West Corner of the Park 4
By Bill Kieffer
The water consumed him in a second, enveloping the young Tortoise with effortless fluidity. The world Andy had known had simply ceased to exist. Now there was only the water all about him, insidiously pressing at his beak and nostrils, waiting for the chance to rush into his lungs and rob his life.
He flailed about, uncomprehendingly reaching only slick mud that dropped to a vertical wall under the surface of the water. Bronze light filtered down from above, and once his feet reached bottom, he thrust his legs into the slimy bottom and bobbed to the surface a moment later. He gasped at the air and grabbed a mouthful of its sweet promise before slipping beneath the surface again. His claws swatted at the log that had betrayed him, but then, they too vanished into the pond.
He struggled and hit bottom again. He squatted and put all his remaining strength into one last underwater leap. In this manner, he "swam" to the surface where he was able to clutch at an exposed root. But it was not a thick root and the moment he tried to pull himself up and out, it gave. He had a moment to shout out for help before the pond swallowed him whole again.
He took in water and the awful chemical taste nearly caused him to choke. Andy forced himself to swallow it before it could force its way to his lungs. His heart pounded. His nostrils stung from the awful water invading them. And this time, when he pushed himself to the surface, he opened his mouth a moment too late and closed his beak a moment too late.
An endless torrent of water poured into Andy as the poor Tortoise felt himself fill up like a great balloon. He was being crushed from the inside out. Without realizing it, he ceased struggling and went limp as his body slid into deeper waters. Numbly, he watched the bronze sunlight fall away as a semi-opaque silhouette of plastic flying disc bobbed on the surface he'd never see again.
He heard his mother's laughter calling him from the darkness. He heard his grandmother telling the tales her grandmother told her of slave ships and having to choose which eggs would be hatched and which eggs would be eaten.
He remembered Momma sending him into the bar to get his father. He hadn't seen his father at first, but he had seen the four Furs gathered around something. He was seven and still innocent in the ways of the world, but he still knew a gun when he saw it and he knew it didn't belong in his father's beak, but still the Canine held it there all the same. He knew the look of fear, even on his father's face, and he would know the look of shame on his father's face when the hot-blooded bigot threw the older tortoise to the ground, because his buddies got cold-feet in front of their victim's little boy.
He remembered the broken eggs on Easter, the promise of new life made obscene with the hate of unthinking Furs. Momma had scrubbed the exterior of their house clean the whole of the next day while his father made phone calls that went ignore no matter how much he yelled.
His grandmothers had died after leaving Bingo one night. Their friendship had still been novel, brought together not by their children marrying, nor by their grandchild being born, but by the recent deaths of their husband. A viper crack head jumped them, hoping their gambling winnings would finance his next score and the ambulance took its time getting to that neighborhood, as his father said.
The heartbreak and agony as the television focused on a strip of material with an oddly familiar pattern on it. The multi-vehicle pile up was still hidden by thick, roiling smoke, but the wind had shifted for a bit and the camera was hungry to get a good shot of anything. "Is that a... piece of tire?" the anchorman had asked miles away in his sterile newsroom.
"No," the onsite reporter said, obviously trying to stay professional, "I believe that's the shell of a Turtle, Frank. Part of it, in any case, it appears to have be sheared from one of the victims of this tragic accident." The cameraman, realizing the gruesome-nature of what he was looking at finally sinking in, turned the camera back to the Raccoon who was reporting on the worst accident in their state since... whenever.
"Oh." The anchorman paused and then asked inanely from the uptown studios, "They can live without that, right?"
It was the last Andy had ever seen of his father, but he knew they would be together very soon.
NO. NOT YET.
Suddenly, the universe exploded about him and his body folded in half from a force, which vanished before Andy could even truly comprehend that something had grabbed him. Air, earth, and sky pinwheeled around him for one dizzying micro-second. Then he was on his hands and knees at the edge of a grassy field, vomiting the foul-tasting water.
The grass and the world around him seemed alien. The grass was too green and the sky too blue. Every little detail tried to crowd his mind as if he had never seen the world before. He was alive. How?
As he choked and spat the last of the vile water out, the red disc landed gently in front of Andy. His eyes went wide as he felt a shiver dance up his spine. The disc, too, was brighter than he ever remembered it being. It was all so very surreal.
He looked, bewildered by it all, towards where the disc had sailed from and saw a tubby brown Lapine in both pants and buttoned shirt, a combination as unusual as the black shoes the Rabbit also wore. He looked very formal in all those clothes because all the Lapines Andy knew only wore shirts or shorts, never pants and never both. Andy assumed the brown Rabbit was male, but couldn't be sure. The chemical stench clinging to Andy's own body masked what scent the heavy Fur might have possessed.
"Did you...? "Andy sputtered as he tried to stand up. "Did you...?"
The Rabbit smiled, and suddenly, Andy realized the Lapine wore thin wire frame glasses as they caught the sunlight as it shifted on the furry features. The eyes behind the glasses seemed to squint in delight. "Did I see what happened? Yes, I did."
"You did?" That hadn't been what Andy was about to ask, but it was close enough. "What happened?"
The Rabbit helped the Tortoise to his feet, his ears rocking forward in a friendly manner as he bent over the reptile. Andy instantly felt safe and secure, even though his throat and nostrils felt tender and hollow. "Well, it all happened so quickly. You might have noticed that I'm a Rabbit and I could hardly track him with my eyes."
"Him?"
The Rabbit nodded sagely, "Fastback. You must have seen him when he grabbed you, right?"
Andy's lower jaw dropped, leaving his beak opened. Fastback was the fastest Being in the whole world and he was a Reptile, just like Andy. He was a Turtle, which was almost the same thing. Almost. He was Andy's all- time hero. It was all the Tortoise could do to shake his head no.
"Oh, that's a shame, any way, he heard you yell for help and ran to your aid. He saw instantly that you were a Tortoise, being a Turtle and all, I suppose, and that you were in trouble! He tried to dive in to save you, but he moved so fast, he just skipped across the surface of the water like a rock. You ever skip rocks across a lake, boy? No, well, that's what happened to him, so he ran around the little pond and created a whirlwind, sucked the water right up into the air... and then he leapt into the water spout and pulled you out through the other side. The water crashed down back the next instant, but Fastback was on the ground by then giving you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Of course, in your case it was beak-to-beak. Once you started coughing up water, he had to rush off to... protect the rain forest. I think that's what he said. Hard to tell, he spoke really fast, don't you know."
Andy blinked as he tried to not only take in the rapid speech, but the things that had happened. He hadn't seen any of it, he couldn't even remember Fastback giving first aid. "Wait," Andy said suddenly as the thought occurred to him, "How did he give me mouth-to-mouth?"
"Hmmm?" The Rabbit seemed confused but very friendly, still.
"How did he... " Andy said and failed to find the right words. After a moment, he simply pushed at his thick almost inflexible "lips."
"Oh," The Rabbit smiled broadly, "You're confused because there's little or no occlusion between two beaks, right? Well, don't forget, Fastback has... super lungs. Yes, that's right, super lungs. How else could he run so fast if he didn't have super lungs? Why, he'd be out of breath all the time. No good for sneaking up on supervillians, eh?"
Of course! Andy's face seemed to shine as the realization set in. Fastback! He'd been saved by Fastback! Now that he thought about it, he could almost picture the blue clad Turtle rushing about the pond, creating a whirlpool. There were plenty of trigs and debris strewn about, just like in their comic book! And, most importantly, he was still alive! "Wow."
The Rabbit brushed some loose leaves and needles from his knees and shell. "Maybe we should go find your parents, kid?"
A little of the light left the Tortoise's face. "My parents died," he said, almost in apology.
The Rabbit pouted a little bit, letting a bit of his large front teeth show. Andy could see himself in the Rabbit's reflection, he did need to be cleaned up a bit. The Rabbit's eyes were brown and the fine hairs on his eyelids were stark white and they seemed so very kind. Andy could almost feel the concern radiating of the male... yes, the Rabbit was very definitely male. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said in a very fatherly voice. "You must be here with someone."
"I'm here with my 'brothers,'" Andy said and the tension on his right arm suddenly seemed to increase. He looked curiously at that arm to find that the Rabbit was holding it. He hadn't even realized the Rabbit hadn't let go of him after helping him up. Instinctively, Andy pulled away gently to see if the Rabbit would let go. The Rabbit did, nodding as if with approval. "Our guardian is coming back to pick us up for dinner. Soon."
"My name is Robert Menke," the Rabbit said then, taking a card from his wallet. "I work for The Zoo Crew. I do public relations stuff for the heroes. That's why I was here with Fastback; next month we'll be holding a 'pep rally' here against prejudice."
"Wow," Andy said excitedly, "Will Fastback be there?"
"I hope so, but it's so hard to keep him in one place very long," Mr. Menke said and he pushed up his glasses as though they did not quite fit him. "If you can come, have your Guardian call my number and we'll send a limo to pick you and your brothers up. How many boys in your family, by the way?"
"Ten, counting me," Andy was too shocked to do more than answer his question and take the card from his brown hand.
Mr. Menke whistled by blowing air between his large incisors. "Any girls?"
"Nope."
"You won't mind coming on stage and holding hands with a... girl?"
Andy giggled at the dramatic tone the Rabbit used for the word girl. "I'd hug Frogzilla if it meant meeting the Zoo Crew."
Mr. Menke's face twitched at the mention of Frogzilla but Andy hardly noticed. He was going to meet his heroes! He was so excited, he had to go run to tell somebody! Maybe he could call Mrs. Hewitt and ask to come get him, although he felt fine. In fact, his throat had stopped hurting and his lungs felt... dryer. His arm tingled a bit where Mr. Menke had held him, but he didn't give much thought to that either. He'd never drowned before, he supposed it was normal to recover like this.
"Look, I think you're going be all right, kid." Mr. Menke said with another smile. Then he leaned forward, his glasses sliding a bit down his short muzzle until his eyes looked over the top of the chrome rims. They squinted and seemed darker for a moment, and then Andy suddenly realized that he trusted the Rabbit more than anyone else in the world. "Why don't you get cleaned up in the rest room, ok? You don't want those cuts getting infected, do you?"
"OK," Andy said, transfixed by the depths behind the eyes. "I don't want my cuts to get infected."
"Good, and remember, Fastback saved you. No matter what anyone says, he saved you. You saw him for just a moment, a streak of blue... just like I told you."
Andy nodded again. "Just like you said. He saved me... just like you said."
Mr. Menke pushed his glasses back up and slapped the blinking Andy on the lower end of his shell. "Good boy. Now skid-daddle."
Andy nodded happily and practically skipped across the field as the Rabbit watched him go.
"Oh, good job," came a very feminine voice from the tree line. Menke turned back to look and watched a feline figure detach itself from the shadows. "He could have been the one."
He smiled and let his eyes open fully. "Cool your jets, Allie." The Rabbit put his glasses away in a breast pocket very gingerly. "He's got brothers. You're the one that said it had to be an only child."
She brushed her sleek and naked body against his. "And so I did, after all, you're an only child, I'm an only child. We're all only children, from Dr. Rooney to that new kid, Chester. Still, there's more than one way to read a portent, Love."
The Rabbit nodded, a playful smile on his face. "True, there's Waldo."
"There's a difference between Cursed and Fated, my Lapine lover." The black Feline said, taking a step away, teasingly rubbing her long sensual tail against his fluffy white tail. "Besides, he's the seventh son of a seventh son, that's as good as being an only child."
-to be continued
By Bill Kieffer
The water consumed him in a second, enveloping the young Tortoise with effortless fluidity. The world Andy had known had simply ceased to exist. Now there was only the water all about him, insidiously pressing at his beak and nostrils, waiting for the chance to rush into his lungs and rob his life.
He flailed about, uncomprehendingly reaching only slick mud that dropped to a vertical wall under the surface of the water. Bronze light filtered down from above, and once his feet reached bottom, he thrust his legs into the slimy bottom and bobbed to the surface a moment later. He gasped at the air and grabbed a mouthful of its sweet promise before slipping beneath the surface again. His claws swatted at the log that had betrayed him, but then, they too vanished into the pond.
He struggled and hit bottom again. He squatted and put all his remaining strength into one last underwater leap. In this manner, he "swam" to the surface where he was able to clutch at an exposed root. But it was not a thick root and the moment he tried to pull himself up and out, it gave. He had a moment to shout out for help before the pond swallowed him whole again.
He took in water and the awful chemical taste nearly caused him to choke. Andy forced himself to swallow it before it could force its way to his lungs. His heart pounded. His nostrils stung from the awful water invading them. And this time, when he pushed himself to the surface, he opened his mouth a moment too late and closed his beak a moment too late.
An endless torrent of water poured into Andy as the poor Tortoise felt himself fill up like a great balloon. He was being crushed from the inside out. Without realizing it, he ceased struggling and went limp as his body slid into deeper waters. Numbly, he watched the bronze sunlight fall away as a semi-opaque silhouette of plastic flying disc bobbed on the surface he'd never see again.
He heard his mother's laughter calling him from the darkness. He heard his grandmother telling the tales her grandmother told her of slave ships and having to choose which eggs would be hatched and which eggs would be eaten.
He remembered Momma sending him into the bar to get his father. He hadn't seen his father at first, but he had seen the four Furs gathered around something. He was seven and still innocent in the ways of the world, but he still knew a gun when he saw it and he knew it didn't belong in his father's beak, but still the Canine held it there all the same. He knew the look of fear, even on his father's face, and he would know the look of shame on his father's face when the hot-blooded bigot threw the older tortoise to the ground, because his buddies got cold-feet in front of their victim's little boy.
He remembered the broken eggs on Easter, the promise of new life made obscene with the hate of unthinking Furs. Momma had scrubbed the exterior of their house clean the whole of the next day while his father made phone calls that went ignore no matter how much he yelled.
His grandmothers had died after leaving Bingo one night. Their friendship had still been novel, brought together not by their children marrying, nor by their grandchild being born, but by the recent deaths of their husband. A viper crack head jumped them, hoping their gambling winnings would finance his next score and the ambulance took its time getting to that neighborhood, as his father said.
The heartbreak and agony as the television focused on a strip of material with an oddly familiar pattern on it. The multi-vehicle pile up was still hidden by thick, roiling smoke, but the wind had shifted for a bit and the camera was hungry to get a good shot of anything. "Is that a... piece of tire?" the anchorman had asked miles away in his sterile newsroom.
"No," the onsite reporter said, obviously trying to stay professional, "I believe that's the shell of a Turtle, Frank. Part of it, in any case, it appears to have be sheared from one of the victims of this tragic accident." The cameraman, realizing the gruesome-nature of what he was looking at finally sinking in, turned the camera back to the Raccoon who was reporting on the worst accident in their state since... whenever.
"Oh." The anchorman paused and then asked inanely from the uptown studios, "They can live without that, right?"
It was the last Andy had ever seen of his father, but he knew they would be together very soon.
NO. NOT YET.
Suddenly, the universe exploded about him and his body folded in half from a force, which vanished before Andy could even truly comprehend that something had grabbed him. Air, earth, and sky pinwheeled around him for one dizzying micro-second. Then he was on his hands and knees at the edge of a grassy field, vomiting the foul-tasting water.
The grass and the world around him seemed alien. The grass was too green and the sky too blue. Every little detail tried to crowd his mind as if he had never seen the world before. He was alive. How?
As he choked and spat the last of the vile water out, the red disc landed gently in front of Andy. His eyes went wide as he felt a shiver dance up his spine. The disc, too, was brighter than he ever remembered it being. It was all so very surreal.
He looked, bewildered by it all, towards where the disc had sailed from and saw a tubby brown Lapine in both pants and buttoned shirt, a combination as unusual as the black shoes the Rabbit also wore. He looked very formal in all those clothes because all the Lapines Andy knew only wore shirts or shorts, never pants and never both. Andy assumed the brown Rabbit was male, but couldn't be sure. The chemical stench clinging to Andy's own body masked what scent the heavy Fur might have possessed.
"Did you...? "Andy sputtered as he tried to stand up. "Did you...?"
The Rabbit smiled, and suddenly, Andy realized the Lapine wore thin wire frame glasses as they caught the sunlight as it shifted on the furry features. The eyes behind the glasses seemed to squint in delight. "Did I see what happened? Yes, I did."
"You did?" That hadn't been what Andy was about to ask, but it was close enough. "What happened?"
The Rabbit helped the Tortoise to his feet, his ears rocking forward in a friendly manner as he bent over the reptile. Andy instantly felt safe and secure, even though his throat and nostrils felt tender and hollow. "Well, it all happened so quickly. You might have noticed that I'm a Rabbit and I could hardly track him with my eyes."
"Him?"
The Rabbit nodded sagely, "Fastback. You must have seen him when he grabbed you, right?"
Andy's lower jaw dropped, leaving his beak opened. Fastback was the fastest Being in the whole world and he was a Reptile, just like Andy. He was a Turtle, which was almost the same thing. Almost. He was Andy's all- time hero. It was all the Tortoise could do to shake his head no.
"Oh, that's a shame, any way, he heard you yell for help and ran to your aid. He saw instantly that you were a Tortoise, being a Turtle and all, I suppose, and that you were in trouble! He tried to dive in to save you, but he moved so fast, he just skipped across the surface of the water like a rock. You ever skip rocks across a lake, boy? No, well, that's what happened to him, so he ran around the little pond and created a whirlwind, sucked the water right up into the air... and then he leapt into the water spout and pulled you out through the other side. The water crashed down back the next instant, but Fastback was on the ground by then giving you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Of course, in your case it was beak-to-beak. Once you started coughing up water, he had to rush off to... protect the rain forest. I think that's what he said. Hard to tell, he spoke really fast, don't you know."
Andy blinked as he tried to not only take in the rapid speech, but the things that had happened. He hadn't seen any of it, he couldn't even remember Fastback giving first aid. "Wait," Andy said suddenly as the thought occurred to him, "How did he give me mouth-to-mouth?"
"Hmmm?" The Rabbit seemed confused but very friendly, still.
"How did he... " Andy said and failed to find the right words. After a moment, he simply pushed at his thick almost inflexible "lips."
"Oh," The Rabbit smiled broadly, "You're confused because there's little or no occlusion between two beaks, right? Well, don't forget, Fastback has... super lungs. Yes, that's right, super lungs. How else could he run so fast if he didn't have super lungs? Why, he'd be out of breath all the time. No good for sneaking up on supervillians, eh?"
Of course! Andy's face seemed to shine as the realization set in. Fastback! He'd been saved by Fastback! Now that he thought about it, he could almost picture the blue clad Turtle rushing about the pond, creating a whirlpool. There were plenty of trigs and debris strewn about, just like in their comic book! And, most importantly, he was still alive! "Wow."
The Rabbit brushed some loose leaves and needles from his knees and shell. "Maybe we should go find your parents, kid?"
A little of the light left the Tortoise's face. "My parents died," he said, almost in apology.
The Rabbit pouted a little bit, letting a bit of his large front teeth show. Andy could see himself in the Rabbit's reflection, he did need to be cleaned up a bit. The Rabbit's eyes were brown and the fine hairs on his eyelids were stark white and they seemed so very kind. Andy could almost feel the concern radiating of the male... yes, the Rabbit was very definitely male. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said in a very fatherly voice. "You must be here with someone."
"I'm here with my 'brothers,'" Andy said and the tension on his right arm suddenly seemed to increase. He looked curiously at that arm to find that the Rabbit was holding it. He hadn't even realized the Rabbit hadn't let go of him after helping him up. Instinctively, Andy pulled away gently to see if the Rabbit would let go. The Rabbit did, nodding as if with approval. "Our guardian is coming back to pick us up for dinner. Soon."
"My name is Robert Menke," the Rabbit said then, taking a card from his wallet. "I work for The Zoo Crew. I do public relations stuff for the heroes. That's why I was here with Fastback; next month we'll be holding a 'pep rally' here against prejudice."
"Wow," Andy said excitedly, "Will Fastback be there?"
"I hope so, but it's so hard to keep him in one place very long," Mr. Menke said and he pushed up his glasses as though they did not quite fit him. "If you can come, have your Guardian call my number and we'll send a limo to pick you and your brothers up. How many boys in your family, by the way?"
"Ten, counting me," Andy was too shocked to do more than answer his question and take the card from his brown hand.
Mr. Menke whistled by blowing air between his large incisors. "Any girls?"
"Nope."
"You won't mind coming on stage and holding hands with a... girl?"
Andy giggled at the dramatic tone the Rabbit used for the word girl. "I'd hug Frogzilla if it meant meeting the Zoo Crew."
Mr. Menke's face twitched at the mention of Frogzilla but Andy hardly noticed. He was going to meet his heroes! He was so excited, he had to go run to tell somebody! Maybe he could call Mrs. Hewitt and ask to come get him, although he felt fine. In fact, his throat had stopped hurting and his lungs felt... dryer. His arm tingled a bit where Mr. Menke had held him, but he didn't give much thought to that either. He'd never drowned before, he supposed it was normal to recover like this.
"Look, I think you're going be all right, kid." Mr. Menke said with another smile. Then he leaned forward, his glasses sliding a bit down his short muzzle until his eyes looked over the top of the chrome rims. They squinted and seemed darker for a moment, and then Andy suddenly realized that he trusted the Rabbit more than anyone else in the world. "Why don't you get cleaned up in the rest room, ok? You don't want those cuts getting infected, do you?"
"OK," Andy said, transfixed by the depths behind the eyes. "I don't want my cuts to get infected."
"Good, and remember, Fastback saved you. No matter what anyone says, he saved you. You saw him for just a moment, a streak of blue... just like I told you."
Andy nodded again. "Just like you said. He saved me... just like you said."
Mr. Menke pushed his glasses back up and slapped the blinking Andy on the lower end of his shell. "Good boy. Now skid-daddle."
Andy nodded happily and practically skipped across the field as the Rabbit watched him go.
"Oh, good job," came a very feminine voice from the tree line. Menke turned back to look and watched a feline figure detach itself from the shadows. "He could have been the one."
He smiled and let his eyes open fully. "Cool your jets, Allie." The Rabbit put his glasses away in a breast pocket very gingerly. "He's got brothers. You're the one that said it had to be an only child."
She brushed her sleek and naked body against his. "And so I did, after all, you're an only child, I'm an only child. We're all only children, from Dr. Rooney to that new kid, Chester. Still, there's more than one way to read a portent, Love."
The Rabbit nodded, a playful smile on his face. "True, there's Waldo."
"There's a difference between Cursed and Fated, my Lapine lover." The black Feline said, taking a step away, teasingly rubbing her long sensual tail against his fluffy white tail. "Besides, he's the seventh son of a seventh son, that's as good as being an only child."
-to be continued