Subject: God is on my side, or They're dead, Jim

Posted by: Mystaque at 04/18/00 21:03

Being the moste tragicke death and lamentable comminution of the Abrasive Shadowcrabbe and Her Pal ellipsis (withe Spoilers)

At the hands of the evil Mystaque and her Politically Correckt hench-Objeckt, The Grande Piano. And God. And His angels.

Plotting: Ben Jonson
Dialogue and story: Budweiser and Crispe Clearminte, anonymous
Picktures: Albrecht Durer (forthe-coming in Under five Yeares)

OUR STORY THUS FAR:

It was a day like any other. The air was filled with the electric tension of the struggle of the human race to comprehend the forces in its midst, the forces it had loosed upon its midst and upon the midsts of lesser species too many and too insignificant to mention, and the forces of someone not named here but of primal importance in his or her own mind treading upon the shag-carpeted back of this day and the days to come in dress shoes and then petting the cat. The air was filled as well with oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and trace gasses, filling the skies of the fair green inhabitable Earth and the pages of chemistry texts with pie charts, equations, and questions for further study. Not the skies but the pages. With pie charts, etc. The study questions being of the deepest, most soul-rending importance.

On this day like any other did Shadowcrab gaze into the vaulted blue sky over the corner of Hennepin and Lake in Minneapolis, city of lakes, city of Uptown, city of the Walker with its sculpture of a huge cherry perched on a huger spoon, and sighing a weighted sigh from her chest upon which many had been tempted to hang a sign on which the words "Why bother?" might have been imprinted (but none had dared, so great was her temper and her ability to vanish at will and thus escape notice, not unlike a manhole cover or the grating englued by accreted years of asphalt onto a storm-drain), thoughtfully said with a mouth that often seemed, not unlike a poorly dubbed foreign film, to be forming not the words her brain intended but words entirely other:

"Whassup, B?"

Her friend, few of few but clasped like all those few to Shadowcrab's loyalty with bands of strong plastic capable of sealing tight even the most overfilled yard bags, those with their dirty bulk of pine cones and their dense packings of pine needles, and their sneaking weight of mid-sized rocks upon which one fears to strike the whirling blade of the lawnmower, her friend, ellipsis, noting the Mount Rushmore of thought seating itself on her boon friend Shadowcrab's lofty brow, nodded and replied:

"Watchin' the game. Drinkin' a Bud."

Then did Shadowcrab nod in her turn. And both of them contemplated the sky over the corner of Hennepin and Lake, while around them, unwatched and unknown but knowable (to anyone with attention to pay—-pray God! Pay attention! For sometimes, then, does it show up for work!), forces of tragedy not unlike those ungodly powers that allowed the film "Titanic" to cram its pockets with Oscars and run as a thief in the night, clanking, and swearing as it struck its shins and knees upon items of furniture in the dark, from the Academy Awards—-yes, such forces were at that moment swirling into being. For the evil Mystaque was watching/contemplating their contemplation/watching of the vaulted skies from her chair in the sidewalk seating at Figlio's, across Lake; and she muttered over her fried calamari:

"WHASSUP!!!"

Her minion, her beast of burden and savagery, her slave of sadism and blackest evil, the ebon and ivory butcher of Beethoven and Bacharach....

....Grande Piano....

....seated to her left and showing superhuman restraint in the face of the most delectable fried calamari for at least four blocks—-for it was not a mere lack of hands that made possible this restraint, this withholding of the desire to suck from their crunchy golden coating the squiddish rings, not unlike a crass adolescent slurping from its precious shell the interior of an onion ring and giggling "Whoa! Gross! Tapeworm!", but years of meditation and training--And fear--Of Mystaque--The evil Mystaque—-contemplated his—-her—-its evil mistress's evil contemplation of the contemplation of the sky then ensuing across Lake, where once had been a store for the selling of furniture and antiques but where now stood but an antler, or branch, of the ubiquitous Caribou, and hissed:

"WHASSUP!?!"

Mystaque, her hand with its ringed burden poised over the tarmack-black minipot holding a cold lava of marinara and its lumpings of greenish vegetable bits not unlike a trailer park being swept, bobbing, to its burning doom by the hellish rivers of Mount Aetna, thought, Oh, my minion! Now will you prove to me your worth, your faith, your use--!

"Where's Doogie...?" she mused contempatively.

And Grande Piano, ensensitized to his—-her—-its mistress's every whim, keen as many sharp new plastic-handled steak knives given in wooden blocks to those who would apply for a Sears card of credit at a booth in the halls of merchandise at the State Fair to fulfill her every evil ken, bellowed enraptured, with flaring nostrils (if only figuratively, for Grande Piano's nose was much like his—-her—-its hands in its absence):

"Yo! Doogie! Pick up the phone!"

And God—-for God was to Grande Piano "Doogie", but not Fred, Wilma, or even, least understandably, Pebbles—-did in a manner most divine in a manner of speaking "pick up the phone" and spoke unto the plea of Grande Piano:

"WHASSUP!!!!"

And Mystaque, the evil Mystaque, the most pernicious, noting then the presence of Doogie, and looking with cold respect at her minion, did mull his—-her—-its plan, his—-her—-its offer of supreme sacrifice (for instantly, being of the most evil genius, did she comprehend his—-oh, heck--its idea for revenge most sweet, most cold; and best served with thin-sliced radish), and did silently ask the Almighty to bear aloft her expendable Grande Piano, to hoist him—-it—-to the heavens and then release her—-it—-so that it—-just it—-would plummet from said heavens onto the heads of her cursed foes and their contemplation of the clear sky over Hennepin and Lake.

"WHASSSSUP!!!!" she murmured, nodding.

God, or Doogie, holding in His breast a grudge old and stained as with the rings of many coffee cups, such as those that might once have graced the Order Up counter at the shops of Caribou, against Shadowcrab for the slight she once made against Him through a misspelling most intentional, did summon angels with a cry that rang against the vaults of the heavens—

"WHHHAAASUP...!!!"—

--and the angels, being thus summoned, and abandoning as they came many games of Tetris and Unreal Tournament amid much grumbling, bore aloft the minion Grande Piano, for they were not, as was Doogie, in a position of middle management and had, as a result, to be those to whom the divine buck was passed in terms of smitings, revengings, loftings, and washings of the evening's dinnerware. Into the sky, the very heavens, did they hoist the evil Grande Piano; higher than high and higher still, above the whisping backs of the cirrus clouds, higher than that, and wearing, yes, their Walkmans with their CDs of KMFDM, Korn, and John Denver blaring into their divine ears songs of destruction and tender romance did they not hear the Almighty bellowing how That would do! and thus did it happen that one of the angels clocked her—-his—-its head on the black-scaled belly of the shuttle Atlantis, passing above the murderous band in the black heavens, and barking in pain and surprise

"WHASSUPPP!!"

did drop her—-his—-its end of the evil Grande Piano.

Thus was the evil Grande Piano released. And thus did it fall. And thus as it fell did it, falling, cry its cry of battle and sacrifice, of pain and greed, of longing and regret for not having grasped, taken, consumed, one of the golden rings of calamari while it yet had the chance: "WHAAAASUUUUP!!!!"

And Shadowcrab, looking upward in contemplation of the clear blue sky over Hennepin and Lake, saw not the evil Grande Piano in free-fall toward her head with its hair the color of hazelnuts and straight in the manner that North Dakota is flat, that is to say, utterly, totally; nor did ellipsis, in contemplation also, see the black speck as it became a dot and then not unlike a beercan, and then like a small television, and then most like a piano—

And thus they were squashed. In the tragedy of days without number, coincidence bears on its iquana back the most terrible tragedies of all. "Whassup, B?"—-the last words of a heroine fallen, become as streetza, abandoned to the wheatgrass-juice (but never—never!—Metamucil) forces of fate by a divinity she too rarely asked over to watch "The Matrix" and drink Jaegermeister.

"Watchin' the game. Drinkin' a Bud."

Amen, brothers and sisters. Amen.

Mystaque