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Chuck Wanted A Story
So I walked into the room and Chuck was there and he said, ‘dude! Why has your head been replaced with an exclamation mark?’
I tried to answer but couldn’t. Chuck said, ‘And now it’s a question mark!’
I reached up and felt around my face, and sure enough, it was punctuation. I grabbed the dot at the bottom and yanked it clear. It felt hefty, but light enough to throw, so I threw it hard at Chuck’s face. He caught it with his left hand and laughed, ‘heh heh heh!’ And then he ran out of the room.
That bastard, I thought, he stole part of my face.
I heard the door slam. I had no time to lose. I ran into Chuck’s room and put on some of his shoes. The left shoe was for running, the right shoe was for weddings and funerals. I was ready for anything. I snapped my fingers and the shoes raced out of the room, taking me with them.
Chuck was loping along the street like a gazelle, and I could hear his voice: ‘heh heh heh!’ He turned the corner far ahead, and by the time I reached it, I couldn’t see where he’d gone. I kicked the shoes against a graffiti’d wall, one after the other, and the graffiti fell off and crawled away like a giant caterpillar. I chased after the graffiti and wrestled it to the ground; then I climbed aboard, straddling it, and dug Chuck’s heels into its side. Puffing out the occasional breath of paint, it started off after Chuck, picking up speed as it went.
We caught up to Chuck in the old monastery at the top of Old Monastery Road. He was standing in the bombed-out circle where there had once been a stained-glass window, and he was holding the dot from my facial punctuation. I waved my fist at him. The graffiti bucked me off and sprayed itself on the wall of the monastery and I looked up at Chuck helplessly.
‘I like chili sauce!’ Chuck shouted down at me, and then he held the dot between his thumb and forefinger and dangled it over his open mouth. My hands flew to what would have been my cheeks but was now either side of the long bit of an exclamation mark. As I watched, Chuck’s eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped the dot into his mouth. I could see his Adam’s Apple spasm as he swallowed it down.
Then his eyes bulged, and he fell back into the ruined chapel proper and out of sight. I heard the thud as he hit the ground.
I raced up to the great doors and hauled them open. Inside, Chuck was lying sprawled on the overgrown stone paving. He was surrounded by what appeared to be many Andrew Loughnans, but I could tell that none of them were the real Andrew Loughnan. ‘What have we done with Andrew Loughnan!’ they screeched in a single falsetto chorus, ‘Nanful wordnah thiw nud eew vah tawh!’
I would not let them claim Chuck, no matter how foolishly he had acted. I thought of a simple equation, then plucked free two short spars to use as a weapon. I had now removed the entirety of what had replaced my head, although thankfully I could still see and hear as normal.
‘It is your fault,’ the Andrew Loughnans cawed at me. They were bobbing their heads up and down like crows. ‘T’ loaf royz ti.’ They came at me one by one. Each time one of them came, I used my equals to batter them in the fingers, and one by one they wheeled off to perch on the ruined wall.
I bent down to Chuck. I leaned close to his mouth to listen to what he said, which was: “.”
In Chuck’s breast pocket was a vivid Sharpie pen. I snatched it out and took off my shirt. Keeping a wary eye on the Andew Loughnans, I wrote hastily across my chest, ‘What did I do?’ Then I displayed what I had written to them.
They replied in chorus: ‘You stole his Egypt. Tip hudjee zih ulloats we.’
I wrote another message: ‘Why are you here?’
‘We come because you are afraid of us, suv odayrfar a we zokeeb muck eeyoo.’
One of the Andrew Loughnans turned his head and from the back of his head extruded a remotely controlled pocket Svend. Svend jigged over to me and whispered in my ear. He told me I was able to see because I had been gifted a metaphorical ferret that moved faster than the speed of light, and which raced around gathering photons in its teeth and spitting them in the correct order directly into receptors in my neck. He told me the Andrew Loughnans wished to eat my soul but not at the present time. He told me I needed to restore the Egypt that I stole from Chuck. Only this would make things right. And then he asked for payment, and held out his little hand.
I snatched up the remote control pocket Svend and hurled it with all my might over the wall and down into the forested valley beyond. The Andrew Loughnans all stood up very straight, and in one keening and squawking crowd they bent their way out of the ruined monastery in pursuit.
The time for fighting was past, so I restored my weapons to my face. Then I leaned over Charles and listened carefully. All he said was ‘.’ I knew I had been a bad person. I used the Sharpie to write ‘Do not touch’ on Charles’ forehead, and I rushed away, my left foot racing ahead of my more serious and sombre right foot.
I had to move quickly. I didn’t know how long Charles could survive with part of my face lodged in his gullet. I went to Doctors, the pub on the corner by the university, and peered through the window. As usual, the place was full of Doctors, mostly of the academic sort but some medical Doctors as well. Those were the ones I wanted.
As I reached the door, the bouncer stopped me. ‘Exclaim all you like, you’re not getting in here without a PhD or MD.’ He was so wide I suspected he was horizontal. There was no way around him.
Luckily at that point fate intervened. I saw my friend Derek, hobnobbing with the other Doctors. He waved at me and said ‘Parlez-vous Quebecois?’
I felt my face turn into a circumflex accent. Derek grinned broadly. I pointed past his shoulder at a medical doctor in scrubs who I thought I recognised. Derek nodded and sauntered over, tapping him on the shoulder.
The Doctor turned around. Sure enough, it was Erik, but I had miscalculated, for he was at that moment holding the end of his stethoscope to the small broken body of the pocket Svend. I felt my exclamation face italicise and checked the other entrance to the pub; sure enough, the Andrew Loughnans were clustered about the entrance, muttering to themselves and peering in.
Erik came over, holding the limp Svend loosely in his hand. ‘Hello!’ he said over the bouncer’s shoulder. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Punctuation?’
I reached over and grabbed the end of the stethoscope, and wrenched it free. Before the bouncer or Erik could realise what I’d done, I had scarpered off down the street. I knew they’d be searching for me, because a Doctor’s stethoscope could earn a fortune on the black market these days, but I had no choice.
I texted Malcolm, who happened to be in the area and pulled up moments later. ‘What happened to your face?’ he asked as he saw me. ‘I almost didn’t recognise you!’
I could hear cawing and scuttering. Sure enough, the Andrew Loughnans were bounding down the street towards me. I scrambled into the car. Malcolm, realizing out predicament, gave me a nod and accelerated out of there.
‘Where do you need to go, guvnor?’ he asked. ‘Should I gather the crew together?’
I pulled out the sharpie and wrote an address on my arm. Malcolm nodded. Scant minutes later, tyres smoking and three species of birds dead on our windscreen, we pulled up at King Christian’s tower.
Christian lived there with his court, which was mostly administered by his Dukes of Leisure. Christian himself was rarely seen, emerging occasionally to take food from the cupboards then disappear back into his chambers. With Malcolm at my heels I ran through the lower level and up the spiral staircase, ignoring the mind-expanding activities going on all about. Finally, unchallenged, we reached the door to Christian’s chambers. I pushed the door open.
Christian was standing at a seventy-degree angle, with his head against the wall. There were fingernail scratches all over his chin. He said to us, ‘I never wanted this!’ And then he laughed.
I pointed to the wall, where Christian’s electric drill was resting on its mount, always fully charged. Christian laughed. Malcolm, sensing the seriousness of the situation, stepped forward and slapped Christian: ‘Come back to us, man!’
Christian keeled over and spasmed. From the scratches on his chin he extracted the bones of a hummingbird. Then he coughed and leapt to his feet, his eyes sharp and gleaming. ‘I know I shouldn’t do hummingbird. But I’m addicted. What do I have to drill?’
I put the stethoscope on my ears and moved it over my head, which was currently a semi-colon. I listened carefully until I heard the vibrational frequency of the pyramids. It was a deep, holy pulse. I pointed at that spot.
Christian leaned in close. ‘Are. You. Sure?’
I could hear the Andrew Loughnans coming up the stairs, and the sounds of panic from below. Malcolm grabbed an empty bottle, smashed it against a table, and went out to hold them off as long as possible. I nodded.
Christian put the drill bit against me. I felt its diamond-tipped pressure. My heart stopped. I made a thumbs-up. There was a jerk and an electric whine and a roar and I felt for a moment the disturbing sensation of a drillbit stuck half-inside my skull, and then I screamed.
Christian yanked the drill free, blood and bone flying with it. Chuck’s Egypt flew out the hole in my temple, and rushed out the window, racing to be reunited with its rightful owner. Outside I heard the Andrew Loughnans, sensing their moment had passed, fleeing with unintelligible anguished cries. I sagged to the floor. Christian handed me a mirror. ‘How do you like it?’
Wearily I held the mirror up to my face. I inspected the hole made by his emergency trepanation. ‘Looks fine,’ I said, and fainted.
When I woke up, Chuck was there, punching Chris in the arm and talking about China Mieville with Malc. They all noticed I was awake. Chuck leaned over to me and poked my hole with his finger.
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If there are images in this attachment, they will not be displayed. Download the original attachment
Chuck Wanted A Story
So I walked into the room and Chuck was there and he said, ‘dude! Why has your head been replaced with an exclamation mark?’
I tried to answer but couldn’t. Chuck said, ‘And now it’s a question mark!’
I reached up and felt around my face, and sure enough, it was punctuation. I grabbed the dot at the bottom and yanked it clear. It felt hefty, but light enough to throw, so I threw it hard at Chuck’s face. He caught it with his left hand and laughed, ‘heh heh heh!’ And then he ran out of the room.
That bastard, I thought, he stole part of my face.
I heard the door slam. I had no time to lose. I ran into Chuck’s room and put on some of his shoes. The left shoe was for running, the right shoe was for weddings and funerals. I was ready for anything. I snapped my fingers and the shoes raced out of the room, taking me with them.
Chuck was loping along the street like a gazelle, and I could hear his voice: ‘heh heh heh!’ He turned the corner far ahead, and by the time I reached it, I couldn’t see where he’d gone. I kicked the shoes against a graffiti’d wall, one after the other, and the graffiti fell off and crawled away like a giant caterpillar. I chased after the graffiti and wrestled it to the ground; then I climbed aboard, straddling it, and dug Chuck’s heels into its side. Puffing out the occasional breath of paint, it started off after Chuck, picking up speed as it went.
We caught up to Chuck in the old monastery at the top of Old Monastery Road. He was standing in the bombed-out circle where there had once been a stained-glass window, and he was holding the dot from my facial punctuation. I waved my fist at him. The graffiti bucked me off and sprayed itself on the wall of the monastery and I looked up at Chuck helplessly.
‘I like chili sauce!’ Chuck shouted down at me, and then he held the dot between his thumb and forefinger and dangled it over his open mouth. My hands flew to what would have been my cheeks but was now either side of the long bit of an exclamation mark. As I watched, Chuck’s eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped the dot into his mouth. I could see his Adam’s Apple spasm as he swallowed it down.
Then his eyes bulged, and he fell back into the ruined chapel proper and out of sight. I heard the thud as he hit the ground.
I raced up to the great doors and hauled them open. Inside, Chuck was lying sprawled on the overgrown stone paving. He was surrounded by what appeared to be many Andrew Loughnans, but I could tell that none of them were the real Andrew Loughnan. ‘What have we done with Andrew Loughnan!’ they screeched in a single falsetto chorus, ‘Nanful wordnah thiw nud eew vah tawh!’
I would not let them claim Chuck, no matter how foolishly he had acted. I thought of a simple equation, then plucked free two short spars to use as a weapon. I had now removed the entirety of what had replaced my head, although thankfully I could still see and hear as normal.
‘It is your fault,’ the Andrew Loughnans cawed at me. They were bobbing their heads up and down like crows. ‘T’ loaf royz ti.’ They came at me one by one. Each time one of them came, I used my equals to batter them in the fingers, and one by one they wheeled off to perch on the ruined wall.
I bent down to Chuck. I leaned close to his mouth to listen to what he said, which was: “.”
In Chuck’s breast pocket was a vivid Sharpie pen. I snatched it out and took off my shirt. Keeping a wary eye on the Andew Loughnans, I wrote hastily across my chest, ‘What did I do?’ Then I displayed what I had written to them.
They replied in chorus: ‘You stole his Egypt. Tip hudjee zih ulloats we.’
I wrote another message: ‘Why are you here?’
‘We come because you are afraid of us, suv odayrfar a we zokeeb muck eeyoo.’
One of the Andrew Loughnans turned his head and from the back of his head extruded a remotely controlled pocket Svend. Svend jigged over to me and whispered in my ear. He told me I was able to see because I had been gifted a metaphorical ferret that moved faster than the speed of light, and which raced around gathering photons in its teeth and spitting them in the correct order directly into receptors in my neck. He told me the Andrew Loughnans wished to eat my soul but not at the present time. He told me I needed to restore the Egypt that I stole from Chuck. Only this would make things right. And then he asked for payment, and held out his little hand.
I snatched up the remote control pocket Svend and hurled it with all my might over the wall and down into the forested valley beyond. The Andrew Loughnans all stood up very straight, and in one keening and squawking crowd they bent their way out of the ruined monastery in pursuit.
The time for fighting was past, so I restored my weapons to my face. Then I leaned over Charles and listened carefully. All he said was ‘.’ I knew I had been a bad person. I used the Sharpie to write ‘Do not touch’ on Charles’ forehead, and I rushed away, my left foot racing ahead of my more serious and sombre right foot.
I had to move quickly. I didn’t know how long Charles could survive with part of my face lodged in his gullet. I went to Doctors, the pub on the corner by the university, and peered through the window. As usual, the place was full of Doctors, mostly of the academic sort but some medical Doctors as well. Those were the ones I wanted.
As I reached the door, the bouncer stopped me. ‘Exclaim all you like, you’re not getting in here without a PhD or MD.’ He was so wide I suspected he was horizontal. There was no way around him.
Luckily at that point fate intervened. I saw my friend Derek, hobnobbing with the other Doctors. He waved at me and said ‘Parlez-vous Quebecois?’
I felt my face turn into a circumflex accent. Derek grinned broadly. I pointed past his shoulder at a medical doctor in scrubs who I thought I recognised. Derek nodded and sauntered over, tapping him on the shoulder.
The Doctor turned around. Sure enough, it was Erik, but I had miscalculated, for he was at that moment holding the end of his stethoscope to the small broken body of the pocket Svend. I felt my exclamation face italicise and checked the other entrance to the pub; sure enough, the Andrew Loughnans were clustered about the entrance, muttering to themselves and peering in.
Erik came over, holding the limp Svend loosely in his hand. ‘Hello!’ he said over the bouncer’s shoulder. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Punctuation?’
I reached over and grabbed the end of the stethoscope, and wrenched it free. Before the bouncer or Erik could realise what I’d done, I had scarpered off down the street. I knew they’d be searching for me, because a Doctor’s stethoscope could earn a fortune on the black market these days, but I had no choice.
I texted Malcolm, who happened to be in the area and pulled up moments later. ‘What happened to your face?’ he asked as he saw me. ‘I almost didn’t recognise you!’
I could hear cawing and scuttering. Sure enough, the Andrew Loughnans were bounding down the street towards me. I scrambled into the car. Malcolm, realizing out predicament, gave me a nod and accelerated out of there.
‘Where do you need to go, guvnor?’ he asked. ‘Should I gather the crew together?’
I pulled out the sharpie and wrote an address on my arm. Malcolm nodded. Scant minutes later, tyres smoking and three species of birds dead on our windscreen, we pulled up at King Christian’s tower.
Christian lived there with his court, which was mostly administered by his Dukes of Leisure. Christian himself was rarely seen, emerging occasionally to take food from the cupboards then disappear back into his chambers. With Malcolm at my heels I ran through the lower level and up the spiral staircase, ignoring the mind-expanding activities going on all about. Finally, unchallenged, we reached the door to Christian’s chambers. I pushed the door open.
Christian was standing at a seventy-degree angle, with his head against the wall. There were fingernail scratches all over his chin. He said to us, ‘I never wanted this!’ And then he laughed.
I pointed to the wall, where Christian’s electric drill was resting on its mount, always fully charged. Christian laughed. Malcolm, sensing the seriousness of the situation, stepped forward and slapped Christian: ‘Come back to us, man!’
Christian keeled over and spasmed. From the scratches on his chin he extracted the bones of a hummingbird. Then he coughed and leapt to his feet, his eyes sharp and gleaming. ‘I know I shouldn’t do hummingbird. But I’m addicted. What do I have to drill?’
I put the stethoscope on my ears and moved it over my head, which was currently a semi-colon. I listened carefully until I heard the vibrational frequency of the pyramids. It was a deep, holy pulse. I pointed at that spot.
Christian leaned in close. ‘Are. You. Sure?’
I could hear the Andrew Loughnans coming up the stairs, and the sounds of panic from below. Malcolm grabbed an empty bottle, smashed it against a table, and went out to hold them off as long as possible. I nodded.
Christian put the drill bit against me. I felt its diamond-tipped pressure. My heart stopped. I made a thumbs-up. There was a jerk and an electric whine and a roar and I felt for a moment the disturbing sensation of a drillbit stuck half-inside my skull, and then I screamed.
Christian yanked the drill free, blood and bone flying with it. Chuck’s Egypt flew out the hole in my temple, and rushed out the window, racing to be reunited with its rightful owner. Outside I heard the Andrew Loughnans, sensing their moment had passed, fleeing with unintelligible anguished cries. I sagged to the floor. Christian handed me a mirror. ‘How do you like it?’
Wearily I held the mirror up to my face. I inspected the hole made by his emergency trepanation. ‘Looks fine,’ I said, and fainted.
When I woke up, Chuck was there, punching Chris in the arm and talking about China Mieville with Malc. They all noticed I was awake. Chuck leaned over to me and poked my hole with his finger.
I said, ‘Are you happy now?’
He said, ‘Heh heh heh!’
FINI
© morgue 2006
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