Jumping peppercorn," Lawrence replied.
Sello slapped a hand on his forehead. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding…"
Lawrence leaned over as Sello moved aside. He had a wrench in one hand and started prodding Cake's nose with it. "Eat more shoelaces," he grunted.
"I'd say he's broken," Sello said as he stood up, "but I'm not sure he worked in the first place."
"Iron toes in a veal oven," Lawrence said, giving Sello a confused look.
"How wonderful…" Sello groaned as he turned away from them to glance around the deck. "Has everybody been this incomprehensible?"
Lawrence gave a loud grunt as he stood back up. "I float on a bee's liver and cushion," he seemed to say to himself just as Sello turned around. He heaved a sigh and added, "Turtle turtle turtle turtle turtle…"
Sello then watched as Lawrence kicked the panel on Cake's chest closed and grabbed the front of Cake's shirt. He only lifted Cake's upper half, and Sello began to wonder if this might hurt Cake or not. However, once he realized that Cake was just a machine, he shrugged and decided to follow Lawrence, who was hauling Cake by the front of his shirt and allowing his feet to drag along the deck.
Sello did not know why, but there was a door in the middle of the deck. It was standing in a frame that looked to have been anchored directly to the deck. Sello took a second to peer around the side to confirm that there was nothing on the other side of the door. And yet, Lawrence stopped in front of the door as if it was blocking his way. Lawrence gave a grunt and set Cake on the deck. Sello watched as Lawrence picked up one of Cake's arms, twisted in a way that elicited a mechanical click, and removed Cake's arm from the sleeve of his shirt. He had to back away when Lawrence raised the arm with some difficulty, almost thrusting Cake's hand into his stomach. Lawrence closed Cake's fingers into a fist and adjusted his hold on the arm. He used Cake's fist to knock on the door, heavy knocks that were repeated with difficulty due to Lawrence having to pull the mechanical arm away and adjust his hold again for the next strike. After the third strike, Sello peered around the door again just to see if anyone was there to answer. He considered opening the door himself just to stop Lawrence, but Lawrence seemed too focused on the task to be interrupted. Not to mention Sello was sure that, if he did open the door, Lawrence would fall through and hurt himself heaving Cake's arm. So, Sello stood nearby and counted the number of times Lawrence knocked.
When he reached twenty-seven knocks, the door opened away from Lawrence on its own. By then, Lawrence was breathing heavily and dropped Cake's arm on the deck.
"Bender flex?" Sello was confused by the voice and checked that there was no one behind the door again. Then he stepped closer to Lawrence to look through the doorframe. The girl he knew to occasionally bring him food (he thought her name was Grape) stood on the other side of the doorframe, giving Lawrence a curious look. "I live in a world of turnips and erroneous parking validation."
Lawrence had to pause for a couple of breaths before responding. "Into jelly wind… spackle my ass," he said between heaves.
Sello sighed and commented to himself, "This is really confusing. Who the hell talks like this?"
"Ark in the beaver's feathers?" Grape asked as she invited Lawrence through the doorway with a hand.
"Sector twenty-eight is under a Venusian moose," Lawrence told her as he grabbed Cake again (not bothering with his detached arm) and hauled him over the threshold. Sello carefully followed, trying not to step on Cake as he passed through the doorway. "I'm a poo… tato and mustard omelette. Veeter in the beater." He paused to glance around. "Eiiiiiiiiight."
"Cat sack, rucksack, potato sack, nut sack, chugga choo-choo milk," Grape said. "Eat the shaggy screwdriver and put your beans where your noses are."
"I think I'm gonna go nuts if I have to keep listening to this…" Sello groaned.
Lawrence had just heaved a sigh under Sello's comment. "Jugular tuber and find the squash in a field of voracious butters," he told Grape while tapping Cake's head with the toe of his boot. "But in a light of castrated chairs, seventy, eighty-five, sixty-seven, seventy-five."
Sello leaned forward to deliver an irritated glare to Lawrence's emotionless face. "You write to your mother with those numbers?" he asked.
"Lower the turkey, Frankie," Lawrence said as he grabbed Sello's sleeve.
Sello stumbled a bit as Lawrence started walking. "That was a joke," Sello told him. "What're you doing? And why'd you call me 'Frankie'?"
Sello's question went unanswered as Lawrence trooped him across the deck. Sello was sure there were more features to the deck, but all he saw were masts. It seemed as if Lawrence was walking a straight line, but, in the back of his mind, Sello was sure that the had taken a few turns.
"Monkey wart!" Lawrence stopped and turned to look at the deck behind them. Sello followed his gaze to see Rain jogging toward them. "In a jack with a toothbrush?" he asked once he was close enough for a conversational voice.
Sello heaved a sigh. "Not you, too…"
"Light lily livered low like a loose lasagna," Lawrence told him. "Todos los niños son mariposas."
"What the hell was that language?" Sello asked, his voice deepening in exasperation.
"I don't know for who the what on a therefore to in my because," Rain said. "Sun to a reason like a nutty chore eats raisins."
"Soap," Lawrence said. "Pace in my two bitters and face the thought of aching iron."
"In your seventeenth eye?" Rain asked.
"Snail toenails," Lawrence said.
"Ear!" Rain snapped at the air. The air around them seemed to respond as a gust of wind nudged Sello, causing him to glance around in confusion. "Lick ten bicycles and turn a smelly rug into a cat's mega bean."
"Kung pao," said a female voice from somewhere nearby. Sello glanced around again to find the source, but he was not sure if he had even heard that voice before.
"Eight is a buttery spit…" Rain groaned to himself. Then he told Lawrence, "Tooth find a sprig veal on a cussing muscle."
Rain then took hold of Sello's other arm, and both men started dragging him across the deck. Not that Sello was in the mood or mind to resist, rather politely letting it happen while he tried to figure out why everyone was talking so incoherently. It seemed like it should be a problem, but Sello was slowly getting used to it and just judging what was happening based on how everyone was behaving around him. While everything else seemed to be a problem, he began finding himself focused on the fact that everyone was naked. He was not aroused by this, disturbed as he was by how the crew could not string together any basic thoughts. But it felt like this should be an important clue as to why the crew was behaving this way.
They walked once more around the main deck before going toward the rear. When both men stopped in front of the door, Sello tried to get an idea of why they were hesitating. However, they still wore hard-to-read expressions, standing and staring at the door as if they were waiting for something to happen. Sello started to think that he was supposed to walk inside on his own, but when he tried to take a step forward, they held him in place. He at least moved to grab the doorknob only to realize that the doorknob was missing. This, he puzzled over, trying to remember if he had taken that out recently. The only thing he could recall was putting together another control burner, and that did not require a doorknob unless he needed a flame the size of a wine bottle; what he had put together made a much bigger flame.
One of them shoved a hand into Sello's back, and all three of them simply walked through the wall. The other side was not what Sello was expecting. Rather than the layout he knew, the interior looked more like a one-room cabin. A bed sat in the opposite corner from the door. Directly in front of them was a large table with two stumps shaped to look like stools. To the left was a smaller table. Almost immediately to the right was a rust-red chest with a bronze frame sitting on the floor. Opposite the door, built into a nook in the wall, was a cauldron sitting on top of an unlit fire pile. Sello also thought he saw a line of pots tucked in between the side of the bed and the nearby wall and wondered if that was a wise idea, given Captain Volcano Killer's tendency to fall out of bed.
Captain Volcano Killer threw aside a white comforter and rose from the bed already wearing his usual green tunic, cap, and trouser combination. "Turn to a chicken wheel, my veal," he said as he stepped toward the trio.
Sello rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I probably shouldn't have expected any different…" he grumbled to himself.
"Wheedle bee in a fork cheese," Rain said. "Cough, cough, and hock a turtle."
"Is this a hairy goggle melt?" Captain Volcano Killer asked.
"Cook a spleen for the third catfish I slathered last tree," Lawrence said. "Humina be the word if two maths touch the green."
"Squeegee please?" Captain Volcano Killer asked.
"File patent?" Rain asked. Captain Volcano Killer sighed and shook his head.
When everyone fell silent, Sello looked around in anticipation of something else happening. "Sooo… we're just gonna stand here, then?" he asked Lawrence. Lawrence glanced at him and delivered a shrug. "Can I at least get something to drink? I don't really feel thirsty, but it'd give me something to do while we're just standing here." Lawrence had gone back to watching Captain Volcano Killer and simply ignored the question.
Then Sello scrunched his face as he realized something. He really was not thirsty. Having been under the effects of alcohol for so long, he knew that he normally did not go for very long before opening another bottle. So why was he not as eager to drink this time? He last knew that he had an ample supply foolishly given to him by the crew. As much as he drank, he believed that he could not have run out so quickly. He first considered that the crew had somehow gotten into his supply and drank themselves so silly that they were incapable of coherent thought. However, that required years of drinking to achieve, and Captain Volcano Killer was far past the maximum age to actually get his brain to rewire that way. Besides, although the crew seemed to be doing a bunch of nonsensical things, they did not otherwise show any of the physical signs of intoxication. No slurred speech, no issues with coordinating their own bodies, and they all seemed to be capable of walking a straight line.
He tried to think back to Tally and Lamb, who, as he recalled, were the first he had encountered when the crew had started acting weird. What had they said? "An tuna gets the milk of a thousand volcanoes", "To one, the cinnamon comes", "Spare tank", "I live in—
"I live in a poker bean"… Who were they talking about? Wait, what came after that? "Three bolts found the caterpillar and turned it into chicken soup"? "You eat the mewling block, and an uncle for the second turnip jams the whole pulsar"?
Sello's eyes slowly grew wide as it dawned on him what had happened. "Oh…" he uttered at first, tasting wood on his tongue. Then he heaved a sigh and covered his eyes with a hand. "Aw, crap…"
…
Link was not happy. He stood in front of his desk with his arms crossed and stared daggers at Lwamm and Twali, both of them with their heads hung in shame. Dholit stood at their side, a slight grin to her face as she waited to translate the first scream Link had for them. Lawrence and Leynne waited next to the door, Lawrence's glance shifting between the two Gelto and Sello.
Sello lay on the floor on his back, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and attempting to walk into Link's footlocker while chanting "Malf—malf—malf—malf—malf—". It might not have looked disturbing if it had not been for Sello seemingly unable to turn his face away from the footlocker to hide the bulge protruding from the opposite side of his neck.
…
Tale # 27 of the Island Symphony – END
NOTICE: This is absolutely, one-hundred-percent NOT CANON! For crying out loud, they tried to kill him!