To catch a fly
Lashed on February 26, 2023.
I tried to catch a fly in my eyelashes but instead ended up with a killer bee wedged sideways up my left nostril.
Night terrors again visited me all week. In one particularly gnarly dream, bulbous, swollen hemorrhoids accosted me from all sides until I had become nothing more than a pile of piles—and then I became a single pile attached to Satan’s hairy rectum. The theme song to Bill Nye the Science Guy played in the background and I hummed along in a wordless, mouthless mumble. I awoke laughing. Laughing.
I belched uproariously and went all wall-eyed for a few seconds.
Upon realigning my eyes in their sockets (for the most part), I saw it was already morning: Time to get up and start my day… or whatever this horrifying thing that awaited me was called. I think it was “Monday.” I silently oozed out of bed in an ungrulious stupor and ambled downstairs in search of coffee, cake, or perhaps even coffee cakes.
“Archaeologists discover three new years between 1619 and 1620,” read the headline in the Bouillabaisse Boulevard Bulletin. Images of our politicians trying to out-smarm and out-sanctimony each other over the meaning of these three new years filled my head. Fortunately our vainglorious butt-frump of a mayor was mired in scandal upon scandal, the latest being fallout from his initiative to repeal both Godwin’s Law and Murphy’s Law. So, I knew he wouldn’t be participating in that particular granfalloonery. My head was full; I turned the page.
Page two was entirely blank for some reason—but for a photograph of a rather flaccid earthworm in the center of the page. I shrugged. It happens to everyone.
Turning to page three, I learned that Moldova had completely molded over. “Well, that’s a shame,” I muttered as I scraped it off the plate into the trashcan. “I planned to eat that for my blunch tomorrow.” Becasue took a sip of her coffee, looked at me curiously, thought to say something, thought better of it, and gave me another coffee cake (a non-moldy one).
Turning to the funny pages, I learned with much consternation that Garfield had enlisted in the Reddit brigade to go fight in Ukraine. That was simply too much; I put the paper down, held my head in my hands for a few moments to compose myself, then started laughing again. A long, dolorous laugh. Laughing. Laughing and decomposing.
I got another coffee cake out of that!
Again I tried to catch a fly in my eyelashes. But all I accomplished was getting a murder hornet trapped in my pants.
Roy G. Biv composed more poetry for me to critique. “Obafgkm!” I cursed mightily but politely endured his reading. The verses went on and on… on and on. I will spare my readers a verbatim retelling of the ode, but will state I was unaware the English language contained so many words rhyming with “goat.” When the reading was over, I smiled my most unctuously patronizing smile and, in my politest tones—contrary to common belief, I am capable of emitting polite tones!—explained to Roy that… I don’t speak English, so I couldn’t properly critique his mephistical abuse of the language. He seemed skeptical: Likely because I explained this to him in English. (Crap!) Repeating myself in Klingon didn’t assuage his skepticism, so I then just sat there emitting harsher and harsher tones until I sounded like a broken dialup modem. He realized further prodding was useless and left.
Like any fact, it retracts before impact. Man, what the hell happened? John Tuld, Dick Fuld, or a dick fold happened. Did you know the Sasanian snow squirrel can fold its dick up inside itself? After it buries its nuts for the winter, this evolutionary adaptation ensures its member doesn’t freeze in the −40 °F weather and snap off!
On Wednesnight, I confused hors d’œuvres with ordure, which caused some real embarrassment at the dinner party I was hosting. What a shitty mistake! But on Thursnight I confused saran wrap and sarin wrap, which accidentally killed everyone in a three-mile radius. Fortunately, the dead were all gnomes, so everyone forgave me. Life went on as normal by Friday. It also made them forget about Wednesday’s mistake right quick!
Becasue and I took a stroll downtown on Frimorning: I in my leisure suit and bolo tie, hexaflexagonal valise at my side, and my big little redheaded huzzey-muffet in her greenest dress, even greener sandals, and carrying her new tubular, octagonal handbag. The snow had all melted and the sidewalk had not yet filled back up with the desperate hordes of slavering, emaciated rats who return in spring and ravenously consume everything in their path. The time would soon come where none would dare venture outdoors in anything less than steel-toed boots lest everything south of the knee be gnawed off the moment foot met pavement. But this week was a week for leisure suits, bolo ties, and the greenest of sandals.
We returned home before darkness befell us and the gorgothine Owl Gods descended from the trees to peck and enucleate us. I took another swig of my fermented turkey juice and stumbled upstairs to my ninth-floor bedroom. Becasue stayed downstairs, murping and wheegling.
Too inebriated to complete decomposing this entry, I went about feeding my tulpas and egregores. The Spend-O-Mart was having a fish head shortage this week, but the early spring had brought thousands of frogs and toads to my back yard, which made a fine substitute. The tulpa shaped like Becasue’s buttocks—it even had the tentacles, too!—was pleased with my improvisation, but the others really wanted their fish heads.
The egregore who lurked in the shadows of the room—clawed, skinless, eye-ridden demoness that she was—would never be satisfied with a mere 157 skinned frogs. She rode me like I was a hapless horse doofer until Becasue (with all her tentacles) entered this nightmare and vanquished the demoness, casting her back to Hell whence she came. There wasn’t a kookely-wanger pointy enough to take this marsupial succubus on, but there was my big little blonde huzzey-muffet!
In the deep, suffocating snow lurked another reglondent thought-form: Twelve feet tall, white as its surroundings, it was roughly shaped like a humanoid. (Its shaper was as drunk as I am now and was furiously masturbating to images of Gumby when he went a-shaping.) The tulpa went forth when there was a bad storm to steal pigs, dogs, or first-borns. This one was a formidable foo all right. The snow had brought it back again. Even the silithicine creatures feared this one.
I shuddered as I watched it move. It stared up at me at my ninth-floor window with its beady black eyes. The stripped bones of two Borzoi lay in the snow near it (atop the pile of older bones). It was hungry. I went out to feed it.
I cast a glance at the ever-growing bone pile. “This is what I get for not feeding you enough fish heads and moldy corn-cobs, isn’t it?” I asked forlornly. It sneered at me, silently. I fed it more skinned, inside-out frogs. These would have to do. More dogs in the neighborhood would likely be eaten. Or pigs. Or people’s first-borns.
Of course, this deep, suffocating snow had melted away completely when the frogs and toads returned, so none of this could be. None of this was actually happening right now. Was this all a dream, a nightmare, a daymare, a turkey-drunken reverie? I grulliently bolted upright and hit my head on the ceiling. Becasue sighed and shook her own head at me. I grinned my best “Well what do you want me to do?” grin. There wasn’t a pair of dormfuddies big enough to take on this buttocks. But I would!
Saturmorning. There wasn’t a gaggle of luddlanders big enough to capture the beast, so we all just turned the trees inside-out out of spite. The trees would now match all the frogs I slew. Still the roads were covered in blood and gore, but no one could catch the beast. I belched uproariously and went all wall-eyed again: It would be my only contribution to the posse hunting the thing.
I put away the crack before the crack could put me away. (Supplies were running out.) “Zorrhb!” I began shouting—incoherently, incongruently, and covered in rhinestone sequins. My ebullient little fooiscious redheaded huzzey-muffet knew what a zorrhb was—but few others did. I just wanted another taste of butter. But first I had one more thing to do. I thought of those squirrels with their folded-up gonads. I thought of my tulpas and egregores and the hairless beast on the loose in my town. The eye-covered succubi and white Gumbies. The fish heads and toad butts.
For the third time, I tried to catch a fly in my eyelashes. And that’s how I ended up with a genocide wasp folded up in my…