“She was over there, a parsec ago M'lord, she must have popped outside for a second, I am sure …”
“Don’t call me that! She was supposed to be here for the shift-change! What the hell am I supposed to do now? I’m not sitting through another run! I’m running out of underwear!”
“Yes, yes, I understand M’lord, it’s just …”
“Don’t call me that you idiot! Quit yammering and go raise her on the Evercom!”
“Right away M’lord…”
The Honourable Roibois bent the twisted and coiled idiomorph he called his “body” backward, slithering snake-like protrusions writhing up and around, interjecting, connecting and formed a near circular thin rimmed tube. He rolled down the path and onto the grass, slowly picking up speed, lightly bouncing over dirt mounds making soft creaking sounds. His lumbering apparition was already on the fast track when the cutting edge of a cliff shone in the near distance. The large brown-green branch-weaved rolling tire that was currently the Honourable Roibois (form: cyclic) appeared to be in danger of imminent demise. The face of the cliff came threateningly forward and the Honourable Roibois lunged playfully onward. In one hot second he was over it, and in another, split and dissected he had stopped, full circle half an inch before the lip. Pausing for one dramatic moment, he untangled himself into a heap and then quickly twisted his coils upwards assuming his prior appearance. The Honourable Roibois (form: archaic) stood straight over the gap, his toes curled around the cliff edge, allowed the cosmic breeze to blow his silver hair backwards into the eye of the Cosmos and slowly turned his head aside to look over his shoulder, as if he was acting out the last shot before the credits of a well-vised sit-com, winked at the invisible ever-seeing camera obscura and let his robe clad body sink forward into the open mouth of infinity. Brigh, who was sitting near his chariot, wearing his extremely clamorous face was quick to murmur a slur after The Honourable Roibois's (form: unknown) disappearing body.
"Bloody fool!"
Brigh crossed his hands over his chest. He wasn't happy, not happy at all. In a similar manner, as if acting a cameo appearance in his own film, he resiliently looked over the assumed horizon into the verbosely endless nothing. The Cosmos squirmed and wriggled, stacked particle volumes made out of something rolled over and fell, gigantic revolving blobs of matter collided and collapsed into each other. Brigh envisioned what he was looking, observing, experiencing as the inside lining of an enormous stomach, every other entity being essentially elements of soon to be digested food. He was not impressed, by none of it. He put his finger up his nose and gave it a vigorous twist. Joyfully he careened the remnants, appearing now upon his fingertip as an installed work of abstract art some distance away from his face and gleefully examined it under the feeble light of a passing comet. He was certainly impressed by that. He concentrated all his will on his new favourite construct and softly spoke into the cosmic wind.
"This is what I think of you Sli, you are exactly like this to me .... only .... only much worse!"
Uttering those words made him feel somewhat better. He remembered reading an article caught randomly through the ether which advised on the cathartic powers of curse-giving. Sli had brought this on herself, he was sure, adamant about it. Suddenly, viciously he jerked and shook his hand in a manic attempt to rid himself of the thought, the pest and the abomination off his finger. The booger detached itself from his flailing finger only to re-attach neatly under the breast-pocket of his radiating illuminating white silken shirt.
"Fuck! FUCK!"
The object was to remain calm under any circumstance, he knew that it was as obvious as using a butter-knife for applying your favourite spread on a slice of bread is. Brigh was a man of action, bad manners, and practicality. Restraint for him was taking a bullet as an innocent bystander - not fucking easy to live with. He spat on the ground contemptuously and in his own mind the very soul of the Universe. If there was one thing he hated the most, that was having nothing to hate over, and thus to avoid any complications and to be able to engage in heated confrontations, Brigh had decided to hate it all.
Or so he claimed.
The Honourable Roibois appeared from a distance, treading, rolling and after a few watchful moments came to a neat rest in front of a standing, sneering Brigh. Detangling, reconfiguring, he appeared like a man under a new light, only to be scrutinised by Brigh's incessant stare, looking at him in the sneering way an elk is looking down at a hoof-stomped woodworm.
“Sire, I am afraid that …”
“Look, man, all these formalities really tire me. Say what you have to say without the extra nonsense!”
The Honourable Roibois shivered and shook. He lowered his head and shifted his weight from foot to foot uneasily. He was used in behaving despotically towards everyone, indifferent of age or rank. The only person he could talk down to was his own reflection on a dioptric floor mirror held in his quarters, made so to alienate the perceiver from the perceived object, and consequently provide him with a solid inclination to terminally insult himself. He slowly raised his head, looked up to Brigh's round illuminated face and quietly pondered on the correct way of breaking the news to him.
A few ruminating moments of fermented anxiety went by in silence before the Honourable Roibois (form: archaic) spoke again:
“I am terribly sorry to say …”
“Break it!”, snarled Brigh.
“The circumstances are such …”
“Bore! Get off it!”, raged Brigh.
The Honourable Roibois was savagely and profusely sweating. Using one of his many writhing wriggling extremities he wiped one of his many noses and then shook and fluttered the whole of his coil-threaded body.
“Pardon me to say …”
“What exactly are you?”, exclaimed Brigh.
The Honourable Roibois was quite taken aback in reception of Brigh's blatant remark. In an unsuspecting moment and for the first time in his life, certain pathways within his curled mass lit up procuring a dozen raised flailing arms which he vehemently used in taking a fast and abrupt swing at Brigh. Being quicker than he ever thought himself to be, Brigh fell back and rolled over, quirkily imitating the moves of a cage-wrestler he had witnessed on the LumiEther some time ago, picked himself up and assumed a presumed Kung Fu stance.
"Charles Bronson motherfucker!"
The Honourable Roibois didn't have enough time to blink before Brigh raged on.
“So this is what is coming down to Sir Humphrey Quire Leatherbuoy?”, screamed Brigh tightened his body deep into his stance and began to forcibly inhale and exhale.
"Woooshhh!!!!"
"Foooshhh!!!!"
"Whaaa...", the Honourable Roibois managed to exclaim before Brigh's elbow came down in a sideways downward thrust laying the flat broad underside of the arm flat on his branch-weaved face. He was so dumbfounded by what he had just done, that he had forgotten to duck. The Honourable Roibois fell to the ground, dissolved into his heap-like structure and contemplated very well staying there forever. Brigh leaned over him, grabbed him by what he thought must once have been his collar and violently shook him.
“Where, the Hell, is she?”, he spat right down on the reminiscence of his face, putting extra strain on each word.
The Honourable Roibois (form: heap) rolled up around Brigh's fist, twisting and turning and assumed a round thorny fleshy bush-like appearance. A light flickered from deep within his insides and soon enough a single large flame erupted over the bush's top. Brigh's illuminated face was shaded by the robust fiery tongue. A voice shot out, sharp and shrill, miraculously echoing around the flat deserted plain.
"A thousand days in Sodom, a thousand days in Sodom
The ways of God, forgotten, a thousand days in Sodom
A thousand days, a thousand years, you've lived your life, now die!"
Brigh shook his outstretched arm violently up and down in a desperate attempt to dislodge himself from Roibush's fiery grasp. He jumped around, flailing his arms like a chicken in failing mid-flight, croaking sharp exclamations meant to coax that inflamed son into jettisoning every hard feeling.
"Ahhhh!!! Khaaa!! Ahsh!"
Finally, after one last struggling swing which almost dislocated his shoulder, he managed to hurl the Honourably Rolled Roibois (form: extravaganza) like a wad of structuralised sputum onto the ground. He smacked against it with a loud thud, force of impact immediately extinguishing the fire, reverting the Honourable Roibois into his previous, arguably comprehensible state-form.
The exclamation noise machine, ceased operations with a loud clang!
“Stuff it! I’m getting out of here!”, said Brigh and walked decisively towards his chariot. He got in and thumbed the mode execute:on button. The di-ethereal machine came alive, or more aptly put, became aware once again.
“Where to sir?” the Voice asked.
“Home!”
The Voice grunted.
“What?”, said Brigh in a clearly annoyed tone.
“Where to sir?”
Brigh humphed and got off the chariot. He took several manic jabs at the "circuit: relapse" switch by squeezing concentrated will through a very specific optic channel as he stood at a distance. The Honourable Roibois, was once again at his feet.
“Night off!”
“What?”
“She had the night off! It’s her night day!”
"Damn!", thought Brigh. "Damn that woman! Damn the shift!"
This wasn't supposed to be happening. She shouldn't have taken a night day, not today and without warning or prior advice, never. This was just her, typical her, typical Sli, toothpaste in the shower, tea-cup in the fridge, sandal-free for all eternity, always forgetting, glasses, classes, instruments, half eaten lotus buttercups, unfinished fizzed-out long drinks and bent cigarettes. Typical or atypical she had done it, again. Now for once, he wasn't going to drive her chariot, not that old piece of rusted space-junk. The inside of it was dusty, dirty, sticky at parts, decorated everywhere with little dangly bits which made Brigh squirm every time they were on sight. Purple upholstery. Purple tint on the windshield. A million different shades of purple for the buttons, the switches, the screens, the little metric dials indicating the level of assholity achieved on every passing moment. Fuck it! He wasn't stepping a foot in there. He wasn't going to take the bait and he surely, definitely, clearly and robustly as Hell he wasn't going to take the fall. Pyretta should have known better than to trust her but then again, she was just like her, exactly like her, a facsimile of accurately annoying proportions.
Women. The Devil's creatures.
There was once this prophet, which quite often appeared on worldly stages, insulting many made-believe sages, lexically ravaging the presumed holiest of all institutions around his world of being. By procuring a wealth of golden nuggets of collectively atoned wisdom he was instrumental in ushering in an era of perceptual change. One day, he enticed the world to accept women in command, promising betterment and absolution over the many fallacies birthed by men, failing, perhaps here gloriously, to recognise that it was indeed hierarchical institutions that were solely responsible for every committed malpractice.
Another thing he had failed to notice, was that women were equally capable of fucking up exactly where they were not supposed to.
Today, or tonight, was definitely proof of that.
"Master, what shall it be?", begged the Honourable Roibois, kneeling on both legs.
Great things were afoot. Brigh wanted to fuck, but first and foremost wanted to fuck the System. He turned around, shovelled dust into the Honourable Roibois's face with his sandal-clad feet and walked back into his chariot. With one majestic swing of the arm he pressed the mode execute:on button once more.
“Where to sir?”, bellowed
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