Although Ragamemnon had, as promised,
cleared the village of va-va-voompires, the city council stubbornly
refused to pay his fee.
Their voices were thin as heated
broth-whisks and bled into their neighbor's in order as they
struggled to together outline the origins of this oversight that
wasn't one. “Imagine a math class, where a pupil pencils in the
answers without any arithmetic,” said Councilor Staplegun. “As
far as I can see, the serial-killing sexpots decided to leave on
their own while you were eating cod tongues and potato garnish at the
Overlook. A happy coincidence, but without knowing the mechanisms of
the victory, who can say if it even is a victory? It might be a
draw-ery instead, and where will we be then?”
“Ours isn't a city,” said Counselor
Famous Amos, who knew this only too well. “It's a village. Who
are we, the “City Council” to hand over money to malcontented
minstrels? The capitol C “citizen” has no business making
decisions for the villain politic (and I mean that only in the
antiquated sense of the word, a serf, a bumpkin, a rustic dweller in
a loose amalgamation of structures around a green, an us, all lower
case). Let the Village Directorate vouchsafe the invoice
themselves.”
“And you will KNOW my name is
Counselor Quake,” ranted Counselor Quake, a write-in candidate if
there ever was one. “When I substitute the U for E and you're
called forever afterward Ragu-mumnon, which is a flavor of pasta
sauce and not a piper, neither pied or of solid matte. Tread
carefully. There be rattle-spits sunning on the trails!”
“What I'm trying to say is, they
might be back,”added Counselor Staplegun, not without some small
hope that this would be the case.
After listening to this sort of thing
for quite some time, that three-eyed Lorem Gypsum Ragamemnon (he a
place-holder for other worse disasters that will befall the
unrepentant sinner) blew a number of notes on his recornaga. What
marvelous, serpentine melody! The song . . . was a surfer . . .a
live for-today-tripper . . . a mellow-spray-tan color which washes
white when you need to go Gothic . . . a Generalisimo Death
inspecting the troops . . .a stanza from Cicero . . . a car-wash . .
. a made-up guest-bed more comfortable than the host's mattress. It
was everything.
To him aggregated the elders, off their
death beds or out of board-room or mid-sentence explaining whom was
related to who and how they met. Anyone who knew anything about the
whys of the world, not as much the cause-and-effect, but something
deeper, the rhythm of of the village, the what-goes-around comes
around of living for a bit. Anyone who was what and when in equal
measure.
They didn't really want to, but were
obligated, and marched with Ragamemnon to the Overlook where they
were seen but not heard. Three-Eyes folded his arms just so – See?
This is what happens.
The City Council, knowing they were
licked, frantically attempted to make amends, offering gifts from
each day of the week in a spiral of sop, all eight elements. (Some
might be tempted to say that seven days makes the circle, but to add
an eight is the more pleasing and composite. You can easily halve
the burnt calf and halve it again and halve it halfway into that
oblivion of very small numbers without any complicated calculations,
but a prime number spells trouble). The offerings started that
weekend because only at the eleventh hour (inauspiciously
indivisible, as discussed above) could they reach some sort of
consensus, 4:38 pm or so on F-15sday, only tens of minutes away from
clocking out for the workweek.
Herein follows a complete catalog of
their payments:
On Ringsday, they offer up the One True
phone number, which Ragamemnon wisely refuses, preferring a
pay-as-you-go model he received long-ago over a South American prison
wall. The Council protest, “But it's an Insular Phone!” but he
shakes his head.
On Restday they play casino-style
card-games with biological cell cultures.
On Moonday a secret stash of
va-va-voompires that the enterprising Councilor Quake has preserved
against Ragamemnon's razing of their citadel are made to dance a
complicated musical number they have been practicing since the fall
of their House.
On Firesday it's mass executions. The
soldiers before long run out of ammunition and so send Councilor
Staplegun to Town (which is not, please note, another village or a
hamlet or a city or any place at all whose titular dispensation
relies on a number of inhabitants, but rather is a place containing
a Do-What-Thou-Will-Mart where said ammunition is available at
markdown). The ground is made sticky and sweet, like the table at a
rarely cleaned Chinese restaurant.
On Watersday, the Gator-jack is coaxed
out from the swamps and sic'd on old Sed ut Perspiciatis, but
Rags buckles his legs and throws a snack-fish to that well-wielded
alliga-saurus and offers even a hit of his Newport Light to the
snack-fish for being so brave and stone-faced at the coming internment
in gator-belly.
On Thundersday, having ordered an
abominable snowman next-day delivery but without result or response
from customer service, they go into the old comedy routine, classic
but edgy in the subtext of a demographic apocalypse. “Is the Yeti
here?” “Not Yeti.”
On F-15sday a crack commando squad
tries to Indiana Jones the Ragamemnon's wind-pipe whence much of his
power resides, replacing it while he sleeps with an ostensibly inert
billy-club. They botch the job, first half-flattened by a boulder
and then, with shoulders slumped in defeat, surrendering the pilfered
piccalo to their South American Nazi counterparts, To-Team-Latarian,
who for whatever reason are wandering around these very same
swamplands.
On Ringsday again, a hinge and a
syndicated repeat, the Not-Yeti at last arrives with a drink he has
engineered which spreads warmth to the extremities while carrying
micro-metals through the blood until the imbiber becomes some sort
of human antennae to the stars, an ET Phone Home. Ragamemnon knows
what is, but, ever the gentleman, obliges, and downs the cocktail in
a single gulp. Satisfied that the resulting lights far in the
distance are getting brighter, he at last departs, releasing the
villagers' forbears from his hypnotisms.
By then though, the To-Team-Latarian
have the flute pretty much figured-out, and, after waiting for the
Not-Yeti's taxi towards the Dogstar to land and anoint him with
anti-gravity, they bring back the va-va-voompires to terrorize the
village for the glory of their Fatherland. And are themselves eaten
first, being ensconced by vegetation which leaves little room to
maneuver away from cannibalistic eye-candy.
So it really was, in the end, a
draw-ery, just as Councilor Staplegun had predicted.
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