Wangmundo: Missing Time (a series of brief scenes to fill in the gaps)

There is an unnatural creature living in Parodiopolis:
Large, bestial, uncannily clever, impossibly old and unable to die.
It had managed to travel the human world for centuries,
Overcoming its natural limitation to be bound to any one specific lair through use of a talisman:
Wherever it hung was home.

And so it lived in isolation within the attic of the city's Municipal Library
Mentally devouring each book in the collection reverently
Learning through the stories the hopes and dreams of people.
Learning to empathize.
Daydreaming of heroes.

...Until one day it was found out by a man who had hunted it for centuries.
The talisman was stolen, the creature cast out, its treasured lair gone.
And the uncannily clever mind began to backslide...

Wangmundo: Missing Time
Part One: The Dog

I remember the dog very well. Her hollow eye sockets mock me, and the remnants of flesh clinging to her skull sneers. I hate the dog.

"First" says the bitch, "...come the squirrels. Nobody misses the squirrels."

"Shut up" I snap, curling deeper into my submerged Buick. (A subterranean cave is traditional, don't you know... but the Parodiopolis industrial riverfront is woefully short on such conveniences. The oozing mud from the riverbed only needs to be scraped out twice a week. As time means little to me any longer, I often blink to find myself buried alive. Sadly, this remains the only way to bury me.)

"Then come the cats" the skull taunts. "But cats are stringy, unfilling, and people are glad to be rid of them."

I roll in the filth beneath the riverbank, but it is no use. I have not slept since Unferth stole my talisman. I do not know where my lair is.

"Then, and this is the part that concerns me..." the bitch relates. "...Then come the dogs." She had no tongue to loll out of her mouth, but her mandibles are laughing at me anyway. "People miss the dogs. They start to ask questions. People love the dogs."

I kick the skull towards the open trunk through which I climb in and out, but it lodges in the rusted out hub of the rear wheel.

"Do you remember what comes next?" she asks, innocently. "It's the best part..."

I whimper and rock myself back and forth.

"The babies."

I shudder as my tongue scrapes the remnants of her body from between my teeth. I do not need meat. I do not need anything. I cannot die (not yet). It is a phantom pain, to be hungry... Once I start, I can stop any time...

"The junkie loves the babies most of all" says the dog. "All soft outside, crunchy inside... no large bones to get stuck in the gullet. Yes, the street value for babies is quite high."

I'm drooling now, worse than I was before I bit into her back.

"When the babies go missing, then they act, don't they?" she sympathizes with me now. "Then they come with torches and pitchforks and other traditionally pointy things. Then they push their fear aside, and the crawl into the dark fens that they only dared whisper about before. And why do they do that?"

I will not play her games. (I am not at the mercy of my lunch.)

"Because they're heroes. And that is what heroes do... they come to face the darkness and save the innocent." She clucks impossibly with no tongue. "And what do you do?"

Starring straight ahead, I hiss my answer to her, eyes burning yellow with hatred. "I slaughter them all, dismembering them, battering them with the broken pieces of their comrades. I eat them while they still scream. And I laugh."

She nods encouragingly. "And why?"

"Because I am the monster."

She sits back, satisfied (a neat trick with no body) and nods. I grovel in the muck, unmade by my Unferth. It won't work... I won't give away my position... won't venture out to bring the populace down upon me. I have today's paper. (I can no longer tell time.) No babies are missing. It won't happen. I rock my head back and forth and weep for sleep.

"First" says the bitch, "...come the squirrels. Nobody misses the squirrels..."

to be continued

Post By Visionary Sun Jan 28, 2007 at 11:45:29 pm EST	Subject Wangmundo: Missing Time (a series of brief scenes to fill in the gaps)

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