Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Corn Chin

What to fool time with this time? There was a crack at the door and the enormous grasshopper entered.

"And I am the fool who chose to make contact with you." He said.

He stood 7'2 and was wearing a large brown trench coat. A large nemesis to say the least. His green exoskeleton was patched in places with silver mesh, like batter for rat holes.

"What do I owe this pleasure?" I was grim, it was late and I was drunk.

The door lay in splinters behind him and he back up into the mess making more cracking noises. He must have jumped at full speed to make it through the oak.

"We require your person, at once, to the great hole in the universe."

"The prison?" I asked.

He nodded and looked around the room. He found a couch to crouch on and took a vial out of his pocket and opened it. He held it out to me in one of the pincers at the end of his front, right leg. "Want some?"

I shook my head and said "No."

He then put the vial up to his ear and I could hear music very quietly being emptied into his head. He sighed and crouched into himself in some state of orgasmic bliss.

He breathed deeply and the lids of his great red eyes closed and he whistled loudly. "You're under arrest by order of the King."

"What king?" I gasped. The idea that there was now a ruling body in the universe shook my entire being.

"Whatever one you choose." He scratched at the holes in his face that could be used for scent.

"What are my choices?"

"Well," he hesitated. "You know there's a wide spectrum, but I'd wager it's the Empty, the Full, and the Half. I can't really say which is going to be easier on you."

"But, it's prison, right?"

"Yes. No execution for you." His eyes opened and the lids barely cleared the eyeball. He was stoned on some transmission from another dimension. You can tell the force of that kind of high. You don't return from it. The grasshopper had better have a good supply of the stuff or it's curtains for the bastard.

"If I put up a fight?" It wasn't even worth asking. The bastard could be on his last leg of his insect body and still rip me in two before I made the door.

"You know you wouldn't do it. You lost most of your gas when you decided to hide down here."

"I've been writing about you all. The secret will be out down here after I leave. Bargain?"

"No bargain. This planet is to be the food of the King."

"Which one?"

"Take your pick."

"I choose Half."

"I knew you would. I'd let you go if it were up to me. I like the cut of your jib."

"And I yours. What about more of the sound? A hit or two from a pure string?"

"Lies. No one has pure strings."

"What if I told you I found a way to extract them myself?"

"Lies. No one but the Kings can extract strings. But, boy, my mother would I love to get my hands on that. Cleans you up and sends you to places that are unnamed even out there." He gestured up. His head was glowing green. "Oh, so lonesome for the pain. If I could just feel the pain again I'd be happy to go."

"Where would you go?"

"Heaven…hell? It doesn't matter. I just want to hold on for some pain."

"They have pain here."

"Not real pain."

"No, that stuff is on its way with the King."

"Yeah, when the King comes down these people will wish for hell."

"And they'll get it. But, in the meantime, you can hide out down here with me. I don't want to go back to the hole."

"You'll just escape again."

"Do grasshoppers have names?"
"I do. I'm Terry." He spoke like a child of nine now. The transmission was so deep in his blood that he was taking on human characteristics he's never learned.

"You're changing."

"How did you?"

"You'll feel pain."

"I can feel my mind changing. It's wrapping around the darkness. Am I becoming?" A long tongue lolled out of his mouth and he spread a red drool over himself. Tears the color of blood fell from his half closed eyes. "Ecstasy."

"I figured it out down here. It's so much harder to think without any real pain. So, I found a way to get around the thoughts that were involved in extracting pure string."

"Rapture." He bellowed.

"And then I realized that by becoming my environment I could become multiple things and act like the strings themselves."

"The shortest distance between two points is to be two points."

"Exactly."

"Are you me?"

"I am you."

"One."

Screams from down the hall and crashing muffled by the interior of the building. I got up and retrieved myself from the grasshopper and all of the universe.

Simultaneously, two grasshoppers crashed through the walls surrounding us. I hit the floor and fled into carpet fibers.

The last thing I heard was the loud crunching of the grasshoppers devouring their buddy Terry.

No comments: