Untimely #6 - Jeff Goldblum - King of the Rats

“Oh Brother! I just cannot believe how much shit you’re throwing out that window. Don’t you care about the environment? And don’t tell me that it’s all good ‘cos it’ll just be chow time for some bullshit rat-beasts, cos that little Styrofoam tub o’ beans, and your frickin’ spork there, ain’t bein’ eaten by nobody, and even if they could be, who the shit wants to start feedin’ rats anyhow, you sick sonofabitch?”

“Pardon me, Missy, but you see, aha, well, yes, aa, Chaos, you see, Chaos teaches us that while I may dispose of my Styrofoam bean dispenser and handyman’s spork in a seemingly, aha, or you may at least see it as such, um, irresponsible manner, perhaps, in actual fact I could, um, somehow become responsible for the a, a, a, the next STEP, in the evolutionary cycle. Now, yes, aha, it may be possible if we look through the magnificently dim light of Chaos Theory, that I may actually be, a, providing those which you call “rats”, uh, with the tools to become mighty Generals with command of, hoho, their very own armies! Yes, that’s right, Generals; Generals who, uh, may well fashion tiny protective helmets from my Styrofoam tubs; Generals who send their soldiers out to perform claw-to-claw combat with nothing, you see, NOTHING but the humble spork with which to defend themselves. ERGO, ladycakes, it is now likely, uh, unavoidable in fact, that in 10,000 years from now, uh, HUMUNGOUS Rodent Archaeologists will tunnel their way down into these caverns to, a, unearth this Mystic, uh, this Vital place, right here, where it all began… Undoubtably, haha, I, and My Spork and My Tub, uh, shall be revered as the PROGENITORS of this Inevetible Rodent Future! All hail, a, a, a, little lady, the munificent beauty that is Chaos.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Oh, yes, a, clever girl.”

Untimely #6 - The Carpudgeon

- The Carpudgeon?!

- For stats, Hoppo. One varlent, smitheric, mawing grute of a jubba. Aports, it trags at its prain with pindled tegs, farthed darrily in forrows amidden its thorrowful smick. Fallid layes moller, gaxy and all-trothful. With morty kalver fongs it rints the hosh, a gulmish greetch durning the blennish solly. But most hellibund of all is the gorm-rot crandle that aborns his grint.

- Fucking hup, Brod! And the ossifer; how did you lig the ossifer?

- Have you ever skalked the Unterwar as our forends once skalked?

- I scaned the caverence once. A faught into meckness. I was aver wampy.

- Aye, Hoppo. It’s a hordant hance – a corpt. Folmy-layed Whuppets paggle for paps. Honnel Crits frip chummets of melch from abarrened charpses.

-Charpses?

- Oh aye! Many a trovey sprew has drotten the honnels, nowhine to reforn. Some blidder down all glastered or pooky, to hizz in homiden or flut the infarnal morm. Other more sneckety brodes, more stanless brodes, hem with metchety nubs and a mesk for tander – they venger rout into the catoblight to lench for bravure.

- But fellon say the parrels slenk through the meckness, through the cowels of the croven metris all the way to Henk.

- Let me shole a missem with you, Hoppo.

- Is it aband the …?

- You must trull nobrow!

- Not a moll.

- Stamice?

- On the blennish glame of the morling solly.

- Dackay. I waldened sublow only troy dures ago. On his toftfell my pather mandered me a scitchy crip of the honnels. He bond me that to unstreal the smath I must retrother the clember where the Carpudgeon dralls. Paps mandied that it flen beyorn the crip.

- Then how did you smoil it?

- I didn’t. I flumbered for hures, glasping in the meckness, smittling through rungered sketterlers, stralling for the parrels to tarry me fonwith. My larch blutted. I albut depaired.

- But…

- A pappety glame blickered beyorn the parrels. It strew me on.

- What was it Brod?

- A clember of fraun, timmery glame. The parrels bode, sunden entreen troy balstroms rappered with scurrelling pillumns and smasted with profient sygnots – gibberish to our fotern layes.

- The dain of the Carpudgeon?

- Parby. I can albut quass and quither.

- Then what …

- The ossifer. Lumbing in the braddle, frean and smeer. A greckle from the Carpudgeon’s garrific clatch.

- Clant, Brod! What does this tull?

- Toft.

- Toft?

- The Carpudgeon is toft.

Untimely #6 – Black Sheep

And the keening, the keening. He heard them in the tunnel, the sheep, and ran toward the sound, slowing to a walk around the corner where the tracks led into the blackness. Looking both ways, for trains, for guards, for crackheads and cops and nosy schoolchildren, and seeing none, he jumped, careful to avoid what he had oft heard spoken of as the third rail. Not knowing quite what the third rail was, he aimed for the middle of the tracks, the wooden crosshatches that ran eighteen inches apart, figuring that wood was about as bad a conductor as they came and surely the third rail would not run smack down the center? He landed squarely in the middle and bent his knees deep, hands held out fingers spread wide for balance, trying not to touch either of the metal rails, nor the rat shit and trash that festooned the tracks. Before him was a black puddle filled with batteries, behind a newspaper and six coffee cups, relics of a meeting? An impromptu platform chat, as around a watercooler, men in suits gathering to speak crudely of women’s nether regions and slap each other on their padded shoulders? His mind ran off but now, standing in the middle of the subway tracks, was not the time, and he called it back and began to walk in the direction of the bleating. The tunnel blackened quickly, the orange lights along the walls and pillars dividing the tracks into uptown and downtown, local and express, providing a dull glow in which to plod, trippingly, amongst the trash and machinery, the skeleton of the city, bare and tough and rusted. The sheep were louder now the sound was channeled by the lowered ceilings and his footsteps clanged from pillar to pillar sounding like an army advancing before and after. He hurried from hatch to hatch, terrified of tripping, terrified of the apocryphal third rail and the deathly ooze of battery acid and urine that was a distillation of the plague itself.

When he had got accustomed to the regular gaps between the hatches and could walk at a steady rate without first checking each step, he began to think of his great fortune. He had long heard tales of the underground flocks that grazed between stations along the old tunnels, the first ones, the very deepest, in which long ago a freight car had derailed, dumping dozens of fresh Vermont country sheep into the bowels of New York City. The sheep whose virgin wool was soon turned black by the dirt and soot and lack of sun, the fabled Manhattan Blackbacks, a kilo of whose wool would fetch far dearer than its equal weight in truffles. The flocks who had been known to block trains for hours as they grazed on the discarded trash of commuters or in moments of true daring stormed the garbage trains and eviscerated the carefully tied black bags teeming with chicken bones and hot dog buns and paper napkins. For paper was the sheeps greatest source of energy, their staple, like potatoes to the Irish and rice to the Indians and cassava to the Africans. What riders unthinkingly discarded by the ton was what fed this flock and let it grow so that unbeknownst to all but the conductors and maintenance workers and the enthusiasts there were no fewer than ten thousand adult Manhattan Blackbacks roaming the city’s abandoned tunnels. But of course this was just an estimate, for no one had ever actually seen a flock, let alone the full herd of migrating beasts. There had been the occasional spotting, a woolly bottom or the glint of a yellow eye staring from beneath a grating on seventy-second street one early morning just before dawn, when an elderly woman by the name of Mabel Gardener nearly slipped and broke her knee after stooping low to the grating to see just what it was her Fifi was barking at so frantically.

No, these were mythical beasts, except they were not—they were real. Except no one had ever been able to study one, no one had found their lair. Which is why, as he rounded the bend and the bleating began to reverberate deafeningly off the solid metal tunnel, Henry Forsythe held his breath and clenched his fists for eagerness. There was a pounding in his chest and he fought the desire to break into a mad sprint towards the sheep he knew were just around the bend. He must not scare them. He must approach them like a cat stalking its prey: patience was the essence. It was almost more than he could bear.

Untimely Stimulus #6

A man remarked upon a fellow traveler who was eating ribs and throwing the bones out the window of the subway carriage: “What will archaeologists think 10,000 years from now?”