I think this
is the ninth installment of Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive
Brother. When we last left our intrepid crew (I’ve always want to
write that,) Ono, has just encountered Lustavious Brachenhun, the
libidinous, importunate (two more words I’ve always want to use,)
Lightbringer, who has pegged her for one of his longer-termed
relationships – perhaps an entire hour.
Chapter Four
Stuff You Learn
There are several tricks you learn if you live long enough. I have
lived long enough to learn a few of them, and to identify several
more that I have yet to learn. Some tricks come to you naturally,
though the only way to learn others is to go to the right school.
Characters learn to fly in books from the childhood tales of
Ffefferfoph the Bblupbblsuph (who hasn’t read that one?) to
Jonathan Edwards Seagull Looks for Chicks. What does this
mean? There is a trick to flying, and humans can learn that trick if
they live long enough – or find where it’s taught.
The same is true for trans-dimensional transport, a common skill in
many stories – so common that anyone who’s lived long enough
would surely learn how to do it. It is a skill that Ono, at this
point in the story would find very useful.
And also a skill I never learned.
Chapter 4
Lustavious Brachenhun
“You,” sang Lustavious Brachenhun with a catchy pop tune with a
syncopated beat, “you may be the next one! You maybe the
one-and-only of this hour! (or maybe one of two.)”
I disliked Lustavious Brachenhun on sight, but I admired his ability
to make up a song extemporaneously like that. Dirk could do that –
even when we weren’t unusually old. As a matter of fact, Dirk was
doing that when we were children.
“You’re the Babe for my bed,” sang Lustavious, “and it better
be soon or I will SWOOOON to the moon!”
All right, that section wasn’t so good.
Lustavious was tall. He was the tallest Light Bringer I’d ever
met, and his hair was pretty amazing. His blonde coif was the equal
of Luxcurious Bidden, and it wasn’t even stapled to his head.
As he got closer I stood up. Why do men always stand up when they
are approached by tall men? Maybe it is to see if the other man is
taller.
Lustavious was taller. I still stood. So did Ono with Swampy firmly
rooted to her shoulder. She nudged me out a step and slipped behind
me so I blocked Lustavious from her.
“Oh, hi,” said Lustavious. “You must be the brother of that
conniving bastard we are going to blast into oblivion for all time!”
He thrust out his hand. “I hope there’re no hard feelings.”
I found myself taking his hand, and even more incredibly, saying the
words, “of course not; think nothing of it.”
“Jerrrrrrk!” said Swampy, sounding more bird-like than I’ve
ever heard him before.
“We are all happy,” said Akwar in a disturbingly seductive tone,
“to do anything you want, Lustavious. ANYTHING.”
I didn’t remember Akwar being in the room. She did what may have
been intended as a bump and grind routine with a chair, which had it
any free will, might have ended it’s chair existence right there
and opted for cremation.
I put selective amnesia on my list of skills I needed to acquire.
“Noted,” said Lustavious, who had been fortunate to miss the more
disgusting thrusts of Akwar’s routine because he was focusing on
getting past me and into close proximity with Ono. He reached across
my body and fastened his manicured fingers onto Ono’s arm.
Ono said something that might have been yelp, or help. I couldn’t
be sure. Mage-e-not’s head was missing, though there wasn’t any
food floating above his collar. I remembered my boast about just
drawing the line and felt shame.
“Just a moment,” I said, and felt conflicted saying even that
much.
“Yes?” said Lustavious, staring down his perfectly straight nose
and over his strong chin to meet my gaze.
I trembled. I really trembled. Not even Lenny Bruise had made me
tremble and that guy was pretty powerful when he wanted you to feel
small.
“I don’t…”
“You don’t what?” asked Lustavious.
“I don’t know…”
“What don’t you know?” he sang in a suspended minor chord that
sent shivers up my spine.
What didn’t I know? I didn’t know! I couldn’t think. My mind
was blank, my knees were shaking. Something was important, but I had
no idea what!
“I know,” said Swampy, and sunk his rat-muzzle beak right into
Lustavious’ arm.
Lustavious bellowed, and within moments, seven Showr Rinn monks
skipped lightly across tables, chairs, and people’s heads,
surrounding Lustavious, Ono, Swampy, and me.
“A problem?” asked a slightly damp but glistening Lip Ton Tease.
For a moment we all stood there frozen. It reminded me of the day
Grandpa McFarland caught Dirk and me smoking one of his cigars behind
the potting shed. It turned out that Grandpa had no trouble with his
ten and eight-year-old grandsons smoking, but he gave us each a
whipping for not buying our own.
Grandpa loved his cigars more than his children or grandchildren, an
attitude I’ve come to understand over the years.
Tease stood there watching us with patient intensity. Monks live for
the moments when they can display patient intensity. Everybody else
on the planet experiences either patient boredom, or anxious
intensity. Monks hum for years to acquire this skill, then display
it whenever they can.
Yes, monks love to show off.
Ono was the first to come to her wits. She ignored Lustavious’
bleeding forearm, and the bits of gore hanging from Swampy’s beak.
“You glitter and bubble, Lip Ton Tease,” she said. “Did you
splish and swoosh?”
Tease turned his head in the pose that monks make when they don’t
know what to say, but want to look wise. “Loofa brings wholeness
to a shower,” he said.
“Ding dong,” said Ono. “You monks vroom.”
Tease straightened in a non-monk-like, but very guy-like way. For
all his training, Tease was a guy, and Ono was a pretty female.
Guys, be they 2-years-old, or about to fall in the grave, always like
to impress pretty girls.
“Poop and boo-hoo,” Ono continued, “we can’t peep as you roar
and rumble – to see you whoosh and jangle.”
A female novice, who though a female, may have been among that
percentage of females who, like males, live for impressing pretty
girls, said, “but you can watch us! I mean, it is permissible if
you wish to observe and so find peace.”
“Ker-ching?” asked Ono. Her eyes, which I noted were a rather
pleasant shade of green, fastened on Tease, like he was the great
hero, and the bleeding Light Bringer was nothing more than a face –
a face turning rapidly red – in the crowd.
“Yes,” said Tease, “Lap Er Gud, speaks truthfully – though
training exercises here might disturb the peace of brunch. We would
not harm anyone, but those who have not attained cleansed emotions
might fear the fear that disturbs digestion.”
“Wham zing!” said Ono, accepting an invitation that was not
strictly given. “May Swampy swoop and peep as well?” She gently
slipped her free hand under Tease’s arm. Lustavious still held her
other arm in his large hand connected to his large, albeit savaged
arm.
Tease looked on Lustavious’ wound and produced a loofa from his
robe. “You should clean that before you have it bandaged,” he
said.
Lustavious let go of Ono’s arm who strolled out of the cafeteria
between Lip Ton Tease and Lap Er Gud.
Maybe Akwar was right; she was a wizard.
A perfect drop of blood released its hold on Lustavious’ arm and
hurtled out into space. Its shape elongated as it fell, whether
stretching for the floor, or reaching back for its erstwhile home.
Though it accelerated as it dropped, time slowed and tiny fragments
of the drop refracted in the cafeteria’s sterile and unappetizing
light. As the drop found oneness with the puddle below, twin crowns
formed at the top of the drop, and at the point of joining. The
first crown dissolved into harmony with the puddle while the second
rapidly expanded its corona before rippling through the many droplets
that had lost themselves in a completeness which was…
Yech. That’s what it was, a puddle of blood. I never much liked
blood. I looked up at Lustavious whom I still detested.
“You need some help with that arm?”
Lustavious looked around sheepishly. Sheepish was not an expression
his face knew well, and it didn’t suit him.
“I suppose,” he said, putting down the loofa as if it were a
dangerous snake.
Mage-e-not’s head did not reappear until after we left.
Come back
next week to see the doings in the broom closet! That came out
wrong. I mean there is a broom closet involved, and stuff happens,
but I don’t write “doings” very well. So come back next week
to read the non-salacious events that occur in the broom closet.
(Way to go,
Headley. Now nobody’s coming back next week.)
And now this
message from one of my favorite sick song writers, Tom Lehrer
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