RAGAMEMNON

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.