Dirk Destroyer Part 26 Chapter 11 Redux

As you might have guessed, this is the 26^th installment of a piece of long fiction (though the first one doesn’t really count because it’s stuff you shouldn’t bother reading.) This particular installment is the last in a chapter that was so long that it was threatening to grow teeth and eat the rest of the novel. Elmer (the protagonist,) blew it with a young lady. He discovered a way to travel back in time, and now he’s reliving that moment of failure in hopes of not blowing it once again.

Chapter 11 Redux

Another Moment in Time

I’d say I was in deep thought, but as Dirk would tell you, I’m not really known for that. I was in deep fuzziness though. The drone of All Bore, the stench of the sheep, the pleasant effects of the smoke, had me suspended in that hammock of thoughtlessness that isn’t asleep, but isn’t aware either.

Blah, blah blah.

I never noticed how tedious my inner dialog was until I had to relive it. This traveling in time thing was very useful, but it was also embarrassing. Thank goodness Ono comes by and Swampy snaps me out of it.

“Um…” I said wisely – at least by my standards, “you want to sit?” As if Ono needed my permission to sit on the cold earth.

“I think,” said Ono. “That I’d like to sit on that ledge.”

“But the sheep.”

“I’ll try not to bug them.”

Sure enough, there goes the ram flying through the air. Let’s see if I can change speeds here. Whoa, that ram is flying! Now backwards!

I should probably get back to the story.

“You don’t have another algae bar, do you?” she asked.

I knew I had several little sausages in my fanny pack, but if I gave her food now, would we smoke cigars together? It might change the whole timeline.

Oh gee! There’s that stupid brook bounding down a rocky bed thought again. Like it wasn’t embarrassing enough the first time.

She smiled – just as pretty as she did before, and I fidgeted, just as I had before – even though I tried especially hard not to.

“I could offer you a cigar,” I said off-handedly.

“Please!” she said. There was still enough of my first cigar for us to use it to light two more. “Teach me,” she said.

It’s pretty hard to pay attention when you’re living a scene over again in your mind. I’m trying to get all my lines right about Dirk, Swampy and the school. But I never noticed how nice her hair smells – even with cigar smoke and a hundred stinky sheep in the immediate vicinity.

I wanted to throw in something about that, but I stick to the script.

“Magic,” said Ono.

“No, not magic. It’s all logical. It all makes perfect sense once you learn it, or figure it out.”

Blah, blah-de-da-blah! Man, I do go on, don’t I? I’m surprised I didn’t tell her all about Dirk and my Fassentinker duets on scratchwing and bellow. I need to face this – I’m a bore.

“Can you stop Lustavious from banishing you to oblivion?”

Now we’re coming to it. This is the second chance I’ve been looking for. Maybe it would have been a good idea to think what I’ll say here.

Oh great! I have no idea what I’ll say!

“So All Bore made me an offer,” she said.

All Bore, that dirty old man! Of course I’m over eight thousand years old, so what does that make me? No time to worry about that. Look concerned. Try to pretend you haven’t heard this before. She starts to hyperventilate and I take her hand.

“You thought I could save you?” I asked.

“We could save each other,” she said tentatively, hopefully, and at that moment I realized that she was right. I needed saving as much as she did.

At least I figured that out the first time.

“I don’t know how.”

“You could go to that school and figure out how!” she said. “We could be together.”

Silence. It wasn’t complete silence. All Bore was still talking, though I have no idea why. Maybe it was one of those dream talking things practiced by the Sublimin people.

My throat was dry, and it wasn’t because of the cigars.

Here it is – the moment! What if I can’t change history? A great time to think of that, Elmer. I should have offered her a sausage, just to test it.

The sausages! That’s it. I have changed history. I have sausages in my fanny pack. All right – here it goes.

“I understand,” she said.

“Wait – that wasn’t in the script! I waited too long. Speak Elmer!

“I’ll try,” I croaked.

“What?” Her eyes, downcast before, raised to meet mine.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said, “but I’ll try. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we can save each other.”

“Really?”

“I’ll probably fail.”

She laughed as if I was joking, then threw her arms around my neck and hugged me. It would have been a beautiful moment if I hadn’t gotten a face full of Swampy.

“Ouch!” she said.

“What?”

“The cigar is hot.”

“Just throw it away.”

We both threw our cigar stubs into the dirt, where they smoldered together. Really, I’m not making this up – they smoldered together. It’s not another of those brook down a rocky bed romantic thoughts; the stubs landed near each other, and they both smoldered.

“Say,” I said. “I’m out of algae bars, but I seem to have supernaturally acquired some little smoked sausages. Would you like some?”

“Would I?”

Oh yeah. This is a much better ending.

Okay, I’m pretty sure that next week we’ll be exploring some scary territory – Dirk Destroyer that’s not Chapter 11 (or some form thereof.)

Well, it frightens me anyway.

Speaking of irrational fears.

Super Bowl… Is About Food!

So I’m supposed to have this post off. Walter Bego is supposed to be writing this post! I’m supposed to be lying back on a friend’s couch, eating whatever I can find from his cupboards, and wishing he’d get satellite, or cable, or something that gets more than 2 channels on his TV.

But Walter tells me he doesn’t want to write this post. 

 He says that he’s a Patriot’s fan and he feels deflated – then he laughs. I ask him what that’s supposed to mean, and he tells me a sports fan would get it.

So now I’m supposed to pick the Super Bowl?

“No,” he says, “a deal is a deal - 

Patriots 37

Sea Hawks 25

Well that was anti-climatic. I guess I could end the post here.

Can’t do it. So I asked Nick, my co-worker at Amalgamated Monster what he liked best about the Super Bowl.

“The food,” he answered.

“Oh,” I said with relief. I would have been completely lost if he talked about the half-back toggle post wiggle with a twist,

 but food I could relate to.

“My grandmother goes to town,” he said. “She makes all kinds of stuff – chicken wings, cheese cubes, salsa, cheese cake brownies, little funny things with pretzels and M&Ms.”

“Doesn’t she do that other times as well?”

Nick scratched his head and then stopped. It looked too much like he was thinking. Frederick the Bloody and the management of Amalgamated Monster fine all employees caught thinking on the job.

“There is one thing,” said Nick with as thoughtless an expression on his face as he could manage, “that she makes only during the Super Bowl.”

“What’s that?”

“Little smokies.”

My mouth started watering at the utterance of those two magic words. Little smokies were the ying and yang of snack food – a treat that tastes the ultimate good while looking the ultimate disgusting.

“Yeah,” I said to Nick, looking stupid without even having to make an effort. “You’re right – I never see little smokies unless I get invited to a Super Bowl party.”

“And they’re always gone before kick-off,” Nick added.

“So why don’t they show up the rest of the year?” I asked.

“Because they’re always gone before kick-off.” Nick repeated. “It doesn’t matter how many packages of little smokies my grandmother buys – everybody always eats them first while she’s busy putting everything out. I don’t think Grandma’s ever eaten a little smokie.”

I wanted to make some erudite reference to Dante’s Inferno, but my mind went blank – which was a good thing because Frederick the Bloody was staring right at me.

“That’s not fair,” I said as stupidly as possible.

“Uh-huh,” Nick agreed sounding a bit like Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade.

We must have passed the stupid test because Frederick the Bloody moved on to lower the IQ in another part of the plant.

“Little smokies,” I mused. “I have to get myself invited to a Super Bowl party.”

Nick was conspicuously silent the rest of the day.

So, how do you keep people from eating all the little smokies before kickoff? I asked that question of a select panel of readers. Sally Q. Broqenbuttom of Hackensack New Jersey responded:

“I just put my plate of little smokies in my cat, Oscar’s litter box.”

Thank you for the visual, Sally.

Maybe I won’t miss being invited to a party so much this year - as long a Walter Bego doesn't get invited either.

I guess there are more disgusting eating themes.  Squeamish Alert!