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A Story by

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Weasels In Paradise

Once upon a way way way far away there lived fifty thousand tiny big weasels. The weasels was all happy with stuff and never cared for things they didn't have to. When one moved, they all moved. When another made a sound, they all made the same exact sound at the same exact time. If they could have flew, they would have tried that. Everything was satisfactory in the world of the weasels because they all got along with one another. They were cute. They were slippery. They were practical. They were smart.

ONE DAY

One day all of the weasels instantly disappeared except for two. The two that remained were Craps and Malty. Craps had always been the smallest in the pack, but now that didn't seem to matter so much. Malty was the wild card, the one that made everyone laugh and laugh. But now that all the others were gone, there was much less laughter. Craps and Malty looked at one another with slightly puzzled expressions and began to discuss their situation.

"Damn groceries and kitchens," Craps exclaimed. "I hope we never have to prepare and cook."

"We won't. Now it's just us," Malty chuckled. "This is our chance to explore speedy things that juggle."

Without thinking or moving, the two weasels joined hands and began skipping forward. The momentum of the skip was strong enough to catapult them six hundred years into the future. A huge flash of white light appeared shortly afterwards, causing odd simple blips on the screens of mermaids.

"Wag your tail," Craps commanded.

And with that, they both wagged their tails as fast and as hard as they could. The gravity of the motions made them turn different directions, so that it was instantly impossible for them to get anywhere reasonable. But just when they thought there would be no destination, there suddenly was a destination. And it was a destination that neither of them would have ever imagined. Lying broadly at the foot of their feet was a companion trench that was filled with quality butter.

"It is a DREAM come TRUE!" exclaimed Malty. "Smell the goddamn butter!"

"Oh how proud Papa would be," Craps whispered as he waddled his front paw into the butter and scooped up a hefty portion.

When they looked up, they saw a sign that with the words Nurture Area painted all over it. As they stared at the letters, they started to read them. As they read the letters, they started to comprehend the words that contained the letters. As they spoke, they realized what the sign said.

THE SIGN

"The sign says Properly Processed Cheese," cried Craps.

"That's what it says, all right," Malty replied. "But the Witch doesn't allow mouth etiquette."

And that truly must have been the case, because the Witch was really really upset and she didn't care who knew it. She stormed back and forth, shaking pieces off her dress and cackling wildly about some kind of hamster disease that neither of them had ever heard of before. She had magic stuff in her, but that didn't make Craps or Malty frightened. Instead, they reached over and kicked her gently until she started to nudge.

"Oh my goodness, " cried Malty. "We forgot to pay the power bill!"

"We don't have power bills," Craps replied.

"Oh yeah, that's right" Malty said with a completely blank snout.

The Witch was laying quietly nearby, saying nothing but meanwhile aware of everything. Her electronic notation was visibly notched, and her alterations were noticeably different sometimes. She stared at the weasels and began to concentrate as hard as she could. She could no longer fly, but in her mind she was flying continuously. When she closed her eyes she could see sparks and electricity, the peculiar kind that no one else was even aware of. Every few minutes she would fluster and bunch up all at once.

"What is your name, Witch?" Craps asked.

There was no answer. But shortly afterward a tiny little seamstress wandered onto a nearby pond.

"Care to buy some girdles?" the seamstress asked.

Craps and Malty looked at one another and started to laugh. How could she have known?

"We'll take fifty thousand," Malty demanded without hesitation.

"Do you want to be gift wrapped?" the seamstress inquired.

"We are already gift wrapped," Craps cried out with extra sass.

EXTRA MASS

And with that they began spinning wildly so that all of their ribbons fribbled away like a multi-colored mass of hysteria...all bubbly and blinkered like the mythical bitchy snoopers from yonder areas.

A witch, a seamstress, and two weasels. But wasn't there something...missing?

As with any good thing that happens, forty or fifty bad things happen. And when one goes on, all the others go on as well. A puff of smoke lifted. A lifter padded the pumpers of punyville. The punyville villagers got snonky. And then all the dumb motorboats got swirled up in a gorilla nap.

The notices were everywhere. Witch on Nose Patrol. Seamstress on Bad Caption Law. Craps Maintains Secondary Partition. Malty, the Mouse-Smothered Proton.

The count began. One to two to thirty-six. Thirty-seven to eighty to seven hundred. Then more and more counts until the numbers was all so damn high that nothing could ever be counted no more.

"You forgot to pay the seamstress bill," warned the tiny seamstress.

That one puny statement caused everyone to get all honked up. The four characters tooted up toward the sky and scooted around like crazy metallic retards. Curds and whey was sprinkled where it could be and levered tramps racked up the munch of tinnie.

By now the Witch was all gone, with only a botched plow hole to show for it. Her mission had been a tragic one and she had mused porch allow for the fortunes of moon chaps.

ROMAINE'S DUTY

"Me want onion!" Malty cried out.

Craps and the seamstress grabbed a monster onion and plowed it at Malty, whose arms were only too modular to tug at the tassels and minnow patterns. When one onion goes, another must follow. And so it was for the cracks in the toiling fortress.

There's an old saying that says, 'Grease get oiled for the loudest of the oil grips.' But when you say it, nothing gets done any faster or any different. So it just gets said a lot without ever making a damn bit of difference.

A lofty hair stylist named Romaine opened the door and invited them in.

"Let Romaine do the trollying!" he screamed as he tossed handfuls of sequins into the air.

He escorted Craps, Malty, and the seamstress to an area with three large padded stylist chairs and had them sit. He fastened the belts so that they were secure and quickly began snipping and trimming away. He was the irritant and the mustard in the monument. But even though their approval was negligible, they allowed the freak to finish what it did.

When it was done, Romaine twirled the chairs around in unison in front of a large seven dimensional mirror. The three newly-born model types unbuckled their belts and stood up. They ooohed and aaahed over their hair. They said tra-la-la a few times and then chunked Romaine down a thick pantry chute that apparently dumped out into a flooded septic area where dead things decay.

Funny how being pretty can cause dysfunction among friends. They felt mighty guilty, so they wrote a song to commemorate everything all at once. The nilly-willy song went like this:

Ditches the mists break.
Ditches that crawl.
Two times the litter train.
Two times the paw.

But our paws was all thicker
Than ruptures and slick.
Our rank in the positive,
Olive with tick.
The cranks on the beach
Are the budgies that crawl.
We lost things.
We lost lots of things.

But we all get damned.
Damned as hard as punch.
Hard as thick of a bitch.
Thick and stark as a crunch.

Sing a song of sing-song.
Song a sing of shang.
Sag a sog of wig-wog.
Tick a tog of grain.

 

THE BOX OF PENCILS

Loud applause broke out for two seconds. And then no sooner than they had begun the song ended abruptly and they were all sitting cross-legged on a cloud. Then more loud applause for one second. Then they were all aboard a hopped-up lofty ship sailing across the sandy ocean waves.

Where one world ends another stops. And wherever one stops, another gets annoyed. That is how things work. That is how things have always worked.

The seamstress picked up a box of pencils and looked at them. At first the pencils seemed regular and utilitarian. But the more she stared at them the more flexible and adaptive they became. She touched one and it shook with deep blue mental. She touched another and it shocked the smack out of ranch country. She opened the box all the way and held it up to the Malty.

"Pick a pencil, any pencil," she instructed. "Now keep it hidden so that I can't see what it is."

"But you already KNOW what it is!" Malty exclaimed. "It's a goddamn pencil!"

The seamstress closed her eyes and held her tiny palms up into the air. She began to whisper and chant and conjure up things that were in the air. The air moved slowly at first and then faster and faster. All kinds of junk started joining the moving air. So much so that before they knew it everything had become something like a cluster tornado there.

"Wait, I am seeing something very clearly," the seamstress cooed. "I am seeing the image now...it is clearer and clearer. Ah ha! You are holding...A PENCIL!"

"You are stupid," Craps said with a dull thud. "You are stupid and this is stupid."

SEAMSTRESS FOR TWO

Weasels aren't always as stupid as stupid animals that sometimes seem slightly similar to their stupid species. And these two weasels weren't having none of that special pudding that had done been made for them. They spat at the stuff swirling in the air and placed it into percentages. The percentages weren't even at first, but as the porks startled they married the pigeon war taxi.

"What would you like for lunch today?" Craps asked, as he handed Malty a seamstress sandwich.

"I'd like a seamstress sandwich, if you please," Malty replied.

They cut the sandwich in half and each gulped theirs up quick.

Craps wiped Malty's mouth with a poultry patch and then delivered a spouty commentary. His purse got caught in the dimension of 28-23 and big dents was made in there that was impossible to fix real good.

When you fix things right, they ain't never the way they was. When you fix 'em wrong, they's just the right kinda thing swappy little Nancy always fixates on. Big is small. Small is big. Then they all mush together in the trappy owl of snig.

"Is there a little bit of sandwich left for Tammy?" Craps asked. "We forgot to pay the Tammy bill!"

"There IS no Tammy bill!" Malty snarled in anger.

EXPLANATIONS

He was tired of explaining the explanations because everything he explained always had to be explained and explained again with additional explanations. As tires get worn down, so do us. And us don't got no explain for the ranchy and the fantabulous. Craps jumped up suddenly and began to run

"MONKEYS is chasing us! MONKEYS is chasing us!" he screamed.

"That was cheap, corny, and predictable," Malty said in a deadpan tone.

There wasn't really no monkeys of course. So damn it if he did and damn it if he didn't. He just got back from Hell and didn't have time for no smash. He weren't drunk no more. And he wasn't high no more. He wasn't nothin' no more. He was just Malty and there was no time for snack.

"We got to ADOPT something," Malty said in a reasonable tone. "We got to adopt something RIGHT NOW from another species."

"Then we get RESECT!" Craps declared, before asking... "Then we get RESPECT?"

"Yes," Malty said quietly. "Then we get respect. That is what happening."

ADOPT-A-THON

When everything was ready and they had the thing to adopt, they invited everyone from far and really far to come and witness so that proof could be provided. The ceremony was held at the Tantrum Museum, a small locale that was popular with things that were local and slightly foreign. The museum had thousands of items on display that had little or no value and were of interest to no one. As the crowd descended inside the building, they were greeted by dozens of basinets...each containing a tiny warm thon. Malty and Craps stepped forward and began surveying them all to decide which one to adopt.

"Welcome! Thank you all for coming," Craps announced in a heartfelt tone.

"Now is the time that we shall select our thon," Malty declared in a defiant tone.

They walked and looked and looked and walked. They picked up each thon and inspected it for limits and parallels. If the thon stunk, they dunked it. If it seemed primal, they made it go dippy. After sniffing and huffing and prodding and noodling, they eventually decided on the most special thon that was there.

"All hail our mighty new adopted thing!" Malty and Craps cried with joy.

The crowd cheered. They were happy. Malty and Craps were happy. Everyone joined everyone else with warm happiness. Happy swelled up real big inside the building. It kept swelling and swelling until the air went away. Then things started to die. First a big thing. Then a little thing. Then an old thing. Then a pretty thing. Things was just all dead and dying. Craps could see that the dead would catch up with their area shortly.

"We gotta get OUT of here...FAST!" he screamed as his wheels spun out of control, digging a messy trench in the vanilla patches of thawn.

The weasels ran fast and far. Then they stopped running and started stopping. They had to stop three times for pennies before they finally stopped all the way. Then things stopped for real. The thon had mutated into a honk. And it was not a pretty good honk. It was a bad evil honk.

They tied a rope to the honk's neck and dropped in into a water well. After lowering it fast, they heard a sharp crack. Then they cut the rope and began manufacturing envelopes. Then they heard a plunky sound that echoed various tones of lavender and chartreuse.

"Thar's plenty more thons where thattun came from!" Malty declared.

They forgot what they were doing and resumed. The resolution of the tragedy was broad and majestic, like the crumpled ovary of a mandarin pig. They slammed. They diaper-roped. And then they ravaged the sloping triangle of the horrible digging switch.

When one light turns on, another turns off. And then they all turn off together once and for all. Millions and millions of miles far away. Billions of stars everywhere and they're all completely identical. Burning and twinkling in their own unique way. But identical and generic each and every day.

Two divided by two equals twelve. And the beginning of each new day brings the end of eternity. The dreams we have become the depression we live with. With depression comes relief, and the few who survive will be the first to be extinguished. Little fluffy pots transform into puppies. And those puppies in turn become the tamper-resistant uniforms that will eventually be worn by future employees.

One for the dammit. Two for the hells. Three for the badges that birth fifteen-zillion whales.

 

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©2019 LMNOP (aka dONW7)